Hyping Detroit

Special Motor City Issue

Sun "Kulchur"

November 12-26 1975

Editor John Sinclair

Betty Carter

Herbie Hancock

The Spinners

Malcom X

Gladys Knight

Tony Williams

The Dramatics

Aretha Franklin

NewMcKinneyCottonPickers

Bonnie Raitt

David Ruffin

Mahogany

Hyping Detroit

Convention City! Thousands of drunken delegates on the loose in downtown Detroit, gone totally berserk in an orgy of over-priced dinners, expensive hotels, cheap prostitutes, and mindless tourism! See the big buildings, the lordly landmarks of European culture, the breath-taking automobile factories where the wealth which makes such delights possible is created.

You might have to lock your doors, watch your wallets, the natives might be a little restless- but it's just good clean fun for the folks from out of town, and if we can only hold on until Henry Ford and Max Fisher finish their "renaissance" projects, then, why, everything will be all right! Delightful Cobo Hall! Wonderful old Olympia Stadium! Jerry Schoenith's Roostertail! J. P. McCarthy! Jac LeGoff! The Institute of Arts and the Top of the Pontch! The Renaissance Center! Whew! What a life! What a place! With all this shit going for it, why can't people just see that downtown Detroit is happening, baby, like never before! Why, a smart advertising agency could. . . . FADEOUT.

The camera picks up a horde of automobiles lurching wearily up the expressway from downtown Detroit. Slopes of earth and walls of unbroken concrete block out everything but the tops of the buildings which line the banks of the big ditches, and those unfortunate suburbanites who still have to work in the city are  spared the painful sight of the desolate urban wasteland they've left behind. Downtown and the freeways, with an occasional foray into the jungle of the streets for a special event of some kind-an inescapable appointment, a night at the theatre, an off-beat eating experience- are all the excaped ex-urbanites have to do with Detroit anymore, and even that is far too much for most.

The suburbs are where it's really at, in their little minds, and what makes the 'burbs so appealing- above all- is simply the absence of black people. It seems to be strictly taboo these days to talk about any of Detroit's problems in terms of racism and the obsolete modes of capitalist production which perpetuate it, but one really has no choice in the matter if one wishes to make any sense.

Racism-or the hatred, fear, and suppression of black people by white people and their institutions, if we may be so bold- is at the heart of the Detroit experience, it is behind every major economic and cultural decision made by those who control this city, and it is certainly at the heart of the approach taken to hyping Detroit by every agency of white media spew in the area. Selling Detroit to white tourists before selling it to its inhabitants, black and white, would seem to be a serious mistake, if not a total disaster; yet such appears clearly to be the strategy of the goofy characters at the daily newspapers and elsewhere in town who have taken it upon themselves to push their own dangerously truncated vision of the city's greatness.

To add to the confusion, so to speak, the persons who represent the other side- such as former city publicity director Laura Mosley Jackson- have fallen into the same trap of pretending that the racism isn't there, that it's merely been an oversight on the part of the vast majority of well-meaning honkeys who have turned their backs on the glories of the Motor City. "Get to know me better," as if there was some question in their minds, some unreasonable refusal to check out what's really happening, and not the ice cold rejection of the possibility of making a common life with black people which is the very basis of the suburban boom.

Let's cut the bullshit once and for all: Detroit is a city which has been destroyed by the cancer of racism, and its only hope for health is to excise this deadly virus from every affected cell of life In the shell which remains. No amount of fancy advertising agency filigree, no pronouncements from public officials, no bumper stickers or billboards or bus cards can erase the reality of life in the Motor City, and no tourists in their right minds would want to approach this place with the kind of expectations generated by the current round of Chamber of Commerce propaganda.

But tourists aren't what we need here anyway- put the life of the city back in tip-top shape and the tourists will come running. What we need are people who will live and work here to transform these ruins into Renaissance City. Without such people- and I don't mean to say that there aren't any now, because the process of reconstruction has certainly gotten it's start from such citizens -without an increasing infusion of such visionary people the city will remain in big trouble on all sides.

Maybe the question we need to ask at this juncture is a multifaceted one: What is Detroit? What have we got to work with? What is the extent of the problem, and what makes one think the city can be saved? How can we expect to get anywhere by pretending that there is no sickness raging throughout the area and finally, what is it that makes the official pontificators sound so stupid  when it comes to the state of the city and what to do about it?

First of all, Detroit is basically a city whose population is more than half black and steadily rising- a city whose white citizens have deserted in droves for a life without niggers in the suburbs, and who wouldn't come back for anything. Detroit is a city which I has been used and discarded by whites, led by the automobile manufacturers, in the great American tradition, and which stands now as a junkheap monument to the callousness and stupidity of the giants of industry. A place where black people were brought by Henry Ford, almost as slaves were brought to this country in the first place, to be used to do the dirty work white people, no matter how quick off the boat from some hovel in Europe, would no longer do, or wouldn't do as cheaply. And where many of them were put, to top it all off, in a town which Ford had the unmitigated racist gall to name "Inkster" after the color of their skins.

Detroit is a place, in short, with a lot of heavy karma weighting it down- the kind of karma which comes from plunging ahead mindlessly, mercilessly manipulating everyone and everything in its path to achieve maximum profits at minimum expense to the profiteers, who have always managed to keep moving out one step beyond the wreckage and despair their course of action inevitably leaves in its wake. Now they fix their sights on the Renaissance Center, ignoring the rest of the city, and try to pretend that this ugly standing insult to the citizens of this place will make up for the years of plunder and neglect which have been inflicted upon it by the leaders of the whites.

Until recently- that is, until two years ago, when Coleman Young beat out white standard-bearer John "Blackjack" Nichols-black Detroiters and those whites who side with their black fellow citizens against racism and honk control in general have had little recourse but to strike out at their tormentors in sensational but rarely constructive ways. The rebellion of 1967, from which the city has not even begun to recover, is the most spectacular example, but one [might cite more subtle expressions of super-alienation such as the presence of some 100,000 heroin addicts on the streets of Detroit, the tons of litter which disfigure miles and miles of those streets, and the all-pervasive atmosphere of righteous hostility towards whites which permeates the ever-expanding black neighborhoods and turns the whites away in terror.

That most local white persons seem to regard themselves as in no way responsible for the plight of black Detroiters does not really spare them the certainty of their karma. It is far beyond the point where their thoughts can protect them from the consequences of their actions- the evidence is every where. And where the white individual may protest his or her innocence, that individual must have the simple lack of arrogance to concede that it is white people- other white people, perhaps, but white persons 'nonetheless- who have caused, and who Jo cause, black people to suffer treatment not generally accorded to whites. Segregated housing, for example, or segregated schools. An unemployment rate between 25 and 50 per cent of the able-bodied population . An incredible lack of capital for large or small businesses, and the lack of any kind of high-level control of the mass Communications media, especially on the national level.

In other words, white people must understand that black people have a legitimate beef with white persons of a certain stripe, and that their tendency to generalize the beef to include white people as a whole is more the result of whites' self identification with the Caucasian race in all its squalor than any other single factor. Blacks are quick to recognize, and even to embrace, those whites who are willing to denounce their common oppressors, the corrupt greedheads who own all the big stuff in this country-the Fords, Rockefellers, Mellons, duPonts, Fishers et al. But they would be foolish to embrace white persons who continue themselves to embrace the persons and the machinations of the white ruling class and its institutions- anybody should be able to understand that!

It would also be good to understand that black people have never had- have never been allowed to have -the same kind of relationship to the city that white people have traditionally enjoyed. America has never been the land of opportunity for black people, and in Detroit black opportunity has been limited to those areas which white people have abandoned, or which they have fought tooth and nail to keep blacks from entering. Thus it should not be surprising that the black response to this state of affairs has included the burning and looting of the homes and businesses in their communities over which they have had no share of control. Given such a limited range of possibilities for participation in the determination of their civic destiny, one would not be too bold in feeling that even white people might have done the same -and did, in fact, during the rebellion, those who couldn't help but understand and agree with the course of action taken by their black fellow cits.

All that is changing now that the black majority has taken political control of the city of Detroit. Stuck with a worn-out, used-up, squeezed-dry shell of a metropolis once known as one of the world's most beautiful cities, and surrounded on all sides by the whites who have picked it clean, black people will nevertheless rebuild the city for their own purposes at last, if only because they live here and share the aspirations all people hold tor their own communities.

What will they do with it? One might well look to Afro-American culture in general, and to black American music in particular, to gauge blacks' ability to create beauty out of the most limited resources. The Motor City itself has produced, along with its cars and trucks and beer and ginger ale, some of the most emotionally powerful, kaleidoscopically beautiful music ever to be issued by hunians. Most of this music- at least 90%- has been created by black Detroiters, and has spoken clearly and eloquently for the superior creativity, the awesome' strength of spirit, and the vast humanity of the local Afro-American community.

Persons rooted in such a cultural experience have much to offer white people, whose culture can be characterized as somewhat lacking in humanity and who could easily be said to be "culturally deprived." Yet whites are so limited by their own racist heritage that they are reluctant to pay proper respect to the achievements of black people-accomplishments realized in the face of remitting opposition from whites on every level-let alone try to learn something from persons they consider their inferiors.

But it is the whites who have failed, alter all -the whites who ran this beautiful city into the ground, plundered it to suit their fancy, and then turned tail and ran to inflict the same miserable fate on the surrounding countryside. The large manufacturing corporations, the real estate interests and the banks: these are white institutions if there ever were any, and these are the forces which have truly mutilated Detroit. Black people only added he twist which was necessary to start establishing a different set of prerogatives and now it is up to them to try to resurrect what the whites have spent so long destroying - "Detroit, The City Beautiful."

It is this prospect which gives the city its present energy, that dynamic undercurrent which is finally beginning to capture the imagination of more and more Detroiters daily, and if it is a fearful prospect to many white residents of the area, one can only suggest that their fears are hopelessly misplaced. Black people not only are not the cause of white people's problems, but they may even represent part of the solution. At any rate they will be pursuing their own chosen course of action to the best of their ability in responding to the problems of their community, regardless of what whites do, and it seems likely that they will make a better go of it than their white predecessors were able to manage.

Of course their success will depend to some extent on the support of the top honkeys and their followers in the area, simply because these persons have all the big money under their control; and blacks will need white media support as well, to help communicate their concerns, programs, ;and achievements throughout the community, and to give an accurate portrayal of their own culture which is so different From that of Euro-America. Yet the official arbiters and boomers of culture in the white media remain painfully unaware of even the existence, not to mention the excellence, of Afro-American culture here and elsewhere, unless it is pre-packaged in a form they are able to understand within the racist framework of their life and work.

Let us take one last example before closing this modest diatribe: in an entertainment calendar which is packed with news of the doings of every cocktail pianist and hack vocal act in the suburban universe, the Detroit Free Press rarely, if ever, mentions, lists, or otherwise discusses the musical activities at the wealth of black-oriented nightclubs, bars, and cabarets around town. Henry's Lounge, Lowman's Westside Club, Watts' Club Mozambique, the Ja West, Phelps Lounge, Ethel's Cocktail Lounge, Ocie's Paradise Lounge, King's Row, the 20 Grand - none of these places even exists in the world inhabited by the Top of the Pontch/Michigan Palace/Bobbie's Pub set which dominates the columns of the dailies. Nothing that happens at these places, starting with a steady procession of the finest musicians and entertainers in the country, is deemed worthy of mention by the denizens of the suburban depths - they don't go to such places, no one they know does, and certainly their readers, who are nowhere near as hip as their friends, wouldn't have any interest whatsoever in the local whereabouts of a bunch of black musicians and singers, especially when they're performing at places which are principally frequented by people of color. If they're at Pine Knob, fine, that 's outa sight; but not if they're performing in the midst of the black community, which is strictly off limits to Mr. and Ms. White Eye.

This is not the time nor the place for a detailed discussion of the sins of the white media in this town. but merely a start at discussing some of the questions raised earlier in thus piece vis a vis the future of the city of Detroit in the hands of its black majority. It is our reasoned conclusion that the city is in better hands than ever before, and that the excitement to be found here centers on the prospect - and the process of rebuilding this place into the greatness it once boasted.

If a hype is needed to move Detroit forward it must reflect this excitement in a fresh and exciting way, building on the cultural riches Detroit has produced - which black Detroiters have produced in the main - and holding them up as standards to which we all might aspire, whether we're black or white.

And if the hype has any effect, it should be to bring any number of visionary persons into the city to work with the people who are already here, trying their best to salvage something useful from the age they've inherited from the automobile barons and their industrial rap partners. Tourists just won't do, and to continue to appeal to well-heeled suburbanites from around the U.S. is to tighten the 'tourniquet of racist arrogance and insensitivity which has choked off the lifeblood of this city for far too long already. Pay some attention to the people who live here, you honkeys - we're paying you more attention than you'll ever know, and believe me, we don't like what we see!

"Kulchur" Editor John Sinclair moved with his family back into the Motor City early this year and presently resides in the New Center area.

 The design pictured here is the proposed new seal of the City of Detroit with one significant alteration. Pictured at left is the city burning down in 1805, while at right is the modern metropolis which has been built on the ashes of the old wooden structures. in the foreground the woman on the left, her garment seared and torn, bewails the loss of her city, while the woman on the right, clothing intact, comforts her friend and points modestly to the future. In the drawing proposed by the city's Historical Department, this second woman is white; following the suggestion of Councilwoman Maryann Mahaffey, SUN artist Gary Keil has transformed her into a woman of color. This city needs more white people with Ms. Mahaffey 's consciousness!

Motor City Music Greats: 1.Stevie Wonder, 2. Gladys Knight, 3.Smokey Robinson, 4.Aretha Franklin, 5. Marvin Gaye, 6. The Supremes, 7.Martha Reeves, 8.The Four Tops, 9. The Temptations, 10.Mitch Ryder, 11. James McCarty, 12. Bob Seger, 13.Alice Coltrane, 14. Elvin Jones, 15. Charles Moore, 16. Jr. Walker, 17. John Lee Hooker, 18.Eddie Kirkland, 19.Little Sonny, 20. Yusef Lateef.