Wall St.and Business Wednesdays: Powernomics Shakes Up Detroit (Parts I and II) by James Clingman Jr

The economic development plan put forth by Dr. Claud Anderson, and approved by the Detroit City Council, is causing quite a stir in the Motor City. Editorial writers in the dominant media have derided the plan as “racist” and “separatist.” One editorial written in the Detroit News said, “As a document, ‘A Powernomics Economic Development Plan for Detroit’s Under-served Majority’ belongs on the shelf with Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.’ As a policy, it belongs on the trash heap, which is where it will take Detroit if implemented.” That same editorial went on to say the Powernomics plan would “…make Detroit officially a black city, with public resources directed at encouraging black businesses and attracting African-American residents at the expense of all other groups.

Whenever even a hint of Black economic empowerment is sniffed out, an attempt is made to stop it. We’ve seen it before, and what we see in Motown is no different. In the above quote, Dr. Anderson is being subliminally compared to one of the most hated characters in recent history, and the Powernomics Plan, which many of us have read in the book by the same name, is compared to Mein Kampf, which incidentally means “My Struggle.” Maybe Powernomics should be titled “Our Struggle.”

The ominous nature of the comment regarding the plan making “Detroit officially a [B]lack city” is obviously meant to scare white folks to death. But isn’t Detroit already a Black city, that is, if comprising more than 80% of the population is the determining factor? (Uh oh, I think I said something there.) It’s not “Majority Rules” when Black people happen to outnumber everyone else, is it? The real deal is who controls the income-producing assets.

Now that Black folks are trying to gain control of some of Detroit’s assets, a plot of land, some labor, and little bit of capital, the cry has gone out from some in the media, “The proletariat class is storming the Bastille, and we must fend them off.” Read all about it!”

You should study this issue for yourself and make up your own mind. There is more than enough information available if you really want to know what is going on in Detroit. Get a copy of the plan and the book, talk to the parties involved, read up on the history of Detroit, check out the demographic breakdown and the so-called “spending power” of Black people in that city. Then decide if what the dominant media are saying is true and fair.

Decide if this is a zero-sum game, as implied in the editorial when it stated this was at the “expense of all other groups.” Decide if it’s wrong for “public resources” to be directed at “encouraging black businesses and attracting African-American residents.” Then think about the stadiums we have built with public dollars to attract the white suburbanites and to get white folks to move back to the downtown area, and think about the land, tax abatements, and corporate welfare given to whites, all paid for with “public resources.”

Continued. Please read both parts of this editorial, in their entirety, at James Clingman's Blackonomics website.

James Clingman Jr

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

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