COLEMAN A. YOUNG (1918 - 1997)
EDITORIAL:
A New Beginningby Ron Williams
originally published 6/30/93 in the Metro TimesAn era had already ended. Coleman Young's announcement that he will not run for another term as mayor of Detroit was only the inevitable coda to the painful, often tortured transition this great American city has experienced while coming to terms with majority rule and devastating economic turmoil.
Young's is a remarkable story of an activist whose courageous struggles for social change coincided with the enfranchisement of African Americans and the ascent of black political power in cities across the nation. His will inevitably be a legacy of both great accomplishment and bitter failure.
Coleman Young has been right about a lot of things. Detroit's social problems are not unique to this city. There is hostility and, yes, racism within the suburban communities that surround it. The federal government has engaged in a systematic campaign, both in Detroit and in other areas around the country, to challenge and undermine black political leadership, including his own.
Unfortunately, Young too often failed to correctly respond to these realities. His administration placed too high a value on federal money and programs, in the process overlooking real solutions which lay in grassroots leadership and action. Instead of launching, with his legendary skills of charm and persuasion, a determined bridge-building campaign in the suburbs, he lashed back in kind, cynically choosing to manipulate the issue of race for short-term political gain. In response to federal investigations, often cheered on by the Detroit News and other local media, Young inexplicably defended those guilty of betraying the public trust and proceeded to rule over a closed administration whose watchwords were secrecy and paranoia.
Young's singular, most significant contribution to the city of Detroit's future may prove to be his understanding that education and jobs are the only meaningful and effective answers to crime, drugs and urban decay. Ironically, it may be here that history may judge Young most harshly. Over 20 years and the expense of hundreds of millions of public dollars, the mayor has unsuccessfully attempted to reconstruct the economic base of the city's industrial heyday. The big-ticket item has been the mayor's main redevelopment tool. Embracing his own peculiar kind of trickle-down strategy for the neighborhoods, projects such as the Detroit incinerator, the GM Poletown plant and the Chrysler Jefferson Avenue Assembly plant sit at the center of Young's economic development strategy.
The Young administration has suffered from a failure of vision. It has based its economic strategies on the past rather than the future. It has bestowed tax breaks and public money on some of the largest corporations in the world when it is clear that entrepreneurs and small businesses will be the engines of future job creation and economic growth. It has invested in the declining behemoths of the industrial revolution when it is clear that the information revolution, driven by the silicon chip, will increasingly dominate our economy.
Coleman Young has been a tough and uncompromising leader, a committed advocate for the people who elected him five times. His life is a record of extraordinary public service, and this community is justifiably proud of his many achievements. His decision not to stand for reelection was, nonetheless, in the best interests of Detroit.
The importance of the coming campaign can hardly be overstated. The candidates should challenge the voters with issues and specific plans which speak to the future, not the past. What is needed is an opening up of the governing process, a process of healing and inclusion. Let this be a time of serious reflection and a new beginning.
At the time, Ron Williams was the editor of the Metro Times.