Black Dawn: What "Black Power Gary Style" Tells us About Life in 2012 America

An obscure book and its vision of hope  for Black-run cities

Just finished Black Power: Gary Style : The Making of Mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher. Published in 1970, I picked it up after putting together the piece on Gary, 'Because Life is So Brief and Time is a Thief When You're Undecided: The Racial History of Gary, Indiana and the Need for Restrictive Covenants'. 

Written by Alex Poinsett, a senior editor for Ebony, nearly 45 years ago, the reader now gets to play a game of through the looking glass to see world where the strange mix of black power and white liberal fanaticism over equality would magically breed successful cities once blacks took over the political control of places like Washington D.C., Detroit, Gary, Newark, Baltimore, and Richmond. 

The optimism for the future jumped from each word Poinsett wrote; it's only by the advantage of time that the reader understands the complete folly of this optimism in the advancement of these cities once blacks assumed political control.

The retardation of places like Gary, New Orleans, Compton, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Camden... all cities Mr. Poinsett mentions - gloating about the impending takeover!! - on p. 16-17 as benefitting from the black political takeover of City Hall, correlates with stunning precision to this very event.

Here is what Mr. Poinsett writes (p. 17) that underscores why Negro Fatigue is (and will be) being increasingly diagnosed nationwide as the ailment Americans suffer from:

At first glance it appears that blacks will merely gain control of white-abanonded urban misery. But with the control of city government comes a significant degree of political and economic leverage. The power of appointive office, the taxing power, the power to disburse municipal revenues, etc. - all of this will be in black hands. Blacks will be able to tailor law enforcement and education to black needs, monitor the myriad avenues of municipal corruption, and control recurring invasion of their communities by urban renewal (a euphemism for black removal), highway construction, and public works programs.  

That's power! They will be able to divert funds, now being spent on less needy citizens, to improve their community services and facilities. That's power! They will be able to fix budget allocations for services and projects, approve construction plans, and decide whether to pass on request for state and federal grants. And that's power! 

Each of these decisions will be occasions for blacks to force concessions from other groups. They can force employers who want city contracts to hire and promote blacks. Similarly, they can force unions to open up to blacks by blocking approvals for new construction or by threatening to reform archaic building codes on which their jobs partly depend. As municipal government officials, blacks can override resistance to public housing in so-called white areas and enforce bans on discrimination in the rental and sale of public housing. 

In short, racial socialism. That's what occurs when black people assume control of a local, city, or county government. A transfer of wealth, as long as taxpayer money (read white people) still can be collected in sufficient quantities.

In short, the creation of an artificial black middle class (look no further then Atlanta or Prince George's County).

What Mr. Poinsett didn't - and can't - admit is the "urban misery" that whites abandoned (and persist in abandoning, even if it's in the suburban environment) was the direct result of "Manifest Destruction" -- what is currently called "The Great Migration" of blacks from the south to the north.

Were you to be a white citizen of Gary fleeing the democratic rule of Mayor Hatcher in the early part of 1970 (when Poinsett's book was published), would you look back - like a fleeing resident of Troy as it was sacked by the armies of Greece - and understand that it was an occupied territory? Or would you, filled with the same optimism that leapt from every word Mr. Poinsett wrote in Black Power Gary Style, believe that better days were ahead for the city of Gary?

It's now 2012: we are soon to celebrate the 50th anniversary of 1963, the year Bull Conner and the police in Birmingham, Alabama provided the ammunition needed to bring down the Old Republic and legally usher in the epoch that is now known as Black-Run America (BRA).

Outside of using government control to enrich black people, all of the hopes that Mr. Poinsett of Ebony magazine had for black-politically controlled cities came crashing down (no black-controlled city or county would ever pass on state or federal grants; they rely on them to make payroll), a reminder that you can throw nature out with a pitchfork, but that she'll always return.

The state of Gary, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Compton, Camden, Oakland, and New Orleans - all cities Mr. Poinsett glowingly mentioned as soon to be under black control - in 2012 is directly correlated to the ascension of black political power in these locations.

Not one person can cite the political takeover of these cities by black people and argue that they have benefitted from this transfer of power. What we have witnessed is the implementation of a system of governance that seeks to enrich only black people. If crime goes up, poverty value drops, schools continue to see children perform inadequately on standardized tests, businesses shutter, and a lack of entrepreneurship or an environment adequate for outside investments leads to high rates of unemployment, all is well as long as a black people occupy City Hall.

The renewal of each of these cities can only be accomplished with the removal from power of entrenched blackness, for the belief in "Black Power" doesn't generate enough wattage to keep the lights on.

Just look to 90 percent black Detroit for proof of this.