'Chicago Reader' asks: "Why are whites afraid of blacks?"

Geneva Banks also asked, "Why do they always run from us?" We answer her

"Why is it that white people are afraid of black people?" asks 86-year-old Geneva Banks incredulously to a reporter from the Chicago Reader in an article published on November 1, 2012.

Why indeed? The article would report Mrs. Banks was part of the Great Migration of black people from the southern states, moving to Chicago as part of what we have dubbed "Manifest Destruction":

In 1948, her mother was able to buy a two-flat in a racially mixed section of Hyde Park just west of the University of Chicago. The area turned black, and in 1963 the U of C's urban renewal project forced her mother to sell.  

The "negro removal" project, as critics called it, displaced thousands of low-income Hyde Parkers, most of them black. By then Banks was married and had five children, and that's when her family settled in South Shore. 

 The neighborhood was still mostly white; when her family came to look at the building, the owner made them come back after dark so the neighbors wouldn't see he was showing it to blacks. By 1970, South Shore was 69 percent black; by 1980 it was 95 percent black, and it's been about that ever since.   

"Why are whites afraid of blacks?" Banks asks me. "Why do they always run from us?"

Why do white people always run from black people? The octogenarians question continues to go powerfully - and tragically - unanswered in not just Chicago, but in every other city where black people have become a demographic majority.

Just in the narrative Mrs. Banks spun of her history in Chicago rests one of the reasons why white people are both afraid and run from black people: the economically devastating effects that black migration has to residential and commercial property value.

But if Mrs. Banks would like an answer to her question, well, we'll supply it. The Chicago Tribune reported on December 4, 2012 that the continuing cycle of violence in the Windy City isn't showing any signs of subsiding [Off-duty corrections officer among 11 shot Monday night, Tuesday morning].

Perhaps Mrs. Banks grandson, granddaughter, or perhaps a younger relative is part of the target audience of the $55 million that is being pumped into the almost exclusively black 'tough' neighborhoods of Chicago in a last ditch to keep blacks from killing one another [Questions surround $55 million program to cut violence in Chicago, CNN.com, 12-3-12]:

 On a chilly afternoon this fall, teenagers across Chicago's South Side were busy at work, earning $8.75 an hour to hand out fliers with a message of non-violence. "Our message that we're giving out today is about being healthy," said 18-year-old Lucia Eloisa. "One of the key pointers is about taking time to reflect and seek inner peace."   

Eloisa's part-time job was paid for by an ambitious state-funded program to keep at-risk teenagers out of trouble. It pumped nearly $55 million into Chicago's toughest neighborhoods and three of its suburbs to stem unrelenting gang violence. 

A four-month CNN investigation found that not only did the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative (NRI) pay teens to hand out fliers promoting inner peace, it also paid these at-risk teens to take field trips to museums, march in a parade with the governor, and even attend a yoga class to learn how to handle stress. 

Earlier this year, state legislators passed a resolution demanding the state conduct an audit on the program. That audit is under way. Supporters say the program kept kids off the streets of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods and helped expose inner city youth to a broader culture, as well as cultivate future leaders. 

But critics wonder if it was just a waste of taxpayers' money, considering that the city's murder rate has risen since the program began two years ago. Or worse: was it just an effort to buy votes ahead of a tight race for governor?

Politically motivated or not, it's hard to argue that the nearly $55 million spent on the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative helped stem violence in Chicago. Two years after the program was implemented, there have been 476 murders in the city, a nearly 20 percent increase over 2011. 

Midnight Basketball for black people isn't working...

 Why is it extra money and programs are necessary to police your generations grandchildren, Mrs. Bank? Could -- perhaps -- the reason there were so many restrictions to your generations freedom in place be because white people passed laws that worked to protect not only their personal safety, but also their property (and, by extension, their fortune)?

Heather Mac Donald of City Journal reported in the 2010 Winter edition some crime statistics that might help explain to both the Chicago Reader and dear Mrs. Geneva Banks just why white people are afraid of black people [Chicago’s Real Crime Story

Why decades of community organizing haven’t stemmed the city’s youth violence, City Journal, Winter 2010]:

In Chicago, blacks, at least 35 percent of the population, commit 76 percent of all homicides; whites, about 28 percent of the population, commit 4 percent, and Hispanics, 30 percent of the population, commit 19 percent. The most significant difference between these demographic groups is family structure.

In Cook County—which includes both Chicago and some of its suburbs and probably therefore contains a higher proportion of middle-class black families than the city proper—79 percent of all black children were born out of wedlock in 2003, compared with 15 percent of white children. Until that gap closes, the crime gap won’t close, either.

Official Chicago’s answer to youth violence also opts for collective, rather than paternal, responsibility. The Chicago school superintendent, Ron Huberman, has developed a whopping $60 million, two-year plan to combat youth violence. The wonky Huberman, who created highly regarded information-retrieval and accountability systems for the police department and the city’s emergency response center in previous city jobs, has now applied his passion for data analysis to Chicago’s violent kids.

Using a profile of past shooting victims that includes such factors as school truancy rates and disciplinary records, he has identified several hundred teens as having a greater than 20 percent chance of getting shot over the next two years. The goal is to provide them with wraparound social services.

(The profile of victim and perpetrator is indistinguishable, but targeting potential victims, rather than perpetrators, for such benefits as government-subsidized jobs is politically savvy.) The program will assign the 300 or so potential victims their own “advocates,” who will intercede on their behalf with government agencies and provide them with case management and counseling.

In some cities, it’s a police officer who visits a violence-prone teenager to warn him about staying out of trouble. Chicago sends a social worker. 

From "Those Who Can See" Blog -- Restrictive Covenants in Chicago (1947)

Talk about an awful lot of resources dedicated to keeping the grandsons and granddaughters of Mrs. Geneva Banks generation in line. Doesn't seem to me the $60 million plan to combat youth violence worked out to well; as CNN noted, a $55 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative (NRI) didn't work out either.

Are you beginning to understand why much of Chicago had restrictive covenants in an attempt to keep neighborhoods white?; which means "keeping them safe" and free of relying on city and state grants totaling $105 million over a two-year time period to keep black kids from killing one another... 

Perhaps we should go back 20 years Mrs. Geneva Banks, and look at another failed attempt to keep black people - those sons and daughters of "The Great Migration" of blacks form the southern state - from killing one another. How about "midnight basketball? With teams sponsored by Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), what could go wrong? [Welcome To Night Court

Chicago's Midnight Basketball League provides young inner-city males with a brief respite from urban violence, Sports Illustrated, 12-1-1991]:

A foot-stompin', hand-pumpin' crowd of 3,000 is shaking the rafters at Malcolm X College just west of the Loop in Chicago on this November night. Stirring up the fans is an all-star basketball game matching the best players from the Henry Horner public-housing project against those from the Rockwell Gardens project. The point guard for Horner, 20-year-old Dyonne Bowman, pounds downcourt and executes a flawless head fake and blind pass to his power forward beneath the basket. 

Two points. Bowman's neighbors jump to their feet and do Arsenio Hall's "Woof! Woof!" cheer or jeer at the crowd from Rockwell. "You were used," screams one girl, pointing her finger at the opposition. An infant barely four months old sleeps through the din on his mother's lap. 

Welcome to the Midnight Basketball League, a six-year-old program whose aim is to keep black inner-city males off the streets by keeping them in the gym during some of the hours when they would most likely get into trouble. The league has taken hold in 20 cities across the country, but nowhere is the need for such a program more acute than in Chicago, where the school dropout rate for black males hovers around 50%, and where it is likely that this year alone at least a quarter of black males between the ages of 20 and 29 will spend time in Chicago-area jails. But the Midnight League is providing a glimmer of hope.

Midnight Basketball in Chicago is still small. At last count 73,098 people lived in the city's 19 family public-housing developments, but only Horner and Rockwell, which together comprise 7,069 residents, fielded teams during the league's first two years in Chicago. Two more projects have been added for the upcoming season, and if the money were available, all 19 would be participants. 

"The danger is holding this program up as a cure-all for everything that plagues our inner-city communities," says Walker. "You can't erase years of neglect with a couple of seasons of basketball. There are still killings, and there are still robberies."  

Indeed, violent crime has increased in Chicago for three straight years, and the neigh borhoods encompassing public housing are by far the most dangerous. So how much impact have 160 basketball players had? 

"Statistically, it's impossible to attribute anything directly to the league," says Tina Vicini, director of news affairs for the Chicago police. Walker agrees that crime isn't going down. He says, "But at least on nights when we play basketball, there are neutral zones—pockets of peace."

The reality of racial crime in Chicago... is this why whites are afraid of blacks?
 (graph courtesy of SBPDL reader... in Poland!)

Midnight basketball, like the $105 million in combined city and state money spent in Chicago to keep black kids from killing one another, has done nothing to stem black people from acting... black. [Late-night hoops offer lifeline to young men, ABC 7 (Chicago), 6 - 4 - 2009]:

Researchers at the University of Chicago are studying ways to reduce violence in the Crime Lab. 

Professor Harold Pollack says there is value in rewarding positive behavior and keeping young people busy that time of night. 

"Giving young people opportunities for recreation at the times of days that are they are most at risk is important and making sure that those recreational opportunities are attractive and are run in a way that promotes the right values," said Prof. Harold Pollack, University of Chicago Crime Lab. 

Perhaps the question should be this: why is it that we have to find carrots to dangle in front of black people to keep them from misbehaving? In a more... civilized time, we had a weapon called the law, enforced by police who were instructed with protecting the life and property of white citizens.

Now, we have a system of government that works to ensure white people have their wealth redistributed to be spent frivolously on programs such as the ones needed to keep blacks from killing one another in Chicago.

"Why is it that white people are afraid of black people?" asks 86-year-old Geneva Banks incredulously to a reporter from the Chicago Reader in an article published on November 1, 2012.

It's a real shame that most white people have been afraid to share with you the reason why, Mrs. Banks. Once, we actually had a nation called the United States of America, where laws were on the books to protect the interests of white citizens and their property (restrictive covenants). This enabled the accumulation of capital and actual assets, which could be passed down to their posterity.

No longer.

But you also ask, to which the Chicago Reader reporter Steve Bogira offers no attempt at offering empirical evidence to answer, "Why are whites afraid of blacks?" Banks asks me. "Why do they always run from us?"

Look at the communities you have had a hand in helping to create, Mrs. Banks.

See the "Manifest Destruction" in your midsts.

There's your answer.

Now you know why white people run from black people... may the day come when they stop running.

"OUR Blacks are better than YOUR Blacks": The Reality of College Football and Basketball

Kudos to the Soviet-sounding The Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education for compiling some incredibly impressive data that illustrates just how reliant black males are on college football and basketball scholarships to garner acceptance to some of the top colleges in America (outside of Ivy League schools).

Just take a look at the below graphs (courtesy of The Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education study Black Male Student Athletes and Racial Inequities in NCAA Division 1 Sports available here) that break down the percentage of black males on the basketball and football rosters, compared to their overall percentage of the undergraduate population.

Breakdown of black males attending SEC schools and their participation on football/basketball teams

Breakdown of black males attending PAC-12 schools and their participation on football/basketball teams

Breakdown of black males attending Big 12 schools and their participation on football/basketball teams

Breakdown of black males attending Big Ten schools and their participation on football/basketball teams

Breakdown of black males attending Big East schools and their participation on football/basketball teams

Breakdown of black males attending ACC schools and their participation on football/basketball teams

Like most studies of this nature, The Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education blasts the poor ability of these programs to graduate black male athletes (or non-student athlete black males), without looking at the graduation rates of black males at Historically Black Colleges and University's (HBCUs):

The Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education provided data from a four-year study of athletes from the schools that comprise the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC. The findings show that on average, 50.2 percent of African-American male student-athletes graduated within six years and that 96.1 percent of the schools graduated African-American male student-athletes at rates lower than student-athletes overall.

 Just how bad are the graduation rates of black students attending HBCUs? The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) provides the details:

We aren't supposed to notice poor graduation record at HBCUs

At nearly half the HBCUs in our survey, the Black student graduation rate is 33 percent or lower. At these institutions, less than one third of all entering African American students earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. There are six HBCUs in our survey where less than one in five entering Black students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years.

But who cares about HBCUs, right? All that matters is that black male athlete-students at schools like Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Clemson, Florida State, Ole Miss, Southern California, Ohio State, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Arizona continue to provide positive examples and role models of black males, a much needed counter (and reprieve) from the countless other examples of black males behaving badly.

All SEC, ACC, and Big Ten college basketball and football can be distilled into one sentence: "Our blacks are better than your blacks."

An honest undergraduate student or alumni would be able to add: "Even if they aren't really student-athletes to begin with."

God's Gonna Sit This One Out

Well, not in Chicago...

The year is 1890. Chicago is a city on the move. With a population of more than one million people, the Windy City was a mere 1.3 percent black (14,271). By 1960, Chicago's black population would be 812,637 strong, or 22.9 percent of overall population.

As the book "Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago 1940-1960" by Arnold R. Hirsch makes clear:

Chicago's black population grew significantly during the twentieth century. Although the percentage increase was greatest during the initial period of ghetto formation, the largest increase in absolute numbers came during the 1940s and the 1950s. Analysts of the 1919 riot never fail to cite the growth of Chicago's black population; more than 148% between 1910 and 1920. yet, it was the addition of 65,355 new black Chicagoans to a relatively small existing black population  that accounted for the large percentage increase. Between 1940 and 1950 Chicago's black population swelled by 214,534; between 1950 and 1960 it grew by 320,372. Although the percentage growth during these two decades cannot compare with that associated with the Great Migration, the absolute numbers of new black resident represented a movement of unprecedented scale. In 1920 Chicago's black population totaled 109,458; between 1940 and 1960 it grew from 277,731 to 812,637.

Whereas blacks represented only 4.1% of the city's total population in 1920 and but 8.2% in 1940, they accounted for 13.6% of the city's total in 1950 and 22.9% in 1960. (p.16-17)

Why mention this? Because violence in 2012 Chicago is completely monopolized by the descendants of the "Great Migration" of black people to city. While Thanksgiving was being celebrated across the city, 5 people would fall dead and 20 wounded thanks to black violence in the Second City.

But it was a shooting at a funeral that serves as a fitting reminder of the legacy of the Great Migration of black people to northern cities; a powerful reinforcement of what we have dubbed "Manifest Destruction" [Cops: Gang member killed, another seriously wounded at funeral, Chicago Tribune, 11-26-12]:

Shots rang out, causing panic and chaos as hundreds of mourners were leaving a Catholic church on the South Side following funeral services Monday for a slain reputed gang member.

As people scattered for exits, a woman knocked Deborah Echols-Moore, 59, to the floor and fell atop her. Her shoes were thrown off her feet. When she stood back up, she fled barefoot out a door.

“When I came outside, you still can hear shooting. Boom! Boom! Boom! I still ran…people was running behind me,” the longtime CTA employee said not long after the 12:30 p.m. shooting. “You didn’t know which way to go or what to do. All I knew to do was run for my life.”

Chicago police said one man was killed, another critically injured in the bloodshed at St. Columbanus Church. Police identified both as Gangster Disciples members and convicted felons, illustrating once again the high risks of gang membership in a year in which rising homicides have brought Chicago unwanted national attention.

GDs alone make up more than a quarter of the city’s approximately 470 homicide victims. About 60 percent of this year’s homicide victims were gang members, according to department statistics.

Police were still investigating who was responsible for the shooting, but investigators said the neighborhood has long been rife with conflict between GDs and rival Black Disciples.

Illustrating the sudden, often unpredictable nature of the violence, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy just a couple of hours earlier was touting the department’s crime-fighting strategies in tamping down the city’s rate of violence since earlier in the year when homicides soared. Through Sunday, homicides have risen more than 19 percent over the same period a year earlier, department records show.

There were five fewer homicides during the first 25 days of November compared to the same period in 2011, according to department statistics. But shootings during the first 25 days of this month have risen sharply by 45 percent.

From November 1 through Sunday there were 161 shootings compared to 111 during the same period in 2011, department statistics show.

Rev. Corey Brooks, a well-known South Side pastor who officiated at Monday’s services for James Holman, 32, said a church would have been off-limits for gangbangers at one time.

“Now we are living at a day and time where these younger criminals have no regard for life or for street rules,” he said.

bout a dozen bullet casings littered the steps outside the church where yellow evidence markers were placed. Beat cops blocked off traffic with their squad cars and sealed off the church’s entrance with yellow and red tape. As evidence technicians took photos of the crime scene, detectives went door-to-door to nearby homes scouring for witnesses.
April Smith, 30, said she looked out a second-floor window of her home when she heard her car alarm sound off and noticed a man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans walking toward the church entrance on 71st Street. She then heard about a dozen gunshots and saw two passersby crouch for protection.

Moments later, the same man in the sweatshirt ran back onto Prairie and fled south, said Smith. Mourners then frantically exited the church.

“To know that something like that happened right across the street...it’s terrible,” Smith, who has lived at her home for seven years, said in disbelief. “It’s broad daylight.”

Brooks, who is pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood and is considering a run for former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s vacant congressional seat, said about 500 people attended the funeral, including about 50 children. The church was so crowded that people were standing in the back.
Brooks had finished the eulogy and Holman’s family and close friends had gone out the front door of the church when shots rang out.

“That's when all the gunfire broke out and it was just crazy,” Brooks said. “People were hollering and screaming and kids running everywhere.”

Charles Childs, a co-owner of the A.A. Rayner and Sons Funeral Home across the street from the church, held an uneventful visitation for Holman on Sunday. On Monday he said he saw the gunman firing his weapon as he came down the front steps outside the church.

“No place is safe,” he said. “It’s just despicable.”

 Well, actually a lot of places are safe; but one must understand that the "blacker" an event, the greater the odds are that 'random violence' might suddenly occur. Even at a funeral [1 dead, 1 critically wounded at gang member`s funeral, My Fox Chicago, 11-26-12]:

The Rev. Corey Brooks said he spoke at a funeral for James Holman, 32, of Chicago, who was shot to death Nov. 19 in the 6000 block of South Michigan Avenue.

"I preached that we have a great need for God and peace in our neighborhoods," said Brooks, who is running for Jesse Jackson Jr.'s vacant congressional seat.

About 500 people attended the funeral and Brooks heard the gunfire after the service, Brooks said.

"It was crazy," he said. "It was the worst thing you could imagine. People were running, screaming, trying to get safe. When people were going out the door, they saw the bodies."

Brooks said he didn't know the identity of the two people shot.

"This was at a funeral home," he said. "At least on the South Side, no one is safe in Chicago."

"I've seen a lot of things in my life, but this has probably been the toughest and most heart wrenching," Brooks continued.

Outside the church, a sign said: ‘‘Pray for Peace."

Pray for peace? How about praying that black people stop engaging in random acts of blackness? Recall this article from the Chicago Tribune [Homicide numbers reveal stark contrast/African-Americans hardest hit by spike in violence, deaths in Chicago, 7-12-12]:

Violent crime has long afflicted minorities in Chicago at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and the spike in homicides in the first half of this year provides an especially stark measure: 201 of the 259 homicide victims were African-American.

While blacks make up about 33 percent of the city's population, they accounted for nearly 78 percent of the homicide victims through the first six months of 2012.

The pattern is a familiar one in Chicago, where most violent crime happens in impoverished, mostly black neighborhoods on the South and West sides. Annual Chicago police statistics show a majority of both homicide victims and offenders are young black men with criminal records. With one exception, African-Americans have made up more than 70 percent of homicide victims in Chicago every year for the last two decades.

 Ask yourself: would black people in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s want to migrate to a city with high rates of crime? No. They'd want to move to a city with lots of job opportunities and potential for creating a better life for their posterity (leaving the Jim Crow South behind).

2012 Chicago is the legacy of this migration. Barack Obama recently discussed the (almost entirely black) violence in the city, noting [Obama Talks Chicago Violence: “I Live On The Southside…Murders Happening Blocks From Home”, Newsone.com, 10-28-12]:

“What I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence, generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban re-introduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s. They’re using cheap handguns,” Obama said.

Law-abiding white citizens aren't turning Chicago into a war-zone; it's black people, those descendants of the black migration from the southern states, who are re-making the Windy City in their image. You can't even seek refuge on Holy ground in this war.

Chicago News and Weather | FOX 32 News

In Their Own Image: Will 90 Percent Black Detroit Cease Being a City?

Democracy in America...

Out of 815,825 votes cast in Wayne County, Michigan (home of Detroit) in the 2012 Presidential election, 595,846 went to Barack Obama.

Detroit, a 90 percent black metropolis, is what Mayor David Bing calls "one of the hardest jobs in America":

“(My job is) to make the hard decision so this city would have a future, but it’s probably the second most difficult job in this country behind the president,” he said.

“We are in an environment, I think, of entitlement, we’ve got a lot of people who are city workers, who for years and years, 20, 30 years, think they are entitled to a job and all that comes with it,” Bing said.

He added: “Nobody wants to go backwards, but in order for us to move this city forward we’re going to have to take a step or two backwards — and then, I think, all of us have to participate in the pain that’ s upon us right now.”

 A 90 percent black city... completely reliant on federal and state grants to pay the bills. With an unemployment rate of 18.1 (from a high of 27 percent in 2009), why would Detroit continue to go Democrat year after year? Oh... that's right.

We live in a racial democracy, where black skin guarantees victory from an almost entirely black electorate. But... what happens to a city where almost all commerce comes courtesy of the taxpayer, via the welfare and EBT/Food stamps?

What will happen to Detroit, where the middle class in a 90 percent black city is those few black employees still on the payroll of the city government (since so few black entrepreneurs have stepped forward to create new business - or sustain businesses - with the absence of white people)?

We now know [State Senator Proposes Dissolving City Of Detroit, CBS Detroit, 11-28-12]:

It would no doubt be controversial, but the idea of dissolving the fiscally struggling city of Detroit and absorbing it into Wayne County is being tossed around in Lansing.

WWJ Lansing Bureau Chief Tim Skubick reports some state Republicans are talking about giving the city the option to vote itself into bankruptcy. And mid-Michigan Senator Rick Jones said all options should be considered — including dissolving the city.

“If we have to, that is one idea we have to look at. We really have to look at everything that is on the table,” Jones said. “Again, if this goes to federal bankruptcy, every employee down there will suffer, the city will suffer and the vultures will come in and take the jewels of Detroit and they will be gone.”

Local consultant Tom Watkins has proposed this in the past, but the idea has never played well among Detroiters.

In a live interview on WWJ Newsradio 950 Wednesday morning, Gov. Rick Snyder said he wouldn’t count anything out.

“Detroit needs to solve their problems, but they need support and we’ve been very supportive partners, I believe, in terms of offering different ideas and thoughts. And I just encourage them to work harder about working better together,” Snyder said.

Talking to Talk Radio 1270 host Charlie Langton, Detroit’s ex-communications chief Karen Dumas said she would not support such a plan.

“No, I don’t think that dissolution is the solution for the city of Detroit; I don’t,” said Dumas. “I think people … with every step we get more and more fearful … and maybe at some point that’s going to make everybody wake up and realize that we need to stop playing politics and come up with a solution for progress.   “I don’t know at what point that’s going to happen. “

Detroit Political Consultant Skip Mongo said the answer to Detroit’s fiscal crisis will come with fresh faces in City Council chambers and the Mayor’s office.

“We move forward and we start looking for new leadership, and we don’t make the mistake that we made before — we certainty don’t look around and outsource the mayor’s office,” Mongo said.

Mongo, who believes Detroit Mayor Dave Bing was a poor choice to begin, said Bing doesn’t a chance if he opts to run for re-election.

“Anything short of a tidal wave and Mayor Bing getting out with his boots on, or doin’ a [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie, no — he can’t win,” Mongo said. ”I don’t think Mayor Bing could beat me and I’ve never run for anything in my life. Honestly, no. He should leave.”

Meantime, the Bing administration continues to battle with council members over a deal to handle the city’s reform plan.

Bing said the council’s rejection last week of a contract with law firm Miller Canfield means the city missed a deadline to draw down $10 million Detroit needs to stay afloat and endangers a $20 million release in December.  Bing called it a huge setback for the financial recovery of Detroit, adding that unpaid furlough days are on the way for city workers if this isn’t worked out. 

Here's the ultimate question: Detroit still has a population of just over 750,000 people. How can this population - 90 percent black mind you - not have the financial wherewithal to have the means to produce enough income capable of being taxed to provide that necessary $10 million to keep the city afloat?

Worse -- why can't black people maintain neighborhoods that can provide sufficient revenue through property taxes?

Bloomberg.com reported that President Obama would have carried the state of Michigan without Detroit; but can Detroit - a city that is 90 percent black - be carried without the financial help of the state of Michigan? Without the continued infusion of cash from the federal government?

No.

What does this say about the state of black America?

In the absence of whiteness, the privilege of civilization is too great a burden to maintain.