cascade free zone

u

Escape from Detroit is part of a one-man tsunami of books put out by Paul Kersey, who began his literary output at the site: Stuff Black People Don’t Like.  (SBPDL).   SBPDL was begun as a counterpoint to the wildly popular Stuff White People Like (SWPL) site.

But, whereas Stuff White People Like was a humor site with a little edge, pretty clearly written by upper middle class whites to send-up themselves and their friends (examples: the TED conference, Mole notebooks, sea salt, hummus. Full list: here.)  Kersey’s SBPDL quickly took on a much darker tone.  If SWPL was edgy,  SBPDL became a razor sharp machete, hacking through the underbrush of false history and narrative we are surrounded with.

There are, it turns out, a nearly endless catalog of things which black people don’t like.   While initially he went for soft, humorous targets (swimming, the winter Olympics, paying for health care) it turns out that Kersey’s diet of red pills soon had him writing about the daily crime wave in black communities, covering some of the same territory as Amren.

But unlike Amren, where stories are presented with little more than a snide title, Kersey went to work with incredible diligence and impressive intellect to document the entire cycle of black dysfunction and it’s ongoing effects on America.  Along the way he developed a unique vocabulary, including many new terms and acronyms such as:  Black Run America (BRA: aka the USA where black concerns are endlessly catered to),  the Black Undertow (black underclass dragging everything down with it),   and disingenuous white liberals (DWL’s).   Some of these terms have moved into the wider AltRight blogosphere.

The blog, begun in 2009, was timed to coincide with the beginning of the eight years of racial hectoring that Eric Holder led off for Team Obama with his famous “Nation of Cowards” speech on race.  Here, then, in Paul Kersey, we have that man who was willing to talk honestly and fairly about our society’s racial problems, as the Attorney General of the United States suggested most were afraid to.    Which brings us to the topic of our review.

Escape from Detroit is one of the first of Kersey’s many self published books.  It’s a compilation of of articles written over several years (roughly 2008 to 2012) that tell the story of the decline and fall of Detroit.  Detroit, now universally known as a post-apocalyptic hell, was in the early 20th century thought of as “The Paris of America” with its lovely architecture, beautiful neighborhoods, and stunning theaters, museums and civic buildings.

The book describes the series of events as they occurred that resulted in the depopulation of Detroit,  from the race riots of 1943 and 1967 to the election of massively corrupt black criminals as political leaders.  (The book is dedicated to Coleman Young, the cities first black mayor, who was in office from 1974 to 1994, the period of Detroit’s most spectacular decline.)

What is revealed in the book is a devastating accumulation of hidden facts.  People raised in the city of a certain age know these facts, but they are far too inconvenient to talk about publicly, much less write a book about.

To this day you will see many conservative commentators, such as Rush, regurgitating absurd statements like the idea that  generations of “Liberal Democrats” have brought down Detroit.

Kersey takes this claim on directly by comparing the relative fates of Detroit and Pittsburgh.  Both are rust-belt cities that had their major industries decimated in the 1980s off-shoring wave. But Pittsburgh has recovered to the point it is frequently nominated as one of the best cities to live in by various magazines, while Detroit soldiers on topping the “most dangerous” lists and serving as the punch line in a lot of jokes.   The difference, as Kersey proves with fact after fact (all footnoted), largely comes down the the people who live there.

Portland, Oregon has also had a series of extremely liberal mayors, all Democrats. Portland, however, is not a post-apocalyptic crater.  It’s actually a destination for young professionals and software startups, with rapidly increasing home prices.

The simple facts are the ‘cuckservative’ mind refuses to even notice the simple dynamics of Detroit, and dozens of other black cities (or in Kersey’s parlance “actual black run America” which he defines and cities an localities where blacks have risen to be the majority and control all levers of power in the resulting political enclaves.)

Instead we have endless euphemisms, misdirection, and displacement of responsibility from the actual leaders of these cities (people like Coleman Young, Kwame Kirkpatrick and Marion Berry).    Kersey holds the picture of what has happened up for us to look at, and insists that there is a reason, and it’s the obvious one.  The black population of the city is both unwilling and unable to improve or even maintain the metropolis

Detroit today is the blackest city in America.  But it was not always this way.  In 1910 Detroit was 98% white, and even when the city had grown to it’s population maximum, of about 1.8 million people in 1950, at the height of the auto industry fueled Southern exodus that saw blacks moving North for better jobs,  it was still 85% white.   Today it is 82% black, only 10% white, and population has fallen a staggering 25% in the last decade to a mere 720,000 people.

Kersey, using extensive quotes from mainstream local news outlets, goes into detail on the mult-faceted failures that brought the city to it’s current sad condition.   The infrastructure left behind by the white builders of the city can not be maintained,  Electric grids, water and sewer are all in disrepair or failing.  The two plagues of crime and government employee fraud hinder the provision of services.   It’s a process that destroys value.    He reviews the failed public policies that have been deployed continually since the 1960s to turn Detroit around, from the Kerner Commission to Bush era educational ideas.

All in all it’s a devastating critique, the author at times bludgeons the reader with facts, unto exhaustion at times.   But for Kersey this is only an appetizer.

He’s prodigious in his output.   He’s written two books on Detroit, one on Philly, one on St. Louis, one on Baltimore, one on Selma,  one,  Guns, Blacks and Steel, his first book is on black crime generically.  He’s written a book on NASA.   He’s written another on Chicago, and one on Birmingham.  He’s written about black dominance in college football and its effect on white institutions of higher learning.   “Escape” shows clear signs of being self-published.   While their are not obvious errors of spelling and grammar, the layout suggests use of simple PC tools for the actual typesetting.    Most of the content was originally published as articles, and occasionally supporting illustrations and links are simply missing in the hard copy version.

Taken as a portfolio, one might call his work  “an alternate history”, but that would be wrong.  It’s not an alternative, it is the only credible and honest true history of a remarkable era in America. An age when dozens of the largest cities built on the continent were abandoned by the people who built them and turned over to the black under class, who proceeded to destroy them.

It’s a history written on our landscape, but just as surely it is written in the hearts of the dispossessed. The many Americans who have had to uproot their families, businesses and leave beloved but failing neighborhoods for the always euphemistically described  “good schools”.  But still we will not or can not talk honestly about what has happened.

Kersey, then is, in reality, the primary historian of this era.   His oeuvre tells us the true history of how lovely and prosperous cities like Beaux-Arts beauty that was early 20th century Detroit became the pre-built dystopian movie set everything from ‘Robocop” to “8 Mile.”

Contemplating our future in the brave new America we will probably all do much better if we take the time and psychic energy to deal honestly with the past that is immediately behind us.   Paul Kersey’s comprehensive collection of books on the transition from white to black rule in the nearly one dozen American cities he has written about (so far) are not just a good starting place,  they represents the only source currently available for this hidden history.