A Tale of Two Cities:
Grosse Pointe and Detroit

Thursday April 24, 2008

By Ellis Washington

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

~ Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859)

Prologue

Paradise Valley, Detroit, Mich., circa 1967

My younger brother, sister and I were literally bursting with anticipation as we sat by our living room window. My mother had made one of her rare trips to that enchanted place – a marvelous and exquisite land called, Grosse Pointe.

On all of her previous trips to this splendiferous estate, a land flowing with milk and honey, she would always bring back truly beautiful items, things that I know she couldn't have brought in Detroit. Where was this delightful land? Was Grosse Pointe a mythological place?

Eventually my mother would sometimes take us on shopping trips to Grosse Pointe. Only then were we sure that Grosse Pointe was a real place. Other hints I had was that a good friend of my mother, an uneducated, but very wise woman we called "Aunt Ruby," had been a maid to some wealthy families in Grosse Pointe. Through the years, her employers gave her many exquisite items in gratitude for her exemplary service to them. Some of those items Aunt Ruby would later give to my mother.

My sixth grade teacher, "Mrs. Vaught," was from Grosse Pointe, which was not surprising to me seeing she was my most favorite teacher ever. This woman did things as a teacher in the 1960s and '70s that would have gotten teachers today immediately fired. She treated all students (black and white) exactly the same (no affirmative action). If you were smart, you were praised. If you were intellectually challenged, you were encouraged to study harder, or consigned to "the slow class."

Mrs. Vaught's classroom was immaculate. It was an honor to be chosen to clean the classroom. She would often send me to the corner store during class time to buy some "Mop-'n'-Glow" to mop the floors. Literally a section of our classroom was transformed by Mrs. Vaught into a living room with lace curtains, a Henredon sofa, matching mahogany coffee table and end tables, lamps, bookshelves loaded with the classics like Dante's "Paradise Lost," Melville's "Moby Dick," the Bible, and to top off that spectacular space, a Persian rug.

Although we were poor kids living in the ghetto, she brought a sense of Grosse Pointe to us … not to put us down, but as a high standard for us to aspire to. Mrs. Vaught's tutelage has paid cerebral dividends for me to this day. Regrettably, for a fellow student named "Sylvester" whose sadistic tendencies inspired him to repeatedly p-ss upon the bathroom mirrors … apparently Mrs. Vaught's civilizing techniques toward my colleague were all in vain.

After living in Detroit for more than 40 years, my parents moved to a lovely home in Grosse Pointe Woods in 1995 where they lived until my stepfather, Jack Folson, died 10 years later. Visiting their home gave me and my wife the idea in 2000 to move to Grosse Pointe, where we live to this day.

A Tale of Two Cities (Grosse Pointe, circa 1984)

During my time as a member of the Grosse Pointe Symphony (I played the French horn), as one would drive east along Jefferson Ave. from Detroit to Grosse Pointe, one would be confronted by signs of utter devastation – block after block of bombed-out, burned-down, barred or boarded-up buildings. Residential areas with only five to 10 houses on each block where 40 years ago had 30 to 40 homes on each block, pot holes that could break the axle on your car, citizens roaming the streets like zombies, aimlessly begging for money to buy cigarettes, drugs, alcohol – with no hope and in utter despair.

Yes, there are signs of new home construction, but the houses look cheap and don't match the original ambience of the old neighborhood, and, oftentimes, these new homes are vandalized before the units can be sold, causing a "new ghetto" to be built right on top of the old ghetto.

Dear reader, what shocks the conscience most, is that moment when you first cross that imaginary line in the sand that divides the savage wilderness of Detroit from the civilization outpost of Grosse Pointe. Like the river Rubicon that to the Republic of Rome was taboo for a general to cross with an army, yet Julius Caesar boldly crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. with his Roman Legions. Here, the Rubicon I speak of is called, "Alter Road."

When you cross Alter Road, you are immediately struck by the stark difference between neighborhoods. In Grosse Pointe, the old, stately homes are magnificent. The yards are immaculate. There are no loiterers around, no gangs in the streets running wild, no graffiti, no potholes, no security bars on the homes or business, no vacant lots turned into mini junkyards, no drug dealers, no drug addicts, police are visible – none of the ills that have plagued big cities across America for decades.

Why the stark contrast between Detroit and Grosse Pointe – two cities adjacent to one another? Of course, the socialists and the liberal academics will have a host of excuses:

• Grosse Pointe is all white. Detroit is all black.
• Grosse Pointe is a small, white-collar suburb. Detroit is a large, blue-collar inner-city.
• Grosse Pointe has more money for better schools and city services than Detroit.
• Grosse Pointe isn't as old as Detroit – 1893 versus 1701.
• Grosse Pointe has thieves, drug addicts and crime just like Detroit. It just hides them better.

All of the above statements may be factual, but they are not true. Here is the truth:

• Grosse Pointe is virtually all white (97 percent), but is represented by peoples of all racial groups. Most affluent blacks choose to live in Detroit (downtown, Sherwood Forest, Palmer Woods, the University District, Rosedale Park) or in one of the many other upper-class suburbs bordering Detroit, like Southfield, West Bloomfield, Birmingham, Oak Park, Troy, etc.
• While Grosse Pointe is a white-collar suburb, and Detroit is a blue-collar city, this construction is due more to history and expediency rather than a conspiratorial racial animus against black people.
• Grosse Pointe, a comparatively small suburb that is actually five interlocking cities collectively called, "The Pointes" per capita has more money, better schools and city services than Detroit, but this is due to the fact that city officials of Grosse Pointe are better stewards of the tax dollars entrusted to them by "We the People." I don't need to retell the litany of fiscal irresponsibility, waste, fraud, abuse and cronyism by black leadership against their own people in Detroit dating back to 1974 when Coleman A. Young became the first black mayor of Detroit.
• Grosse Pointe's north/south border with Detroit is Mack Avenue. I have friends that live on the Detroit side, and most of the homes date back to the 1920s/'30s era. These homes were built concurrently with those of Grosse Pointe, yet Grosse Pointe homes have been meticulously maintained, some for more than 100 years, while homes in Detroit's "East English Village" just a few hundred feet from Grosse Pointe and of the same era of architectural design, now lay in disrepair, targets of vandals, drug dens or abandoned altogether.
• Grosse Pointe has virtually no murder (one murder in 2005, the only one since it's founding in 1893!) Detroit is not only the reigning "murder capital of America" but according to Forbes Magazine, "the most miserable city in America."

While I don't have the political demographic for Grosse Pointe (Democrat, Republican, Independent), I will assume that because it is an affluent city like others across America this is a Democrat town, yet I see none of the policy experiments liberals love to dump on inner cities. For eight years I have walked length and breath of the "Pointes" almost everyday, and this is what I have not found:

• Bums, loiterers or graffiti
• Abortion clinics, wig shops or party stores
• Projects or "low income" public housing
• Detroiters bussed into Grosse Pointe schools
• "Public" parks open to all (Grosse Pointe residents only)
• So-called "Afrocentric," feminist studies or gay/lesbian studies curriculum,
• Legions of $700-an-hour attorneys, naked cronyism, rigged bids for political pay-offs or strippers partying at the mayor's mansion at taxpayers expense as recently demonstrated by the antics of Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

In conclusion, what has this tale of two cities revealed to us? What are the causes that have given us the savageness and utter despair of Detroit right next door to the idyllic, utopian qualities of Grosse Pointe? Pick a state. Pick any two contrasting cities in that state, and I bet you could write the same column as I have done here.

You can't logically blame all this on "the white man," on the lack of money, institutional racism or discrimination. Any rational person must concede that Detroiters should a least shoulder some of the blame for their plight based upon their own individual life choices.

Secondly, liberal socialist policies dating back to FDR have utterly decimated big cities across America by purposely aborting America's can-do spirit, rugged individualism and self-initiative. Socialist programs: From the welfare that we freely give to 13, 14 and 15-year-old girls to have babies out of wedlock, to the social security we give to our senior citizens who are unduly burdening society and killing business that have to pay retirees' exorbitant social security and Medicare benefits, robbing society of their wisdom by "retiring" at 55 years old.

I truly believe that the difference between Detroit and Grosse Pointe resides within the transcendent qualities that Justice Clarence Thomas' grandfather ["Daddy"] taught him which are de facto illegal today: A tough love that transformed Justice Thomas from a boy into a real man, his daddy's Spartan discipline that cared enough for him to look Clarence Thomas and his brother, Myers, dead in the eyes and say, "The d-mn party's over!"

Oh yeah, that's right, granddaddy (like Detroit) is dead … RIP.

Ellis Washington, former editor at The Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002), "Beyond the Veil: Essays in the Dialectical Style of Socrates" and He has just completed the manuscript to his latest book, "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust" (2007).

Washington's latest book, "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust," can be pre-ordered by calling 800-462-6420, promotion code "UPREPUB."

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