Coleman Young II in Detroit mayoral debate: "It's time to take back the motherland"

Blogger at the abandoned
Packard plant in 2015

Mike Duggan, a Democrat, has done a fantastic job as Detroit's mayor and he deserves a second term. Four years is not a enough time to undo the damage wrought by now-imprisoned Kwame Kilpatrick, onetime communist Coleman Young, and Jerome Cavanaugh. That last one is best known as the mayor of the Motor City during the 1967 riots, but he doesn't get enough blame for the decline and fall of what was once a great city for signing into law the Detroit's destructive commuter and municipal income taxes.

Last night there was a debate between Duggan and his challenger, Coleman Young II, Democratic state senator. In his opening statement, he took a page out of the race-baiting playbook of his father. Duggan is white, Young is black, and Detroit remains an overwhelmingly African-American city.

"It's time to take back the motherland," Young said.

Imagine if a white person had said that in a candidate's debate--particularly a Republican. It would be the lead story for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and MSNBC for days. That candidate would be condemned as a white supremacist.

Young is continuing a sad family tradition. And it's not the first time that he has reached into the toxic race-baiting bucket.

Duggan remains the favorite in this contest.

Good.