Posted on 02/17/2014 7:20:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The article doesn’t mention the one thing that really destroyed Detroit. I’m guessing that you know what that is.
Envy is an ugly thing. Funny that the big money liberals are being attacked by the gimme free stuff liberals. I guess that’s what happens when you nurture a culture that most sane people escape from as soon as possible. I just hope they don’t relocate to red states and turn them into a toilet with their stupid ideas
More than anything else, the race riots of 1943 and 1967 killed Detroit. After 1967, the whites simply left in droves, and the city died.
If Silicon Valley is going to go the way of Detroit, it will be the assaults on the personal safety of the Golden Programers that will kill it.
Get out the double barrel and fire a couple of blasts over their heads!
keynesians are going to be surprised at how bad shape many cities are in once they can no longer be propped up on promises. Even a few FReepers buy into the fantasy that all is well as long as there are still taxpayers to keep paying.
Detroit once had taxpayers too.
OK, I’ll mention it in comment 4.
Yet the midwest is trending red.
White flight is a liberal cop out phrase.
The simple fact is that it was business that fled Detroit and it didn’t happen all at once. I’ve got a neighbor who was a black kid in Detroit when his father’s bakery was firebombed during the rioting. They were lucky because his father had enough money to move to Jackson and find decent factory work.
Others weren’t as lucky, they lost their businesses yet had no money to get out. The third group were those who were wisely insured and managed to rebuild but they were living on borrowed time because along came Chairman Young who inflicted damage on an unprecedented scale in the form of redistributionist and confiscatory taxes and regulations. He was also the one who started using public sector unions as enforcers.
True, but then the conservatives were the first wave, eventually the limousine liberals will be on the last wave out of town. That’s who you fear.
One could argue that rich liberals support progressive policies out of fear, they know what is being pointed out in this article is true and are trying to placate the masses by giving them just enough to keep them from rioting. Knowing that it will be their heads the roll first.
They can never give enough. They would have to completely begger themselves before the rioters would be satisfied. Homeless, without a job, that would be all they could do to stop what they’ve set in motion.
I agree, they don’t seem to know that the takers will never be appeased. They will simply keep raising the bar higher and higher for what is minimally acceptable welfare until the rich can give no more, then they will riot and take everything else.
They unleashed the mob on us all when they gave the vote to everyone.
Only a republic could have lasted (with limited voting rights), Democracy will always fail.
Microsoft buses in Seattle have become objects of contempt. I wonder if that’s where they got the idea?
I had heard that Detroit hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1957. And a lot of the Democrats have been unusually corrupt and incompetent, I think. Tales of the Kilpatrick administration alone are quite shocking.
I’m a big believer in the existence of ‘white flight’.
For 17 years, I have worked in Land Development, in a community with anemic 1.5% annual growth. So where are all the new homebuyers coming from? The answer is simple - anyone who can get out of the city will do just that...and for whatever reason, the majority of those that can leave are white.
Did the businesses leave first? In our line of work, the model is businesses follow ‘rooftops’...meaning businesses go wherever the newer houses go, not the other way around.
I’m fascinated with ‘white flight’ trends...keeping in mind that I don’t blame white people like myself for ‘fleeing’ (which is exactly what I have done). It just amazes me how efficiently urban decay destroys places...and the differences between adjacent cities can be, well, black and white.
As an example, I am originally from the Birmingham area - the city of Birmingham is now only 21% white, while the city of Hoover, which is immediately adjacent to it (i.e. they share a border) is 73% white. Something has caused this shift in population, and its interesting to try and find out why. BTW, the county that includes Birmingham has declared bankruptcy...hello next Detroit.
Anyway, I think ‘white flight’ is real. I just don’t blame whites for fleeing. Its exactly what I have done. I live near Topeka, KS, the home of the famous ‘Brown vs Board of Education’ desegregation case - and my kids go to a school that is around 98% white. So much for desegregation.
White flight is a fact. The liberals use it as a cop out phrase, but they caused it. And to some extent we are in a “chicken and egg” argument here.
Yes, Coleman Young’s socialist policies drove businesses out of Detroit, but they were by and large white businesses. Therefore, white flight. He gained power because a significant number of black voters put him there. The significant number of black voters had been growing during the 1950s and 1960s, but reached a critical mass after the riots of 1967.
So I argue that Young didn’t cause white flight, he was it’s beneficiary and his policies that did not suppress crime and saw deteriorating schools only hastened an already ongoing process. Where the liberals have their say is the allegation that white flight is caused by blacks in their neighborhoods, as an indictment of white racism. That is the liberal cop out. White flight is, in reality, caused by two things: High crime and poor schools. People who want to work for a better life for themselves and their kids will not stay in a community where there is high crime and the schools are bad. That applies to both black and white people, just like your neighbor’s bakery. Lots of blacks live just fine in the suburbs, and they are here for the same reasons white people are.
So I will concede this point that it should not be called “white flight,” and won’t use the phrase any more. It should be called “affluent flight” or “productive flight.” People are free to draw whatever conclusions they wish from the demographics of the phenomenon.
San Francisco is a fortress city. Parts of it are beautiful, although almost no one can afford to live in those parts. But every time I go there I am staggered by the number of people living in sleeping bags on the street - one small block can easily have 15-20. New York and LA are like that, although maybe slightly less so. Wherever the left rules, opportunity for those most in need of it dies, and the much lamented “inequality” becomes most manifest.
You say “White flight is a fact.” And then in the same post you say “... it should not be called ‘white flight,’ and won’t use the phrase any more.”
That’s exactly what Political Correctness is, the abandoning of a factual term of speech because you’ve, supposedly, upset someone else. Of course, because you’re terminology is, indeed, factual, the persons upset always have an ulterior motive for getting you to abandon the factual term.
Take “illegal aliens.” It’s a factual statement but rubs liberals (and illegals) the wrong way, so we’re all supposed to say “undocumented workers” now, as in “well, they work; they just haven’t got their documents...yet.” Both are factual, but one emphasizes illegality; the other emphasizes work.
Granted, the person using the terms “white flight” or “illegal alien” might have an agenda, but more likely they are stating a fact as fact, and others with an agenda find that fact inconvenient, or outright damaging to their cause and so bring the “political correctness” cudgel to bear.
I urge you to reconsider your decision. If the flight is white, it is indeed “white flight.” Why sugarcoat it? More important, why give the PC police another victory?
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