"
California's 'Blade Runner' Future comes to life ... in Detroit" (Lex Communis, February 4, 2013):
#7 Approximately one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles are either vacant or derelict.
#8 The city government of Detroit has closed dozens of schools and has decided to cut off public services to the "heavily blighted areas".
#9 According to one estimate, there are 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots in the city of Detroit today.
#10 The median price of a home in Detroit is just $9,000, and there are some areas of Detroit where you can still buy a house for $100.
#11 There are more than 85,000 streetlights in Detroit, but thieves have stripped so much copper wiring out of the lights that more than half of them are not working.
#12 Mayor Bing has announced a plan to reduce the number of streetlights in the city of Detroit to just 46,000.
#13 According to one very shocking report, 47 percent of all people living in the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate at this point..
#14 The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City [but still lower than in Mr. Obama's beloved Chicago-- Site Mgr.].
#15 There were 377 homicides in Detroit in 2011. In 2012, that number rose to 411.
#16 Justifiable homicide in Detroit rose by an astounding 79 percent during 2011.
#17 In one recent year, the rate of self-defense killings in the city of Detroit was 2200% above the national average.
#18 Ten years ago, there were approximately 5,000 police officers in the city of Detroit. Today, there are only about 2,500 and another 100 are scheduled to be eliminated from the force soon.
#19 Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day.
#20 Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are are telling people to "enter Detroit at your own risk".
[Hat tip to C.B.]
I hope Mr. Allen dos not gainsay this information :)
ReplyDeleteI myself would be no more scared breaking down in the middle of Detroit than anywhere else.
That's because I do not have racial hatred in my heart like you. Now get lost; I left you alone, I am asking you to do the same decent thing by me.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Allen. For one who falsely accuses others of serious sins you are quite thin-skinned, aren't you?
ReplyDeleteAnd, I have left you behind - check the thread where I factually flayed unto death your race-does-not exist ideology.
As for the words you have written publicly, they seem to be fair game to quote until you retract them - but that is not they way it works for men of a certain arrogance and so you demand that I leave you alone.
Fine.
Ta-Ta; and no hard feelings on my part.
I have gotten much enjoyment and not a few old-fashioned belly laughs from following the Oscar and Felix slappy-face exchanges between I Am Not Spartacus and Robert Allen. In gratitude, and in the spirit of gushing ecumenism so fashionable these days, I would like to sketch out a few observations on the general subject of racism and human behavior, which you all may feel free to ignore. I feel fairly confident in saying that I have spent a smidge more time in black neighborhoods than either of you (none of them at the point of a gun as yet), so my remarks may be slightly less unworthy of your attention than usual, even though I am neither a biologist, nor an anthropologist, nor Jesse Jackson’s footstool.
ReplyDelete• People tend to form groups: families, tribes, etc.
• Subgroups tend to form within groups. Relations between groups, and between subgroups within a single group, tend to run the gamut between fractious and harmonious.
• Fractious vs. harmonious relationships among groups and subgroups within groups tend to be determined by self-interest. Whatever advances self-interest defines relationships
• All of the above may or may not be in our DNA, but it is exactly as ubiquitous as are human beings on this planet (who may resist such behavior only by a conscious effort of will)
I don’t advance any of the above as social Darwinist principles, just common sense observations. Science frowns upon common sense much of the time, but I will leave that for another to explain.
• When relationships turn fractious, demonization of one group by another is a popular rationalization for the hostility. Racism is, of course, a popular form of demonization.
• Our better instincts tell us that such rationalizations are not worthy of us
• Our better instincts do not tell us that such rationalizations are, ipso facto and in toto, completely false and mendacious. Occasionally they may even be deadly accurate as observations, although that may be incidental to the reason they were developed.
I will end with an observation by a friend of mine of the black persuasion, speaking on the subject of the welcoming nature of certain neighborhoods:
“GOODYEAR STREET? Dude, don’t be goin’ to no Goodyear Street! Them Goodyear Street niggers is crazy!!"
Ralph,
ReplyDelete=)
I almost feel as if I should feel guilty for laughing! But I've heard this sort of thing too, what with working in the "Hood of Hoods" and all.
The unwritten rule, of course, is that a black can call another black a "nigguh"; but a honkey can't. Jus cuz!
PP, the strangest thing is when white teenage boys address each other that way. For some reason, they don't seem to have much interest in calling each other "rednecks" or "honkeys." Do you suppose that their rejection of the epithets chosen for them by blacks is a subtle form of racism?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the self-appointed Thought Police of Mr. Obama's New World Order will think so, Ralph!
ReplyDelete