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Detroit 'African Town' Plan Stirs Debate
By SARAH KARUSH
Associated Press Writer
October 10, 2004, 1:54 PM EDT
DETROIT -- Detroit has a Greektown section that tempts visitors with
moussaka and baklava, and a Mexicantown neighborhood with Latin American
groceries and restaurants. Now, politicians are pushing for a business
district identified with the city's biggest minority group -- blacks.
The plan, dubbed "African Town" by some proponents, has stirred fervent
opposition, in part because the new district would be established using
taxpayer money that would be available only to black business owners.
A majority on the City Council has endorsed its basic tenets. But the plan
is unlikely to become a reality. The mayor is against it, and many community
leaders say the very notion undermines the city's efforts to promote
economic revitalization through regional cooperation.
The plan was drafted by Claud Anderson, author of a popular book on black
economic empowerment. The former Detroit resident was paid $112,000 for the
City Council-commissioned report and says he could be involved as a
developer in the projects he proposes.
Anderson's 2001 book "PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black
America" spent more than two years on the best-seller list of Essence
magazine, which tracks sales at black-owned bookstores.
Under his proposal, the city would dispense grants and low-interest loans to
blacks only, using a $30 million minority business-development fund that
Detroit's casinos agreed to pay into long before the African Town idea ever
surfaced.
Anderson says the new district would include such things as a fish
processing plant, a black beauty-supply store, and soul food and Caribbean
restaurants.
He does not use the term "African Town." He says he is concerned only with
the plight of "native black Americans," or descendants of slaves. In fact,
he says immigrants have taken resources away from black Detroit residents
and contributed to black poverty.
Late last month, a few dozen people led by Hispanic and Asian community
groups protested in front of City Hall, demanding an apology from the
council.
A spokesman for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Howard Hughey, said the mayor, who
is black, supports the concept of an "African Town" but believes it would be
wrong to use public money in a way that would benefit only blacks.
The City Council, on the other hand, already has passed two related
resolutions that are part of Anderson's plan, with seven out of nine council
members voting in favor. The first resolution declared blacks Detroit's
"majority minority," and the other resolved to create a development agency
to administer the loans and grants.
Detroit, with a population of just under 1 million, is more than 80 percent
black after a decades-long white exodus that was driven in part by racial
tensions, including the 1967 riots.
Many Detroit residents still mourn the loss of Black Bottom and Paradise
Valley, vibrant black business-and-entertainment districts that were leveled
to make room for Interstate 75 and other projects in the 1950s.
According to the 2000 census, 26 percent of Detroit residents lived below
the poverty line. Unemployment in the city has averaged 14 percent this
year, about double the statewide rate.
"Nobody's addressing those issues. They keep pretending that somehow if they
ignore the problem it will go away," Anderson said in a telephone interview
from his office in Bethesda, Md.
Kay Everett, one of the two council members to vote against the resolutions,
said Anderson's plan is "reverse racism."
"This money belongs to everyone. It doesn't belong to one race. We cannot be
race specific -- it's also illegal," said Everett, who is black. "What if
you came up with a white town?"
JoAnn Watson, the plan's main proponent on the City Council, denied the
African Town idea is anti-immigrant or promotes racial separatism. "African
Town is proposed as a cultural and economic vehicle ... which can attract
and serve all citizens," she said.
Anderson said he was not surprised by the controversy his plan has evoked.
Detroit leaders, he said, "are hiding behind a colorblind, race-neutral myth
and using it as an excuse to do nothing for the underserved, black
population."
* __
On the Net:
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