Black-Owned Businesses Are Quietly Powering Detroit's Resurgence, But No One's Talking About It
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/detroit-black-owned-businesses-_n_5587466.html
Detroit will mark the first anniversary of its bankruptcy filing this Friday, and across the country, people are watching the city to see how it has survived the upheaval....
But something's missing from those pieces, and from many other articles that examine the city's resurgence: black Detroiters, who make up 83 percent of the population.
Stories that claim entrepreneurs are building, revitalizing and even saving Detroit focus primarily on white professionals, often younger and new transplants to the city, a trend that's palpable and frustrating for locals. When journalists and readers criticized the Times for leaving blacks out of its Corktown story, the paper's public editor addressed the lack of diversity in a follow-up, and the writer said she regretted not including a black-owned business. (A more recent Times story takes a wider-ranging view.)...
"During the good times and the bad times, black-owned businesses have been around, primarily serving their community," said Stewart, who moved to Detroit from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the 1960s. Such businesses, Stewart said, have long been "circulating resources, building wealth (and) opening doors to other opportunities, such as higher education and lifestyle."
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