MIDWESTERN MARX
  • Home
  • Online Articles
    • Articles >
      • All
      • News
      • Politics
      • Theory
      • Book Reviews
      • Chinese Philosophy Dialogues
    • American Socialism Travels
    • Youth League
  • Dr. Riggins' Book Series
    • Eurocommunism and the State
    • Debunking Russiagate
    • The Weather Makers
    • Essays on Bertrand Russell and Marxism
    • The Truth Behind Polls
    • Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century
    • Lenin's Materialism & Empirio-Criticism
    • Mao's Life
    • Lenin's State and Rev
    • Lenin's LWC Series
    • Anti-Dühring Series
  • Store
    • Books
    • Merchandise
  • YouTube
  • Journal of American Socialist Studies (JASS)
  • Contact
    • Article Submissions
    • The Marks of Capital
  • Online Library
  • Staff

1/25/2022

Detroit is Haiti: unforgivably Black. By: Charles Brown

2 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
The Detroit protest rebellion of 1967 had the impact of crystallizing or aggravating a capital boycott that had then been developing for 15 or 20 years, a divestment by the bourgeoisie - big capital - something like that economic blockade or embargo on Cuba. This agreement for a capital boycott was not done by law, instead it was private agreements which were most responsible for the disassembly of Detroit as a labor giant. The relationship of business to Detroit as a result is something like the relationship of world capitalism to Haiti since the revolution there a couple of centuries ago.

​With the corporate flight from Detroit, a capital boycott was inflicted on a former concentration point of capital investment, by suburbanization of factories, plant closings, runaway shops to the South, and globalization of production.

There was the bullet and then the ballot. The rebellion, a mass protest or demonstration, guerilla theatre against white supremacist unemployment, poverty and police brutality. Then the 1973 election of Coleman Young as a Black mayor extraordinaire. For these exercises of Black power and really for now being 85 percent majority Black population, Detroit is still under economic blockade punishment by the powers that be.
 
"The news magazines called Detroit a model city. They marveled at its
strong chin and gushed over the heroic benevolence of Mayor Cavanagh,
who had become the gallant knight of the War on Poverty by spearing
forty-two million federal dollars for the city's poor people. Cavanagh
was widely portrayed as a sort of Great White Sympathizer, and the
fact is, he worked hard at maintaining a symbiotic rapport with Black
leaders. In that spirit, he had established an amicable relationship
that let observers to think of Detroit as being immunized against the
outbreak of inner-city rioting that had torn apart Watts in 1965,
bloodied Chicago and Philadelphia, and in 1967 was sweeping the
country at a rate that would produce 164 incidents, among them major
revolts in Cleveland and Newark." (Young, 170)

The federal government's Kerner Commission report essentially agreed that the "riot" protests in the dozens of majority Negro ghettoes around the country had legitimate gripes. Detroit's 1967 mass spontaneous protests were the culmination of a socioeconomic historical shift which was marked by segregating of residence based on race through white flight to the suburbs especially beginning in the 1950s, escaping the move toward integration represented in open housing law. It was also part of a relative scattering of some main points of industrial production from a concentration in the city of Detroit ( and neighboring Dearborn) to the surrounding suburbs. It was a breaking up of the World War II era Arsenal of Democracy.

In a way, there seems to have been a shifting of the location of basic production from the Midwest to the South, from the U.S. to other countries, in what gets termed post-industrialism, post-Fordism, restructuring. The concentrated proletarian powerhouse was busted up and racially resegregated, on the typical American model: Black vs. white.

​The bourgeoisie cannot really undo what they have done. They are hoisted on their own petard. Detroit is a pariah society in the national media still, as the latest Time article shows. White masses are shy to move back into Detroit; although in 2014, there has been some white popular migration into Detroit.
 
The bourgeoisie will not invest in the people of an African town like this, with so few white people to benefit. They are trying to move more white people in so that they can feel better about investing. They, the bourgeoisie, had to economically blockade us like Cuba, or Haiti have been for decades and scores of decades. Like the great heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Jack Johnson, Detroit is unforgivably Black and Proud.

Author

​​​​Charles Brown is a political activist in Detroit, Michigan. He has degrees in anthropology and is a member of the bar. He teaches anthropology at Community College.  His favorite slogan is "What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”


Special thanks to N.C. Cai for editing and alignment.

Archives

January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020

Share

2 Comments
Charles Brown
2/1/2022 05:39:22 am

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/01/stop-claiming-mlk-legacy-america.html

Reply
Charles Brown
2/1/2022 05:46:50 am

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/04/financial-dictator-would-rob-detroiters.html

Reply



Leave a Reply.

Details

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020

    Categories

    All
    Aesthetics
    Afghanistan
    Althusser
    American Civil War
    American Socialism
    American Socialism Travels
    Anti Imperialism
    Anti-Imperialism
    Art
    August Willich
    Berlin Wall
    Bolivia
    Book Review
    Brazil
    Capitalism
    Censorship
    Chile
    China
    Chinese Philosophy Dialogue
    Christianity
    CIA
    Class
    Climate Change
    COINTELPRO
    Communism
    Confucius
    Cuba
    Debunking Russiagate
    Democracy
    Democrats
    DPRK
    Eco Socialism
    Ecuador
    Egypt
    Elections
    Engels
    Eurocommunism
    Feminism
    Frederick Douglass
    Germany
    Ghandi
    Global Capitalism
    Gramsci
    History
    Hunger
    Immigration
    Imperialism
    Incarceration
    Interview
    Joe Biden
    Labor
    Labour
    Lenin
    Liberalism
    Lincoln
    Linke
    Literature
    Lula Da Silva
    Malcolm X
    Mao
    Marx
    Marxism
    May Day
    Media
    Medicare For All
    Mencius
    Militarism
    MKULTRA
    Mozi
    National Affairs
    Nelson Mandela
    Neoliberalism
    New Left
    News
    Nina Turner
    Novel
    Palestine
    Pandemic
    Paris Commune
    Pentagon
    Peru Libre
    Phillip-bonosky
    Philosophy
    Political-economy
    Politics
    Pol Pot
    Proletarian
    Putin
    Race
    Religion
    Russia
    Settlercolonialism
    Slavery
    Slavoj-zizek
    Social-democracy
    Socialism
    South-africa
    Soviet-union
    Summer-2020-protests
    Syria
    Theory
    The-weather-makers
    Trump
    Venezuela
    War-on-drugs
    Whatistobedone...now...likenow-now
    Wilfrid-sellers
    Worker-cooperatives
    Xunzi

All ORIGINAL Midwestern Marx content is under Creative Commons
(CC BY-ND 4.0) which means you can republish our work only if it is attributed properly (link the original publication to the republication) and not modified. 
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Online Articles
    • Articles >
      • All
      • News
      • Politics
      • Theory
      • Book Reviews
      • Chinese Philosophy Dialogues
    • American Socialism Travels
    • Youth League
  • Dr. Riggins' Book Series
    • Eurocommunism and the State
    • Debunking Russiagate
    • The Weather Makers
    • Essays on Bertrand Russell and Marxism
    • The Truth Behind Polls
    • Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century
    • Lenin's Materialism & Empirio-Criticism
    • Mao's Life
    • Lenin's State and Rev
    • Lenin's LWC Series
    • Anti-Dühring Series
  • Store
    • Books
    • Merchandise
  • YouTube
  • Journal of American Socialist Studies (JASS)
  • Contact
    • Article Submissions
    • The Marks of Capital
  • Online Library
  • Staff