I remembered a headline in the satirical paper The Onion the day after President Obama was elected. “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” To many of us, that would seem even more appropriate for the new mayor of Detroit.
Face it: We all have an image of Detroit shaped by poverty, class and race. Millions of Michiganders think of it as a crime-ridden slum hellhole, with major league sports teams and a museum or two.
And if you live in Grand Rapids or Muskegon or Holly, or even Bloomfield Hills, it is easy to convince yourself that Detroit’s problems have nothing to do with you. That Detroiters created their own mess, themselves. Sadly, that perception has been fed by unscrupulous Detroit politicians from Coleman Young to Kwame Kilpatrick, who played, or tried to play, the race card for their political benefit.
Well, it’s time for all of us to grow up. Detroit is the first thing the rest of the country thinks about when they think of Michigan. Retailers know that if your store window is seen as a filthy mess, you aren’t going to lure any customers inside.
The good news is that we have been sort of outgrowing this race thing. Think about this: A majority of white voters in Michigan voted for a black man for president last November.
Barack Obama won Kent County. He won the Upper Peninsula. He won blue collar suburbs.
And Detroit yesterday had the closest thing it has had in decades to a normal election. There was no race or us-vs.-them talk. You had two serious, sober, professional men arguing over who had the best vision and the most ability to lead.
Dave Bing won a close victory over Ken Cockrel, the interim mayor.
Bing won, to the extent that we can tell why, for these reasons. Voters are tired of the mess at city hall, and wanted a new broom.
Bing was apparently helped by a last-minute endorsement by Freman Hendrix, another sober, middle-aged man, who finished a close third in the primary. Voters were also dismayed that Cockrel had failed to get council to accept a regional proposal to revamp Cobo Center, the city’s aging convention facility.
Plus, some realized that if they elected Bing they would get the talents of both men; Cockrel now returns to City Council as its president, replacing the bizarre Monica Conyers.
Speaking of bizarre, Dave Bing has three months to convince voters he is doing a good job, and then he faces another election, followed by another in November.
Till then, we ought to see him as being very much like so many of us. He’s a guy who came to Detroit for a job, moved to the suburbs, and has now gone back to try and make a difference. If we can’t follow him there, we should at least try to help.
For Michigan’s sake, and our own, as well.
Please no revisionist facts here..The majority of white voters in Michigan voted for a passive and "magic negro' in Obama..
White voters did not vote for Obama out of some sense of racial justice or any noble or civil or cum ba ya reasons. Bush destroyed our national economy!!
White voters in our state remain in the most part uneasy and in fear of Black males..
This is a reality in part the reason why our region is the most segregated and racist in the entire nation...
Of course only media types like you will try to spin Bing's victory as a good racial outcome since such a fiction let's white folks off the hook with regard to the racial legacy of this region..
Bing is not a magic bullet , our state is in a meltdown not becuase of Detroit but becuase of the state leaders in Lansing and the lousy CEO's in the autosector and of course the impotent voters who tolerate 2nd class leadership..
Posted by: Thrasher | May 06, 2009 at 03:08 PM