What Brought Detroit to it's Knees?

 This is just an amazingly, on-target post by a Detroit resident who counters the notion that poor politics, liberal democrats, union members, or wild spending bankrupted Detroit. It is, in fact, a response from a progressive libertarian who blames racism, pure and simple, for Detroit's fiscal problems...and who sees great promise in the city still.  Thank you to Milo Sales for this impassioned analysis:

Anyone who knows anything about Detroit knows how dumb this (blaming Obama or specific politicians) is. If a racist had a city, it's what Detroit would look like 50 years later. You might want to look up what White Flight and Redlining are - because that's what turned Detroit into what it is today. When you move all the jobs to the suburbs and refuse to let poor minorities rent/buy houses in the area, with shit for mass transportation (effectively stranding them with no means of reasonable income) guess what, the city will degenerate.
What you fail to realize is that METRO Detroit (ie, the Suburbs) are prosperous. As a matter of fact one of our suburbs is the second richest city in the ENTIRE country. [I suspect he is referring to Grosse Pointe].  If you understand the scale of Detroit (we can fit Manhattan, Austin and SF all in our city borders only) and then consider the size of the suburbs (at least 15x larger) you might start to make some connections here. The Old Detroit spread out, taking its wealth and jobs with it. It's not coincidence that the City/Suburbs is the most racially segregated part of the entire USA - 8 Mile is a Black/White Line, even still. 

 
You have a city designed for a tax base of a million trying to make do with 200,000 - which falls daily as black people whose families got left behind emigrate to the more prosperous suburbs now that, you know, they can actually do that.

Detroit wasn't killed by Democrats or Liberalism, it was killed by Racism - pure and fucking simple. Now tell me, which party is more Racist? Yeah, I thought so. It's amazing that the city has held on as long as it has without going bankrupt.

Second, despite all of this - Detroit is an amazing place; especially for Libertarians. Where else could a couple kids buy a 3 story building downtown for 40k? I renovated an entire loft out of nothing, no electricity, no water, with no permits, no government interference. I built a place that in another city would have been so far out of my budget it's absurd. You know how many permits I pull when I go till an abandoned lot and plant a community garden? None. We have communities, real ones, where people stick together and know each others names still. We have neighborhood watches where we manage not to kill unarmed kids, despite their being ACTUAL crime. We have an incredible entrepreneurial spirit - art galleries which spring from nowhere, designer clothing shops started up by 20 year old's, 2k and a screen printer. Nineteen year old's are buying and renovating homes, starting businesses.

But maybe you're right, if Obama had a city maybe it would be Detroit. A city where blacks and whites come together despite centuries of racism, create and achieve things that no one expected or thought possible. While I'm no fan of the president, I'll take that comparison.

The general ignorance of people is amazing. Maybe we're all Secret Muslims too.

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