Recent media conversations about the 10 year anniversary of Emergency Management and Bankruptcy have essentially focused on how the city as a municipal entity has fared the past decade on the so call road to fiscal recovery. However, what has not been noted is how the suspension of democracy alongside the gutting of Detroit’s municipal wealth all but silenced the call for racial equity and racial justice in the nation’s largest majority Black city on the part of elected officials.

As a result, many Detroiters experience the city as failing to live into its essential mission of that as government organized to meet the needs of its residents. Instead, what majority Black Detroit has experienced is a willingness of elected officials to adopt a philosophy of governance and economic development that favors white, wealthy developers and a rush to create and subsidize housing for younger, whiter and often childless households. A recent quote from Council President Pro Tem pretty much admits the neglect: “We’re transforming the landscape of the city, and we’re contributing to it, and I don’t want to do that,” he stated in a new MetroTimes article.

The following statistics show the inequities and disparities for majority Black Detroit in the face of the “so called” post bankruptcy and emergency management Detroit recovery especially when compared to what white residents have experienced. In spite of the fact that the economic recovery has been fueled by massive investment of public tax dollars - $2 billion conservatively, the outcomes of the public investment have NOT benefited the majority Black population.  As illustrated by the fact that:

• Over the last decade, economic gains in terms of median income occurred at 8% for Black Detroiters vs 60% among whites
• Decline in homeownership rates among Black Detroiters alongside increased household evictions and foreclosures while the percentage of white home owners increases.
• More often than not, Black renter households pay a higher percentage of their monthly income for rent in excess of the recommended 30%
• Percent of Detroiters who are employed in the city of Detroit is 25% vs roughly 70% of jobs in Detroit held by suburban residents
• Detroiters have higher rates of employment in lower paying service and hospitality jobs
• The increase among whites residents in downtown and midtown has resulted in greater income gaps among Blacks and Whites
• The over reliance on tax incentives have deprived schools, libraries, and the general fund of vital tax revenues for decades

That Detroit has become an unwelcoming place for Black residents is further validated by the reported exodus of roughly 100K Black residents from the city this past decade.

That Detroit has become an unwelcoming place for Black residents is further validated by the reported exodus of roughly 100K Black residents from the city this past decade. Therefore in our estimation emergency management and the municipal bankruptcy produced a set of policy decisions with far reaching and long lasting negative impacts on the city’s majority Black citizenry with little to no accountability on the part of public officials who failed to act in the defense of majority Black Detroit.