Turn Old Tiger Stadium Site in Detroit into Complex Showcasing 'African Culture'? Isn't 84% Black Detroit Already Showcasing Enough "African Culture"?

An 84 percent black city.

An actual "artists rendering" of Urban Cafe Detroit, to be built on the empty Old Tiger Stadium Site... it will showcase "African Culture" in an 84 percent black city already boasting enough "African Culture"...

Joblessness, abandonment (white people, who were 85 percent of the city in the early 1960s), and high crime - courtesy of the black population - is all an example of what a metropolis fueled by black empowerment can create.

2013 Detroit. 

Right, Louis Farrakhan?

2013 Detroit is a city showcasing African culture in a city that was almost 100 percent white only one hundred years ago (in fact, it was the economy white people created that attracted black migrants to the city; conversely, it is the black culture these migrants imported to the city that drove away whites).

Now, an ambitious developer has the bold idea to try and break new ground: be the first developer to develop an African-American development from the ground-up [Developers Want To Turn Old Tiger Stadium Site Into Entertainment Complex Showcasing African Culture, CBS Detroit, 5-17-13]:

An ambitious Detroit businessman thinks he has a bombshell idea for transforming the empty lot where Old Tiger Stadium used to be.

Francois DeMonique told WWJ City Beat Reporter Vickie Thomas he wants to see the site at Michigan Avenue and Trumbull transformed into a unique hotel and entertainment complex.

“I love this city and I believe in this city. I’ve put a lot of effort into it and my company, which is Urban Café Corporation, we are dedicated to being a part of the new face of Detroit. This may be just the first African-American development built from the ground up,” he said.

DeMonique’s vision for Urban Café Detroit is one where visitors can stay in a hotel, attend a live concert, have a first-class dinner and dance the night away all under one roof without having to drive to separate destinations.

“We’re anticipating the Old Tiger Stadium site, but there are other options and sites that we are currently in negotiation with, private enterprises and private owners,” he said.

The look of the building would be aesthetically pleasing, DeMonique said, with a streamlined, avant-garde look that will instantly raise the profile of the area in which it is built. He said the facility will influence the city’s skyline and “lift the spirits of Detroit’s residents and visitors.”

DeMonique, who’s been working on the project since 2009, said the complex would focus on “celebrating the positives of many nations around the world” from the perspectives of art, dance, music, cuisines and the other aspects. He described the venue as being “the place to be for locals and a must-see establishment for tourists.”

The hotel will be the jewel of the complex, DeMonique said, featuring its own 200-seat upscale restaurant, full-service bar, candy store, exercise room, spa, hair salon and a business center.  The third through seventh floors will have 20 suites per floor, each featuring a theme-specific decor designed around the unique cultures of various African countries. DeMonique said the designs and concepts will cover all 100 suites, showcasing different countries of Africa and the Caribbean.

  DeMonique is too late. Modern-day Detroit is already an entire city fueled by both black culture and the idea of black empowerment.

A book on baseball (The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2002) helps describe how the culture black people imported to Detroit - which subsequently drove white people, business, and hope from the city - supersedes any hope of turning the old vacant Tiger Stadium lot into a complex showcasing African culture.

Detroit 2013 is the ultimate example of African culture in America:

Any post-war illusion that sustained economic growth would solve Detroit’s social problems was shattered with the decline of the automobile industry in the late 1960s as well as the 1967 Detroit riot or uprising, depending upon one’s point of view. Frustration over growing unemployment, allegations of police brutality, and de facto segregation exploded in July 1967 when police raided a “blind pig,” or after hours drinking establishment. Before National Guard troops restored order, 43 people (again most of them African Americans) were dead, 7,000 were arrested, and $22 million in property was destroyed. Most observers interpreted the growing racial segregation in the Detroit area as due to white flight into the suburbs following the 1967 violence. By the 1980 census, Detroit was losing population and the city was predominantly African American, while the metropolitan area continued to grow in the overwhelmingly white suburbs.

Mayor Coleman Young is often blamed for exacerbating Detroit’s racial divide. Elected in 1974 as Detroit’s first black mayor, Young was a vocal critic of the white suburbs and champion of black Detroiters. The city’s racial divide, however, was already well established before Young arrived. Nevertheless, national perception of Detroit as a city characterized by urban desolation and black lawlessness was fostered by an influential magazine piece and book by Z’ev Chafets focusing upon the city’s Halloween-eve Devil’s Night fires as representative of decadence in Detroit. Little wonder that when the makers of the futuristic Robocop (1987) wanted to create an urban wasteland with rampant crime, Detroit was selected. (p. 137-138)

 Detroit is a city where black lawlessness has created urban desolation, only exacerbated by having a city government almost entirely composed of (elected or appointed) black people and a tax-base supported almost entirely by black residents -- who elected the black officials in charge of the custody of the city they inherited through a low-level racial war against whites.