BATTLEGROUNDERS - MICHIGAN: V-DAY IN MICHIGAN [Henry Payne 11/02 10:54 AM]
Your humble Michigan reporter voted this morning in Precinct 22 of Oakland County north of Detroit. I always find voting an uplifting experience.
It is a time to reflect on the privilege we enjoy as Americans - particularly at a time when Afghanis just voted for the first time - and to share the experience with fellow citizens proudly exercising the same right. The cramped, politically-correct world of the US media defines Oakland County as "white" in "America's most racially-divided metropolitan area." As my polling place - and others across the county - prove, that is a ridiculous stereotype.
Oakland is Michigan's richest county and an enormously diverse place, the product of a global automotive industry that has consistently attracted immigrants here for 100 years from all over the globe. The line reaching out the door at 7:30 am was comprised of a rainbow of Jews, Indians, English ex-pats, Canadian ex-pats, Asians, and WASPs. Of course, the US Census Bureau crudely defines this wonderful stew of peoples as "white," but the faces and accents are anything but vanilla. These are folks who, within a couple of generations, may have survived the Holocaust, come to America as college students, or pulled up roots from some corner of the globe to locate here. That's true diversity, and this county is a tossup in the presidential race.
To Oakland's south lies Detroit, a city that's Democratic policies of welfare, high taxes, and racial exclusion have isolated its 85 percent black population from the surrounding region's diversity and economic growth. Detroit is the media's false diversity. And as the city's black middle class continues to emigrate from this urban nightmare to the surrounding counties - 10 percent of Oakland is now African-American, the fiction of a white and black America will be ever harder for the media to make. |
