January 17, 2011
EDUCATION
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called Detroit’s school system “a national disgrace.” Fewer than a third of Detroit’s students graduate high school. In 2009, Detroit students produced the lowest scores in the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, even though more is spent per-capita on Detroit students than the national average. A staggering 77 percent of Detroit’s eighth-graders scored “below basic” in math. It is estimated that a mere one percent of males who graduate from Detroit high schools are educationally equipped to handle college.
Until last summer, Detroit’s School Board President was Otis Mathis, whose difficulties with basic language caused him to be placed in special-education classes in fourth grade. Depending on whom you believe, he graduated from high school with a GPA ranging somewhere between .98 to 1.98 (Mathis claims the latter number). A special program through the G.I. Bill allowed Mathis to attend Detroit’s Wayne State University even though he was deemed “academically unqualified.” When emails surfaced in 2010 revealing Mathis to be sub-literate at best, he replied that he’s “capable of reading a lot of information and regurgitation.” A colleague of Mathis insisted he was still the right pick because his job “is to represent the community” and his “lack of writing skills is [sic] prevalent in the community.” Mathis resigned in June 2010 after a coworker filed a letter complaining that he”d touched himself inappropriately during several one-on-one meetings with her.
GOVERNMENT
Detroit officials oversee a population that has dwindled to less than half of its peak during the city’s boom years. The pivotal 1967 riots led to what is perhaps the most significant case of white flight in American history. City government shifted from having a widespread reputation of white bigotry and police brutality to being a hotbed of black-nationalist ideology infused with ghastly levels of corruption and police indifference.
The city’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, assumed power in 1973 and clutched onto it for 20 years. Inner-city blacks tended to love him, while the suburban ring of whites surrounding Detroit viewed him as an arrogant race-baiter determined to make the city all-black. Young, who referred to himself as Detroit’s “Motherfucker in Charge,” saw employment plummet and crime rates soar during his reign.
In 2001, Detroit elected “hip-hop mayor” Kwame Kilpatrick, only to watch him self-destruct in ways which make Coleman Young appear dignified. Kilpatrick apparently spent most of his time as mayor sending text messages to a female coworker that included such bons mots as “I’m HEADED HOME NIGGA….NEXT TIME, JUST TELL ME TO SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, and DO YOUR THING! I’m fucked up now!…I’m GOING TO BE ALL OVER THE BIKINI WAX SECTION OF YOUR BODY. LOL.” Kilpatrick, who now sits in prison, still faces numerous felony corruption charges. There’s also the unsolved matter of the stripper who allegedly performed at his mansion, was reputedly assaulted by his wife, and wound up murdered with a pistol of the same caliber used by the Detroit Police Department.
After Dave Bing recently became mayor, he proposed cutting all services to roughly a fifth of the city’s territory, essentially surrendering it to the homeless, the lawless, and all the public defecators stranded in between.
SUMMARY
Nothing I”ve detailed here involves things I “believe” about Detroit; they are all statistical facts. In life, facts tend to be more useful than beliefs.
To help revive a city that was dying under his watch, Mayor Coleman Young once said, “We need to dream big dreams [and] propose grandiose means if we are to recapture the excitement, the vibrancy, and pride we once had.” While he was dreaming big and making grandiose propositions, the city continued falling apart.
Sounds a lot like the new “I”m a Believer” campaign. It seems founded on the old myth that things such as self-esteem”rather than, oh, brains“are what lead to achievement. It also relies on the delusion that when you”re in cancer’s advanced stages, your attitude can make all the difference.
Sorry, believers, but when things degenerate to a certain level, your attitude doesn”t matter; you still gonna die.
