The Three I's of Detroit's Decline
Detroit used to make cars. Now it makes poor people. The city pumps out poverty on a three-shift, seven-day cycle.
The raw materials in this factory are ignorance, illegitimacy and isolation.
Ignorance is by far the main ingredient. Citizens came to Mayor Bing's town halls on right-sizing last week shouting for jobs. Let's get real.
Two-thirds of Detroit residents don't have a high school diploma. Half are functionally illiterate. Only about 10 percent graduated from college.
What kind of jobs do residents expect Detroit to attract with a work force that ill-prepared? Certainly not the technical jobs that are driving the 21st century economy. And the city can only support so many fast-food joints.
Robert Bobb came to town hell-bent on reinventing a school system that fails two out of three children. And yet some elements of the city are fighting him as if he carried the plague.
Unless Detroit commits to making its people smarter in a red-hot hurry, Bing's land use plan will amount to little more than moving poor people out of already blighted neighborhoods and into neighborhoods soon to be blighted.
Illegitimacy is a direct by-product of ignorance. More than 70 percent of the city's babies are born to unwed mothers, and more than half to teen-agers. There's no greater predictor of poverty. Most Detroit babies are added to the welfare rolls before they leave the delivery room.
Some rise above the circumstance of their birth, either through determined mothering or the strength of their own character. But many more have no hope of beating the long odds against them.
Under-parenting is a scourge of Detroit, and yet few are willing to take up a crusade against illegitimacy.
Isolation is the most dangerous element in this poverty plant. The more dire Detroit's circumstances become, the more suspicious its citizens are of "outsiders." Bing found that out at his community meetings. A shockingly high percentage of the audience believed he was really crafting a sinister plan to let suburban rich guys take over the city.
A possible solution to Detroit's troubles would be to make the city part of a regional government. The outflow of the city's black middle class, which accelerated after the housing crash made suburban homes more affordable, is leaving Detroit a single race, single economic class city.
That creates a lot of social needs, while stripping the city of the tax base to meet them. A regional government would spread the costs over a wider area, and possibly bring Detroit more economic and racial diversity. But does anyone think Detroiters would grab onto that lifeline, let alone that suburbanites would throw it to them?
A plan to make Detroit's footprint match its population is an urgent necessity. But it won't fix the core problems.
Poverty will wear a "Made in Detroit" label as long as the city wallows in ignorance and illegitimacy and isolates itself from those who might help.
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at (313) 222-2064. Watch him at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on "Am I Right?" on Detroit Public TV.
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Originally Posted by Anthony
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