Detroit Politics

I am going to explore corruption as practiced by city politicians in the United States right now, with emphasis on the City of Detroit. Chicago may have been synonymous with resolute corruption; the City of Detroit is not far behind. Recent indictments, trials and possible convictions involving bribery, graft, and kickbacks indicates that little has changed with the mindset of some unrelenting corrupt Detroit politicians. Detroit’s politics is so elusive, there is no doubt many get away with some unimaginable corrupt practices. It seems to be a style of deception saddled with entitlement to be corrupt to some politicians. So many good 'ole boys (and girls) ' watching out for each other that the ordinary citizen and voters seemed confused as to what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Corruption is so ingrained in the city that any ‘honest leader’ has little or no chance of being elected as a ‘dog catcher’ in the city's politics.

To assume race is not a problem in Michigan or the US would be right down stupid. However, a total focus that everything is about race is equally unfortunate and may have created a segment of entitlement that tends to mask incompetence of some ‘blamers’. Noticing that America is a ‘blame society,’ nobody takes responsibility for anything they may learn from as a failure. Most tend to blame something or someone else, including racism, revise-racism… and the list goes on. These entire “someone else’s fault’ begins to hurt the very essence of equality that remains legitimate in the context of racism. In Detroit, race is the best outlet for stirring emotions by crooked politicians and sure on ‘me too syndrome,’ all shades of criminals has benefited from an issue that many worthy lives has been sacrificed and continues today.

Corruption is generally considered to be bad for the performance of governments and for the growth and development of economies, but American cities grew rapidly and was, as far as tangible evidence suggests, relatively well governed. I propose that when race and greed becomes integral self-serving outlets, political graft takes a different route.

Skimming from city contracts and manipulating influence peddling with elected or exclusive clubs membership to pursue business enhancing policies and ‘old politics’ destructive tendencies hurts more in places like Detroit. Why? Detroit has a huge socially disadvantage population. Such a population, where there is a lack of core political engagement and comparatively requires socially targeted help than other Michigan many communities. Patronage politics makes Detroit corruption more likely by insulating politicians from voter wrath, as the ability to depart from real issues to racial politics, an easy outlet to dodge responsibility.

Without the willingness, including Detroit voters to change from the ‘old politics’ to a new political paradigm, a paradigm that looks beyond race, class, and color, we have a long way to go. Voters in Detroit must stop electing candidates on race alone by some voters, but, the politician that truly represent the people and their aspirations for the American dream. We, Detroiters, must also look deeper into our individual souls, learn to accept and change our own bad attitudes. Until we know that we have shortfalls that hurts our neighbor, city, region and all of the human family, change will not start.