Black folks need their own Detroit Homecoming.
It’s something my sister-in-law suggested to me in a mini-brainstorm moment as we were standing outside in the lobby during the first full day of Detroit Homecoming 2015, which took place today at the Detroit Institute of Arts. And as soon as she said it, I found myself nodding along with her, both of us understanding that this was something that maybe really oughta happen.
And just to cut off anyone who is about to suggest that this is so unfortunate how black folks always wanna go off on their own and have a black this or a black that, this isn’t about this nor is it about that. What this is about is insurance.
Lemme explain.
It was encouraging to see the level of enthusiasm expressed among a crowd that included a significant number of ‘Bigfoots’ to so many interesting business proposals to invest in Detroit. It was hard not to think back to once-upon-a-time to maybe five seemingly eternal years ago when everybody either hated us or was laughing at us. We may have acted like we didn’t care but believe me, we did.
Now fast forward to today and the census is showing where for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the Earth the number of white people in Detroit is actually growing. Home values are growing too, and not just in ‘metro’ Detroit, but in the actual city itself where all those black folks still live. Midtown and downtown is all the rage, but Mayor Duggan came prepared this morning with slide after slide to prove that it’s not just the downtown but the neighborhoods too that are on the comeback trail. Because Duggan knows if the neighborhoods stay mired in misery – not to mention the schools – then all the pretty downtown lights don’t much matter.
So I hope for all our sakes that the mayor’s spiffy slide show was on the money because we need it to be. Not to say the man isn’t telling the truth, I just choose to live by the motto that says if your mother says she loves you, you better check it out.
Moving on.
One of the things I wanted to check out was whether or not there were many black folks attending this thing. Because if it was just white folks ‘coming home’ then that’s a problem. But there were a noticeable enough number of black folks in the crowd and on the stage during all the presentations, so that’s a good thing. Because when you see a program designed to set the pace for the rebuilding and re-imagining of the city in which we all live, we need to see that we (yes, I mean black people) are in that mix. We need to be at that table.
But we also need our own table. And I suspect we will always need our own table for awhile to come if current events are any indication. We need to have the kinds of discussions that I saw here today amongst ourselves as well as amongst everyone else. We need to make sure we get ourselves our fair share of this pie, because believe me when I tell you the pie is getting divvied up as we speak. That much is clear.
We need that insurance. History isn’t just for textbooks anymore.
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