BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group
DETROIT -- Say whatever you want about Detroit, just don’t say it’s “back.”
Visit here and longtime residents will be quick to tell you they never went anywhere, so they aren’t “back”—they’re simply still here.
I learned this and more during a conference sponsored by UNITY: Journalists for Diversity that was organized to help young journalists-in-training and other community members overcome the current media narrative about the Motor City by telling their own, real stories.
According to most of the Detroit residents whom I met and spoke with, coverage went from hysterical, in the run-up to the city’s bankruptcy filing in July 2013, to what it is now: tone-deaf.
This emerging “Detroit rebirth” storyline that casts it as “America’s great comeback city”—by none other than Detroit’s own Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau—is increasingly becoming a slap in the face to longtime, often impoverished residents who are far from seeing any economic boost from new investments in downtown.
I’m from another Midwest city that is at the center of great violence—to give you an idea, celebrated director Spike Lee is in my hometown filming “Chiraq,” a clever mash-up of Iraq and Chicago—and multibillion-dollar financial stresses have our town criers warning that we’re on the road to becoming “the next Detroit.”
But I came, I saw, and I’m telling you: Don’t believe the hype.
Like any other great American city, Detroit has its challenges and opportunities.
It is a collection of beautiful architecture side-by-side with crumbling edifices, new-ish infrastructure sitting next to dirty, empty lots. And, like so many other urban areas, Detroit has great poverty living alongside great wealth.
Numerous people told me about how Quicken Loans Chairman Dan Gilbert—the unofficial “mayor” of Detroit, who purchased several blocks of downtown and is rehabbing it—set up a temporary beach in the center of the city. It promptly attracted young office workers and parents with toddlers, as well as the homeless population, who have alleged that they are systematically being driven out of downtown so they don’t taint the new atmosphere.
And for every older person you see begging on the street, you’ll see a fresh-faced young one, brimming with positivity about how Detroit is practically the land of opportunity, with its cheap rents and new high-tech jobs.
This is not to say that longtime Detroit residents begrudge the new efforts to beautify and revitalize the city. But it is fair to say they bristle at the false portrait of a broken, left-for-dead city that is now rising, Phoenix-like from the ashes.
People here complain that national news teams helicopter in and look for the most burned-out building or blighted block from which to beam pictures to the world. Or focus on the downtown success stories that leave the impression that everything is OK now.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
There are green shoots of revitalization, plenty of road construction, people going to work daily and students attending classes on campus—there is the great vibe of a multiracial and ethnic city going about its business.
And there are massive opportunities to do better still.
Detroit News columnist Bankole Thompson gave UNITY journalists a stirring speech at Wayne State University focusing on whether Detroit stands at the precipice of becoming a city divided into separate camps of rich and poor.
“There is a Detroit paradox,” said Thompson. “How can we live in a city whose comeback has been trumpeted so much but only to the chagrin of a senior citizen on the east side of Detroit who feels like a prisoner in exile in her own home because of crime and blight?”
The people who will eventually provide the answer to this question are those who can successfully mobilize themselves to bring attention to the real Detroit story—the one that isn’t easily told in either the number of crime victims or the number of new boutique businesses selling high-priced artisan cupcakes.
Our responsibility as witnesses to Detroit’s struggles, setbacks and successes is to resist the urge to mourn, pity, champion or laud.
The best thing we can do for the people of Detroit is respect them. They are real people, and their ability to reshape their troubled city will have much to teach the rest of us who live in cities that aren’t doing so well themselves.
Esther J. Cepeda is a Nationally Syndicated Columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.
For information on booking Esther for public speaking engagements, click here.