Growing up in Roseville in the 1970s, by the time I reached junior high school the majority of my neighborhood friends were refugees from Detroit, those who fled at a time when the inner city was showing the earliest signs of degenerating into an urban wasteland. These suburban families represented the beginning of white flight, a massive population shift that would prove to be Detroit’s undoing over the next four decades. Once safely settled in suburbia, these whites would eventually lead the charge against cross-district busing and would congregate as an anti-Detroit voting bloc. That led to Macomb County political...