'Where Are the Black People' in Downtown Detroit?

Finley: 'Where Are the Black People' in Downtown Detroit? –  Deadline Detroit:
Nolan Finley is among those who see "obvious warning signs," as he puts it, about the whitenesss of New Detroit.

The Detroit News editorial page editor presses that hot button in his Sunday column, describing the race gap as "near the top of the list of the challenges Detroit faces as it starts its post-bankruptcy era."

The question is how to avoid "becoming two cities — one for the upwardly mobile young and white denizens of an increasingly happening downtown, and the other for the struggling and frustrated black residents trapped in neighborhoods that are crumbling around them."

Nobody wants to inject race into the marvelous story of downtown's rebound, driven largely by young creatives who grew up in the suburbs and are now fiercely Detroiters. I don't either. It's a downer. . . .

But with racial tension simmering across the country, Detroit must heed obvious warning signs.

It's a clear red flag when you can sit in a hot new downtown restaurant and nine out of 10 tables are filled with white diners, a proportion almost exactly opposite of the city's racial make-up.

It's a warning signal when you go to holiday events for major Detroit cultural institutions and charities, and you can count the number of African-American revelers on both hands.

It should stop us in our tracks — as it did me the other day — when a group of 50 young professionals being groomed for future leadership shows up to hear advice from a senior executive, and there's only one black member among them.