Detroit residents Jerjuan Howard, left, Annie Mae Holt, center, and Nichelle King, right, talk race, trauma, Detroit and more.
Photos by Tonya Core
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s well-known words turned into a movement that continues to remind Black people, among others, that we are our own change agents and revolutionaries.
On Friday, September 9, at Campus Martius in the heart of Detroit, residents answered a series of man-on-the-street style questions on what that change could look like when it comes race and trauma. Even the African diaspora at large chimed in on equity talks after Queen Elizabeth’s early September passing, which left many with mixed emotions.
Closer to home, several diverse Detroiters and denizens spoke to the Michigan Chronicle on what could be next for solutions across these racial, social and economic lines.
Previn Martin, 56, of Detroit, told the Michigan Chronicle that day that the state of race in Detroit is “in flux” right now.
“I think there are some changes, but there’s a lot of things that you know, are the same as they have been in my opinion,” he said, adding that when it comes to structural improvements in the city, he sees changes “mainly in the core downtown district.”
“I think it still needs a lot of work. I think there’s some struggles that there’s always going to be between the races, and then that’s not just white, Black, Arabic and Hispanic and things like that,” he said, adding that Black people in particular are still traumatized by the effects of British-led colonialism among other things. “I think it has a lot to do with where you are within your socioeconomic group. [And with the queen’s death] a lot of colonialism feelings are coming up. I personally believe that the whole monarchy system is this is very, very outdated.”
Across the pond and beyond, segments of others in the diaspora are harnessing their collective power and have been vocal about their want to remove their own countries from British rule, as questions linger if they’re even ready to accept newly-minted King Charles III as their next leader.
Antigua and Barbuda may soon vote to remove its newly crowned sovereign, King Charles III, as the Caribbean nation reconsiders monarchy following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
On Saturday, September 10, Prime Minister Gaston Browne said it would be up to the people of Antigua and Barbuda to decide whether to move forward with the British monarch as head of state.
“It is a final step to complete the circle of independence to become a truly sovereign nation,” he said, noting that a vote on the measure would probably take place “in the next three years.”
Queen Elizabeth was not just the queen of the United Kingdom, she was also the queen of Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Canada, Tuvalu, Australia, and more than half a dozen other countries.
The tie to the monarchy also held the promise of promoting ongoing economic and political ties with the U.K. This promise was usually illusory: Elizabeth as Grenada’s queen did nothing to stop the United States from invading it in 1983.
“Elizabeth’s legacy isn’t necessarily complicated, but filled with enough ambiguity and action and inaction, that it might be easy to understand why people of color might view her differently than the adoring throng mourning outside of Buckingham Palace,” the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a trade organization which advocates for America’s African-American-owned newspapers and media companies, said in a statement.
“Reminder that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times. She was an active participant in colonialism. She actively tried to stop independence movements and keep newly independent colonies from leaving the Commonwealth. The evil she did was enough,” Twitter user @YaaAsantewaaBa wrote.
Annie Mae Holt, 75, of Detroit, told the Michigan Chronicle that as part of the Baby Boomer generation moving from Birmingham, Ala., to the city (during the week of the 1967 Rebellion) she speaks from experience on race as a transplant.
“I continue to see us as citizens in Detroit fighting to make things better,” Holt said, adding that even in her adult daughters she sees how they take on different impressions of race and it’s all about coming together to find a solution. “[We] just gonna have to start getting together and having a healthy dialogue.”
The former educator added that it’s about being the village and looking after one another.
“We the village,” Holt said.
Another Detroiter, Jay Jason, in his early 20s, told the Michigan Chronicle that the current state of Detroit could be better.
“There is a lot of segregation around, especially in our communities,” Jason, who has Mexican heritage, said of the notable difference between nearby affluent and impoverished areas. “I’ve been very fortunate with hard-working parents but sometimes it lingers around. It could be that chance where I am discriminated against because I was just born.”
The solution to the obvious wealth gap? More money needs to be added in lower-income areas and tax wealth needs to be redistributed.
Detroit resident Ariel Suarez, 31, told the Michigan Chronicle that as a Mexican person who has seen a lot of disparity and inequality, she especially sees it daily in Detroit.
“You get to go to the ‘burbs everybody’s taken care of and also just coming to like downtown Detroit. This is where they’re focusing on [putting] the money into,” Suarez said. “I see this firsthand. And there’s like a huge, like, issue that I have because they’re focusing here instead of focusing on the actual neighborhoods in Detroit. … I don’t feel like money is being poured into actual people. And the people are primarily Black. I wish it was a quick fix.”
Kalani Ture, a senior fellow at Yale University’s Urban Ethnography Project, and assistant professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland, said that the Black experience in America leaves a lot to be desired, and reparations are needed.
“Furthermore, racism remains a caustic carcinogen wasting African American life such that in this post-George Floyd era, marked with replacement theory terrorists, the normalization of trauma, violence, and grief colors the daily news and extinguishes any hope that we will become a more perfect union,” the social scientist and African American Studies professor, told the Michigan Chronicle.
Nichelle King, 33, of Detroit, told the Michigan Chronicle that she feels that there is a problem with how Black people are “cast out of downtown.”
“We work here, you know, but a lot of us can’t live down here,” she said of housing affordability. “This is the part that’s coming up the fastest whereas the inner cities are not.”
King, who lives downtown, said that city officials promised to make some expensive housing units affordable but that reality is not coming to be. “That is not happening. And I know firsthand, that that is not happening.”
The solution?
“I feel like one of the things that need to happen is more people of color, more Black people specifically, need to be in those positions of power.”
Jerjuan Howard, 24, of Detroit, told the Michigan Chronicle that the state of Detroit is segregated.
“Economics plays a role in it, race in Detroit,” he said echoing similar thoughts and adding that neighborhoods need to be shown a lot more love. “There’s a lot of great stories on the westside, eastside, the north end. The solution is to tell our own narrative a lot more, embrace each other a lot more.”
Pontiac resident Ken Abrams said that when healing trauma, it’s important to separate whatever is causing the trauma.
“I believe in self-determination, self-sufficiency with every aspect of their lives in order to fully heal,” Abrams said. “The stuff that really installs self-pride or self-love.”
Black Information Network contributed to this report.
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