I’d have thought this story straight out of (august)Osage County. But, nope. This story comes from the county that I come from. Oakland County, MI. Honestly though…and on second thought… that’s no surprise…
Excuse me while I get real with myself for a minute… I think I just stumbled upon some version of reality that I concocted where I, an inherently integrated person, grew up in segregated communities, and in this version of reality of mine, even though I was usually the only “black” person wherever I was, those “conditions” never mattered. Also, in this reality I like to believe that everyone was free of prejudice and just happened to live somewhere where almost everyone looked like them. As if it were a coincidence. But that is not true. Those conditions were a strategically planned. Generations before. Of course there were and are exceptions, like me, but I must admit that there is a palpable sense of “us vs. them” in Oakland County. And by “us vs. them” I mean white vs. black. The funny thing is there’s that age old adage about the savage (see entire debate here)…
AFRICAN-AMERICAN
Why are black people savages?
Click on an option to vote
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They just are
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They can’t help it
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Jungle syndrome
…and I gotta say when I watched The Butler and saw what the Freedom Riders went through, I thought which group played the role of savage there? Or, Emmitt Till. Did the 14 year old child behave in an undomesticated way, or was it the grown men who hunted him down? This dogma, this ideology that we just kind of accept and play by the rules of…well, it’s just so twisted. It is detrimental to all. It is not in line with the Divine. That’s really all I know to say about it right now.
Jackson Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-in
Oh yeah, the article…I have much love for Oakland County (and many of it’s residents), btw. And I thank it for lending itself to my racial discourse. In so many ways.
Michigan GOP official: ‘Herd all the Indians’ to Detroit, build a fence and throw in corn
A Republican county official in Michigan is in hot water after making racial comments about Detroit, including the idea that the city should be turned into a detention center for “all the Indians.”
In a recent interview for a profile by The New Yorker titled “Drop Dead, Detroit!” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson admitted, “Anytime I talk about Detroit, it will not be positive. Therefore, I’m called a Detroit basher. The truth hurts, you know? Tough sh*t.”
Patterson recalled telling his children to “get in and get out” if they needed to go to Detroit.
“And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That’s just a call for a carjacking,” he said.
Patterson also proposed a fix to Detroit’s financial problems: Turn the city into a reservation for Native Americans.
“I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, ‘What we’re gonna do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and the corn.’”
After Detroit officials and activists reacted with outrage, Patterson’s office released a statement accusing The New Yorker of having an “agenda.”
“It is clear Paige Williams had an agenda when she interviewed County Executive Patterson,” the statement said. “She cast him in a false light in order to fit her preconceived and outdated notions about the region.”
Activists with Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network had planned a news conference on Tuesday to call for Patterson to apologize.
National Action Network’s Michigan chapter president Rev. Charles Williams II said that the comments were “repulsive” because they were an insult to the city’s African-American population and “a direct slight to the American Indians who occupied the land before Detroit was Detroit, and Oakland County.”
In recent years, Patterson has also come under fire for comparing Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger to Hitler and for suggesting that Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano kill himself.
mulatto diaries 