A bus tour highlights Detroit's black economic recovery, resilience

[iFightSeagullsForBread]

Tired of the media profiling white-owned shops in an 82 percent black city, a group decided to spotlight black business

DETROIT — When a school bus pulled over on a street in Midtown on a recent Saturday and dropped off a couple dozen black women carrying cameras and tote bags, headed to stores marked with multicolored balloons out front, the sight turned some heads in the mostly white crowd having brunch at one of the neighborhood's popular cafes. According to the organizer of this tour group, that’s kind of the point.

A few months ago, when Carole Watson realized there was little media attention paid to black-owned businesses in Detroit, she set out not only to create a tour, but to make a statement about being black in the rapidly changing city.

“I just said to myself, ‘I don’t want to hear another story about the renaissance of Detroit and not have it include my people,’” Watson said. “God has created enough for everybody. So why do we have to work so hard for exposure?”

Detroit is 82.7 percent African-American, according to 2011 U.S. Census figures, the most recent available. Yet if you were to tour the city through the pages and websites of the local and national media, you might get the impression that its business are almost all owned by white people. The city has been in the spotlight for the last few years as it made its way through the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

With that increased attention has come myriad profiles of the city’s businesses — detailing how, despite long odds and amid financial ruin and physical decay, creative people have found a way to thrive in Detroit. But Watson and others say the media seem to equate the recovery of Detroit with being young and white (see: here, here, here, here and here).

Watson, 68, is a retired public school teacher who has lived in Detroit for the past 50 years. In January, Watson convened a group of about 10 friends at The Collective, a meeting space and support group for entrepreneurs and business owners housed in an old Tudor house on Detroit’s East Side. Her idea was simple enough: she wanted to create a tour of black-owned businesses.

Didn't know The D was over 80% black.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articl...roits-black-economic-recovery-resilience.html

 

[Blackking]

cacs are having a harder time here doing all the fukk shyt they already have done in nyc, dc, chicago, and everywhere else.

We not having that shyt.

 

[Rekkapryde]

The D....




edit:

 

[Responsible Allen Iverson]

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

Spending summers in the D as youth..........

 

[Detroit Wave]

cacs are having a harder time here doing all the fukk shyt they already have done in nyc, dc, chicago, and everywhere else.

We not having that shyt.

yea they not gon be able to move outside of downtown/midtown

got them cacs boxed in