Imani Mixon

Student, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism

Susan Schindehette

Founder, MiWorld.com

8 Mile Revisited

For far too long, Detroit has been experiencing "a comeback." Whether recovering from the riots of 1967, shaking the image of being the "murder capital" of the world, rebounding from the financial crash that disrupted the auto industry, or any other of a number of challenges, it seems Detroit is always "on its way."

At some point, we have to get to and acknowledge that we have arrived at the next step. Yet our validation seems to rest too comfortably in the effort.

The unfortunate reality here is that it seems our expectations -- of ourselves, each other and the city as a whole -- have become dormant. Perhaps it's the apathy that plagues our political elections, the disappointment with a struggling educational system, or simply that we no longer know what we can or should expect.

Yet Detroit deserves and is capable of being better -- much better. In order to realize what "better" is, we must stop duplicating efforts and practices that put us here in the first place. There is no success in the struggle.

We must first recognize that today's Detroit is not yesterday's Detroit. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. A smaller city can be a much better one if we make more responsible use of our land and limited resources; hence the importance of the Detroit Works Project. We can't continue to maintain a land mass for more than a million people with an ever declining tax base of just more than 700,000 residents.

Every resident must begin to realize the connectivity between paying taxes and city services. Taxes are the income of every municipality. On the other hand, those who provide services must realize that doing so at an optimum level -- even if it goes beyond their contractual obligation -- is the best way to keep their jobs. People leaving the city for lack of services will result in decreased need for those same services. No demand, no need.

Citizens must assume some liability and responsibility for helping to keep their city safe. As a large urban area, Detroit will have problems proportionate to its population. However, citizens who tolerate crime and criminal behavior until it personally impacts them are as guilty as any perpetrator. No matter how many officers are put on the street, there will never be enough to cover every square inch of the city. But neighbors who care, and are involved and intolerant, are the biggest deterrent to crime.

A sense of ownership in the city also will yield a level of pride seemingly lost during past decades. It's not someone else's responsibility to pull this city and its citizens up and out any more than it is the responsibility of each and every resident. Stop trashing the very street you live on, or the streets you ride or walk down. And stop buying into the mentality that Detroit is dead, dying or in need of some external force to "save" it.

From services to cleanliness to crime and education, it's time for everyone to own up to higher standards and expectations, individually and collectively. Mediocrity should be unacceptable, and the status quo should be a part of our past.

Detroit deserves better, and it's our responsibility to make it that way.

Karen Dumas is a lifelong Detroit resident and former communications director for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing
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Stop arguing about what happened and start focusing on what to do now.

If there is a single, unifying message to be found inDetroit's population count from the 2010 census, that's it.

The city lost more than 200,000 residents over the past decade. Among U.S. cities, only flood-ravagedNew Orleans hemorrhaged a larger percentage of its population.

They had a hurricane. We had a near-biblical exodus of people who were home dwellers, school attendees and taxpayers. At 713,000 residents, the city has about 5,000 residents for each one of its 139 square miles. That's just a little more dense than Manhattan -- the eighth-largest city in Kansas.

Why so many people left Detroit doesn't matter anymore. Neither does who's at fault.

The important thing now is for everyone to accept that this is a fundamentally changed city, a hollowed-out version of the Detroit that boasted 1.8 million people in the mid-1950s.

New Orleans is not distracted by squabbling over how to rebuild that city to accommodate all the people who have left. Detroiters and their leaders must similarly focus on making their city work for the folks who are still here.

Density is a big part of that. If there was any question about the city's ability to maintain its sprawling infrastructure in the face of a continuing population slide, the sharp decline in the 2010 census numbers put it to rest.

Mayor Dave Bing took some heat for (and then backed away from) his assertion last year that his Detroit Works Project had identified a handful of neighborhoods that would be targeted for reinvestment, and that residents from all over the city would be encouraged to move into them.

But is there any doubt now that he's on the right track? The census numbers prove that the city's nearly depopulated acreage is growing, not shrinking. Bing and the City Council must focus on creating critical mass in the areas that still have solid population bases, and come up with a credible plan to abandon the infrastructure in other areas, or find suitable, low-impact uses for them.

The census numbers mean large-scale farming is no longer some pipe dream, but an imperative part of the discussion about land use. Homesteading, which could also facilitate the low-cost repurposing of the city's 80,000 abandoned homes and businesses, also deserves serious consideration.

At the same time, city leadership must continue to build on the things that are going right. While people were leaving at a rate of one every 20 minutes, the decade from 2001-10 was also one that saw the city re-establish itself as the cultural and economic hub of the region. Three casinos and two stadiums opened downtown; the city hosted a baseball All-Star game and a football Super Bowl, and attracted thousands of suburbanites and expatriates to celebrate its 300th anniversary. Two major employers moved into the city, and General Motors decided to stay.

Downtown and Midtown, which are attracting new workers and residents have to be girded with services that will continue to attract and retain people. And services won't get better until they're not spread over such a large, depopulated area.

Programs such as Live Detroit, which will see the Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University and Henry Ford Health Systems give cash to employees who move to the city, are models that might have potential for moving residents around the city as well.

A city of 700,000 isn't inherently inferior to one that has a million or more residents. But a city that is losing people at a rate of 25% per decade is a problem, and a city that is carrying as much unused infrastructure as Detroit can't make it financially.

Bing now has proof that his plans for Detroit are about the city's very survival. He and the council can't get started soon enough putting them into place

I returned to Michigan as a reporter after being away for nearly 20 years. When I was a boy, was taught almost nothing about the history of the African-American experience or the history of Detroit or even the history of my family for that matter.

Confronted by the hard realities of our time and our city, I went looking for my own story which is inextricably linked to the story of Detroit -- white, black and red.  I was surprised by what I found.

In the spirit of Black History Month, this is the first of three essays on myFOXdetroit.com that will culminate in video form on FOX 2 in coming weeks. Portions of these essays will appear in my upcoming book, “ DETROIT: An American Autopsy,” due out this fall. -- Charlie LeDuff

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DETROIT -- I finished shaving and dressed. My wife and I loaded up the baby in the SUV and drove to my aunt's funeral in a rural corner of Oakland County, where the land rolls like a ship on the swells. A boat, a house, a lake, a foreclosure sign. 

"Jesus, it's Whitey McWhiteville out here," my wife said distractedly, noticing a white-faced lawn jockey. She is a white girl who grew up in Detroit — not the suburbs — which makes her a special kind of white person. 

"Have some respect," I barked at her. I don't know why. Maybe it was the idea of the funeral. My people don't handle them very well. There is usually a drunk screaming from an upstairs window, like a stewed sailor on night watch. Sometimes it is a fistfight. One time, a cousin threw a beer bottle at his brother's casket as it was lowered down the hole, screaming that his brother could keep the dime deposit. 

I turned up the radio. Manfred Mann was singing, the blackest-sounding white man there probably is. Blue, black and white, can't we get anything right? An appropriated sound of course, but righteous enough in its own way. 

The funeral for my aunt was weird in the fact that it wasn't weird. It was normal. It was white. It started on time. Everyone wore a tie and jacket. Aunt Marilyn, my father's sister, had raised the ultimate American family. A husband of 49 years, seven children, 22 grandchildren or something like that. No divorce. No death by misadventure. Catholic to the point of evangelical. Her progeny lining up single-file to each place a rose in a vase. It was simply odd in its normalcy, it’s clean-scrubbed sweetness. Who were these people? Where was their bitterness? Their bite? Their whiskers? They couldn't possibly belong to me. And then a brassy woman stepped out of a dark corner. 

"Hi, Charlie?" 

"Yes?" I had never seen her before. 

"I'm your long-lost Aunt Debbie." 

I stood there blankly. She was a well-put-together blond in a black dress, with red lipstick. A smoker, I thought, by the sound of her voice. 

"Your father's half-sister?” she offered helpfully. “Your grandmother, she was my mother, Betty. I'm your father's half-sister." 

"Her name was Betty?" 

"Yes, your father's mother. We had the same mother. Betty." 

"Betty what?" 

"Well, first Betty Lancour. And then Betty LeDuff when she married you father's dad. And then Betty Zink when she married my dad. She died when she was 35 years old. Alone." 

"Those are a lot of names." 

"Yeah, they are." 

"How did she die?" 

"A heart attack, I think." 

"Oh." 

"How is your father?" 

"I haven't talked to him in a decade," I told my new Aunt Debbie. "Not since my sister's funeral. She was 35 too." 

"Oh, wow," she said. 

Like a gossip with a secret, Aunt Debbie wasted little time telling me her son's girlfriend just had her feet amputated because of a virus and that the muffler just fell off her car, making it difficult to fulfill her job, which was to shuttle around the Amish back in Pennsylvania. 

This was more like my family. I liked her. 

Grandma Betty died alone. Who was she? And who was Grandpa, for that matter? It occurred to me, especially now that I was back in Detroit, that for a man who had spent his entire professional life criss-crossing the planet asking others the most pointed and personal questions, I didn't really know much about my family. Or myself. A boat without an anchor, bobbing across the shores of Whitey McWhiteville. 

I went looking for Grandma Betty. 

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The radio dispatcher sent scout car No. 10-1 to see about a dead woman, according to the police report. It was 3:35 in the afternoon on March 8, 1956. It was cold outside. Patrolman Mitchell Adamek found a youngish woman lying dead in the back bedroom of Apartment 207 at 2665 Gladstone, on the west side of Detroit, near the Sacred Heart Seminary. She was dressed in a slip, nothing more. There were no visible signs of violence to her body. Adamek contacted the homicide squad anyway. 

On the dressing table was a bottle of Anacin tablets, a bottle of Bufferin tablets, a bottle of nose drops and a bottle of codeine cold remedy in liquid form. In the corner stood John W. Migan, a narrow-shouldered dentist who, at the age of 34, was still living with his mother. He told Adamek that he had been dating the woman for the better part of three years and that he had last seen her about 2 a.m., when her dropped her off after an evening of spirited partying.