Thursday, February 23, 2006
detroit zoo update
The bad news:
Barbara-Rose Collins, Detroit city council member, made it clear that a large part of her motivation for voting down a plan to save the Detroit Zoo was to keep it out of the hands of white suburbanites when she likened the city of Detroit to a whore and the suburbs as her pimp by saying: “This is not a plantation. We are not owned by everyone else. Black folks are not owned by white folks anymore. I made the point Saturday that the state Legislature was pimping the City of Detroit, and that we should not play the role of prostitute. That upset a lot of people, but I stand by my words. The symbolism is that Detroit is a black city, and we’re not able to govern ourselves. It’s a racist attitude and I resent it.”

The good news:
The Detroit city council has showed some common sense by announcing that they have developed a plan to save the zoo, and they expect to vote on this new plan some time next week.

The bad news:
L Brooks Patterson, Oakland County Executive, decided to further exacerbate racial sensitivities by claiming that the Detroit City Council belonged in a zoo. Seeing as 8 out of 9 council members are African American, the comment was perceived by many as a racial slur.

The good news:
The Fox 2 Problem Solvers are on the case to save the zoo.

The bad news:
The Fox 2 Problem Solvers are homophobes.

The good news:
You can feel like you have the tiniest bit of control over this by signing this online petition to save the Detroit Zoo.


1 Comments:

Blogger Mrs. White said...

To add to the insanity pile, another council member recently called L. Brooks Patterson a "grand wizard" and refused to apologize until Patterson apologizes for his zoo comment. The roots of racism run very deep here, and until both the city and the suburbs realize that they need one another for survival, this playground behavior is unlikely to end.

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