In respect to AIG, I have not done the investigation into the rates charged to Detroit to determine if insurance of Detroit bonds required a higher premium rate. Did the failure of AIG have a racist impact on the city of Detroit? Without question Detroit's working class faces higher general insurance rates on their personal property, than Black workers in comparable economic and social circumstances outside Detroit. Say in the city of Southfield. Housing and vehicle insurance is outrageously high and this "extra-charge" - called redlining, is the structural and material relations of white supremacy/chauvinism - in respects to blacks, or as it is called by the theorist of biological race, racism. All the workers in Detroit - black, brown, "Arabic" and white, who are able to use another resident address for insurance, do so in order to receive a reduced rate of insurance. Detroit is redlined. A red mark is drawn on the map and everyone within the red zone is charged extra for being in the zone. Redlining. Highland Park is worse with it being virtually impossible to get reasonable insurance against fire. Pontiac is a basket case, with Grand Rapids and Battle Creek being most distasteful for the working poor and teetering on the verge of open fascism for blacks and the whites in the neighborhoods adjacent to the blacks. Benton Harbor has been the seen of a particularly nasty fight over voting rights. Northern Michigan and the farming areas of the state are devastated, with huge sections of our blue eyed brothers and sisters living below standards acceptable in Detroit. Detroit has muscle and proletarian fiber. The city's proletariat has to lean how to make its point understood. What needs to be understood is the class relationships and the role of the color factor in American history. Amongst the blacks the most destitute sector of the proletariat and the middle class is caught in the turning gears of capital, with the former being herded into the concentration camps called prisons. This happens to be the case throughout the state of Michigan, without regard to the color of ones eyes. This is more so true with the blacks because we were slaves and trapped on the bottom of the economic and social ladder. One might need to get out more often and visit areas beyond the city. "Ain't I blue ain't I blue. Ain't these tears in my eyes, telling you." Rather than eye color it is the dark clouds in the proletariat's eyes that cannot be ignored. Inkster is hit but so it Adrian and Allen Park. Canton, Centerline and Clearwater are facing murky waters. Eastpointe is "holding on" but my other brother by a different mother paid $105, 000 for his home in 1999, only to see the house next door sell for $45, 000 two months ago. Class politics means understanding intersection and economic logic and the spontaneous movement of those workers who are a tad bit to economically secure to be the lowest sector of the proletariat, but to economically weak to escape the cycle of capital destruction. My brother in Eastpointe is black. 65% of his neighbors are white. The proletariat as proletariat is hit hard. Everyone lost money and value. The problem is the promise capital made pro mising economic stability if we worked for them 30 - 40 years. The social contract has been ripped to pieces. Ripping the social contract apart might have racists implications but it is a class act. Everything that happens to me - the good, the bad and the ugly, has racist implications because I am a Black man in America. Easy answers are boring and make me none the smarter. Some of this shit - if not all of it, is capitalism. I was just up in Flint, Michigan. Detroit is a paradise compared to Flint. Actually, Detroit is still very beautiful. Blight and poverty is in neighborhoods zones. These zones are economic categories. The autowokers with 15 years seniority and up live in different zones than the workers making 50% less. In fact, as this horrible crisis of capital unfolds, Detroit is still economically robust. The "Hip Hop" Mayor was not all bad by any means. The "old Mayor" was stupid and arrogant. Us old heads call young men like this "young, dumb and full of come." Our young Mayor was driven by testosterone and bourgeois politics and lacked a vision based on the fact of Detroit's history. Detroit is the industrial proletariat, past, present and future. Then again, K. Kilpatrick was part of the political establishment and beholden to McNamara. This was good and bad. Housing development in Detroit has been remarkable. Remarkable becomes outstanding under politicians on the side of the proletariat. Communist know a little "something something" about money, wages, bonds and economic interest of various economic strata in the city. Since some of us know how to negotiate without being overwhelmed from being invited to dinner and having the bill paid by a fucking representation of capital, we tend to judge, . . . maybe, to harshly. Dude . . . . eat before negotiations or shopping because if you don't you are going to buy something you go not want. Rather than looking at you opponent as white, think "Hey this mutherfucker is capital." If you do this and have eaten before negotiations you will not be driven by an impulse to be personally greedy, unless you are personally greedy and have nothing for the proletarian masses anyway. I would do better negotiating with a bunch of the dope boyz in toll who understand money and refuse to be taken on a "date" by capitalists, expecting you to eat from the steak side of the menu and then get fucked. The dope boyz never scream racism when things do not go their way. Sure . . . everyone talks about white peoples but no one talks about them as serious as white people, who already understand they will never attain the status of white bread. These dough boyz "cats" (dudes) are serious and deal with market shares. I love this. Our market is the proletariat and what I have to offer is communism. Flat out. That is the product. The right product at the right time is magic. Then there is Flint. Does not Flint produce a spark when struck and steel when worked up the right way? What an appropriate name for a city that gave us the historic sit-down strike and "struck up" bourgeois production in the form of the auto. A nigga be blessed to have circumstances that allow one to be spontaneously proletariat to the core. Show me your pay stub and an economic program spring from the numbers. We talking about class and the role of the proletariat in its dimensions as black, or historically and structurally Negro. One look at that pay stub and its like, "nigga, you need a union, a better clergy man, political representatives on the side of the proletariat or a good loan shark and number man." My niggas have all kinds of eye colorings. What one must look at is not the color of eyes but that fucked up smirk on a person's face and the body language of proletarian pride, defeats and insurgency. . Flint has been on the ropes for a long time, going back to the movie that got Michael Moore on the map as movie producer. Moore's "Roger and Me" Roger & Me is a 1989 American documentary film illustrating the negative economic impact of the late General Motors CEO Roger Smith's summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan, costing 30,000 people their jobs and economically devastating the city. Flint is majority black. Was Roger Smith's closing of the plants in Flint a racist act? Much of this production was not shifted elsewhere. The loss was absolute. I have a serious need to further understand the intricate and delicate operation of racism and how AIG actions had a racist impact. I am not about losing money, prestige or political clout because my eyes are brown. WL.
In a message dated 8/10/2009 1:53:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes: AIG insuring of Detroit city bonds was not motivated by race hate or racism but profit motive. The first question is "why did the leaders of Detroit go to AIG in the first place?" I am not aware of any evidence that Detroit seeking insurance from AIG was racially motivated. AIG’s pricing of insurance or financial products was the motivation for Detroit entering this market relation. ^^^^^ CB: On this issue, racism should be analyzed _structurally_, not in terms of individual motivation. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
