Detroit's Bankrupt...Blame Game

I'm already seeing these points about "who is to blame" for the unprecedent bankruptcy proceedings that Detroit will be mired in for the unforeseeable future. And of course, blame the white people who "abandoned" the city is one component.

Says one Post reporter: 

Of course the city did explode, in riots in 1967, and that was when Detroit’s downfall — its current path to insolvency — was set in agonizing slow motion. The white families in my neighborhood, my friends, all fled to the safety of the suburbs. My street, and my neighborhood, went from mixed to all black in an instant. Many of the black newcomers who came couldn’t get mortgages, so most ended up as renters, not homeowners...

The white population’s abandonment of the city left Detroit with a shrinking tax base and deteriorating, segregated public schools — a system locked in place by a Supreme Court order that halted busing across school district lines. But blacks left behind in Detroit had one thing left — political power. And they would guard it jealously against any encroachment, real or imagined.

My family didn't leave Detroit until 1990. We "abandoned" the city for the same reason may middle-class black families left: soaring crime rates, horrible public schools, and corrupt liberal governance, among other reasons. White families didn't "abandon" the city because of some deep-seated racial animus. I resent the charge of abandonment, honestly. We loved our neighborhood, and I have so many fond memories of playing with children of all backgrounds in the late 1970s/1980s. We left because the city was decaying--even 30 years ago, city services weren't up to par (neighborhood moms collecting for snow retrieval, even on a street where school buses ran), and Detroit's murder rate led the nation. Remember 1984? The Tigers won the World Series and led the nation in arson. And murders. And yeah, Coleman Young's infamous phrase about "hitting 8 Mile" may not mean purely law-abiding white people, but we all knew how to read the man.

The right is saying what the left won't: liberal policies explain so much of this mess. Detroit's decline accelerated after the 1967 riots and the 1973 election of Young. It snowballed during the Kwame years. Pockets or hipster trendiness may pop up, but the city needs more than narrow enterprising zones. It needed (a decade ago or more) a city-wide reevaluation. Can you imagine what a Rudy Giuliani could have done in Detroit?

I don't know what the answers are, or if there are any answers to be found. Bankruptcy is a start, and I think it's a start that will start at a rock-bottom impasse. But it's a step forward, and that's why I applaud it. I may never be a resident of Detroit again, but I'm forever a Detroiter. And I want to see my hometown rebound.