The Courageous Communities of Plymouth-Canton
The Michigan Roundtable has been facilitating a discussion amongst the community stakeholders in Plymouth-Canton (PC). These efforts by leaders in those communities will pay important dividends in the years ahead. The PC Recognition, Reconciliation and Renewal Initiative brings together education and government leaders, business people, law enforcement and citizens to begin understanding each others’ perpsective on racial issues. The process starts by recognizing the real issues: A region that was 90 percent white a decade ago is now now 30+ percent people of color; a nearly all-white school establishment struggling to adapt to this diversity in Michigan’s third largest school district; law enforcement that sometimes uses routine traffic stops to question what people of color are doing in the community.
Recognition can lead to action to reconcile the problems, and then start a process of renewal. It’s a process Michigan Roundtable intends to lead, and one that is critically needed if Michigan is to become an economic leader. More information on the process can be found in Professor William Bridges’s book, Transitions Framework. Resistance to diversity and unity is an important factor in Michigan’s current stagnation and polarization. A recent study prepared for the Michigan Roundtable, Professor john a. powell, Execeutive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, showed the inequities plaguing Southeast Michigan. “A significant impediment to reinvigorating the State is the widespread and systemic inequity plaguing marginalized populations and communities. … Many of the state’s African-American communities (are) isolated from the essential opportunity structures needed to succeed and thrive in the 21st Century global society.”
Southeast Michigan has no real mass transit system bringing workers from Detroit to jobs in the suburbs. The Skillman Foundation is embarking on an effort to employ 5,000 Detroit youth this summer. What is the one major impediment”? Getting the students transported to the job site! Many adjoining school districts are virtually all black or all white–all black meaning largely poor and lacking the resources needed to bring those children to equal footing. Enough quiet steering in real estate continues that people of all colors quickly learn they are not welcome in certain communities.
Until Michigan recognizes its problems and begins a process of reconciliation and renewal, we won’t be able to create regional government that can provide more services for less tax dollars, get the mass transit we need, persuade people to put money into urban school districts, and take other steps critical to Michigan’s participation in the new global knowledge economy.
If you are interested in helping the Michigan Roundtale accomplish this daunting task, please contact us at (313) 870-1500. You can speak with Senior Director of the Community Reconciliation Initiative, Steve Spreitzer, or our two community organizers, Stacey Stevens or Nikhol Atkins. Visit our webpage at: www.miroundtable.org to find out more information on our work.
Tags: Michigan, Michigan Roundtable, Plymouth-Canton, Tom Costello
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
May 5, 2009 at 2:36 pm
As critical of an issue diversity is to our region, I do wonder about the best way to communicate this issue. The problem with high media coverage is, it will certainly become more negative publicity about our area, something that we don’t need. Rather, if media coverage could be focused on the good work of the Roundtable and others to effectively utilize our diverse community consequently promoting our diversity as the asset that it is. Will positive coverage generate high ratings that the networks are looking for?