In Detroit, The Most Segregated Metropolis In America - RACE Is Still The Main Point Of Division

Detroit's divide in black and white: How can region work past racial roadblocks?

The meeting had just ended, and Detroit City Council Member Barbara-Rose Collins, in a wheelchair following shoulder surgery, was taking questions.

During the heated session, Collins had delivered a polemic denouncing the foundering deal to expand Detroit's Cobo Center, European colonialism and what she says are racist attacks on the city of Detroit. Namely, a 2006 war of words in which Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said Detroit's City Council belonged in a zoo.

“You can't negotiate with someone who called you a monkey,” Collins said, frustration plain in her voice. “Even if it was two years ago.”

It was a telling moment.

The contentious and prolonged debate over the fate of Detroit's civic center has brought the region's racial wounds into sharp relief.

Mistrust and deeply ingrained fears abound, and until they're overcome, say scholars, business leaders and activists, the region can't move forward.

“We have to understand that we need regional collaboration,” said Thomas Costello, president and CEO of the Detroit-based Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion. “Our fates are linked. We have futures in common.”

But conveying that message — and persuading people on both sides of the racial divide to listen — isn't easy.

“Race relations is a kind of a dialogue that has to be ongoing all the time, not just in times of crisis,” said John Rakolta Jr., chairman of New Detroit Inc. and CEO of Walbridge Aldinger, both based in Detroit. “Like anything else in life, the best exchange of ideas, solutions and compromise comes when people are listening to what the other person has to say first before putting their feelings or their ideas across.

“And we don't have that yet in our region