Faux Progress fo' Faux Immigrants

According to an article in Pittsburgh Live, the Detroit city council has hatched a plan to help "the underserved [by whom?] majority" of the overwhelmingly black city. To wit:

"The idea is to build an 'AfricaTown,' similar to Little Italy and Chinatown," explained Charles Oliver ..., referring to the vote by Detroit City Council to spend $30 million a year in public money to develop a blacks-only, race-based district of entrepreneurship in downtown Detroit.

"By a 7-2 vote," reported Oliver, "the council has decreed that only black businessmen and investors can qualify for the money." The concept of this black version of Little Italy originated in a $112,000 report commissioned by the council: "A Powernomics Economic Development Plan for Detroit's Under-Served Majority Population."

Blacks only? Race-based? Nevertheless, in case you are still wondering whether something whose name evokes the memory of "Ebonics," that old excuse for not teaching black children proper English, could possibly be good, consider the following.

[T]he report complains that entrepreneurial immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East are opening up too many stores and selling too much of everything to blacks. In doing so, it's alleged that these money-grubbing greenhorns are stealing jobs and business opportunities from blacks.

The plan is to create a black Little Italy, dubbed AfricaTown, funded in large part by taxpayers' dollars and made up of black-owned businesses catering to a black clientele. The analogy to Little Italy, of course, doesn't work. There's nothing about the proposed development of AfricaTown that bears the least resemblance to how Little Italy happened.

First of all, I hope Detroit is the only city in America whose government feels the need to "solve" the problem posed by hard-working immigrants. (And these are the very immigrants who might help the city finally reverse the fifty-plus year decline that has seen it lose over half of its population!) Second, let's set aside for a moment how many of the same politicians who passed this racist plan would react to, say, a developer who wanted to build a whites-only real estate development over the ruins of some old neighborhood there. The racism, though insulting to whites, is nothing compared to what Detroit's government is doing to its black citizens! The author hints at the answer late in the article.

Across the board, reported [Dr. Kate Holliday] Claghorn[, author of a 1901 report on Italian immigrants], rich or poor in Little Italy, "all classes are highly industrious, thrifty, and saving" -- the exact formula for upward mobility and business expansion. "The tradespeople prosper rapidly," she reported. "The Italian barber enlarges his shop, perhaps finally sells out and becomes a banker; the fruit peddler buys a little shop, then a bigger one and may finally become a wealthy importer; and in like manner with other shopkeepers. The more ambitious and successful move to the suburbs and become property owners in Long Island City, Flushing, Corona, Astoria, etc."

That's how Italians got rich. It's how America got rich. Or as historian John Steele Gordon explained it: "If America is famous for its get-up-and-go, it's because we have ancestors who got up and came."

Little Italy, in short, was successful because the spaghetti was good, not because someone got a handout from city council.

Dare I say, "Amen, brother!" to that last sentence. There is a vicious cycle of dependency and handouts going on in Black America. Politicians like these pander to an electorate wanting to be bailed out of their problems. And an electorate unwilling to pay their dues vote for politicians who are willing to substitute stolen money for work on the part of their constituents. Round and round she goes. The rot goes all the way through this culture, from the bottom to the top.

Getting to America is more than a trip on a boat or life in an ethnic enclave. It's the mental decision to live coupled with the willingness to face the fact that no one can live for you. Until blacks start making this journey, there will be no real "Little Africas." There will only be government-sponsored bad jokes like this will surely be. A government that makes excuses for failure and insulates its citizens from the consequences of not working is only providing reasons not to make this journey. Read again how the Italians prospered and then ask yourself again who is "underserving" Detroit's majority. The freely-elected politicians are, but then, they are freely elected. The majority is, in fact "underserving" itself! Until either the welfare state is totally abolished or more blacks understand that they are doing this to themselves and to each other, they are doomed as a minority.

To the blacks: Please stop oppressing yourselves. Come to America. We'd love to have you here, but you still have to get here first. To those who would like to see blacks become prosperous: quit supporting the welfare state.

-- CAV