Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is fighting for his political life, and starting to resemble Fidel Castro, opines Freep columnist Brian Dickerson today.

You might imagine that, with his city hemorrhaging tax revenues and residents at the same life-threatening pace, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would have bigger fish to fry than a handful of bigoted yahoos in Livonia. But when the Free Press quoted some of the aforementioned yahoos objecting to the proposed erection of a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the grounds that it might attract black Detroiters to their stubbornly segregated suburb, I knew Kilpatrick would be on the story like, well, white on rice. A more confident leader might have ignored the racist remarks, which undoubtedly mortified most Livonians.

But Kilpatrick is not that leader. His practiced swagger conceals the desperation of a demagogue fighting for his life. So it was a cinch he'd seize this latest opportunity to portray Detroit as an island surrounded by racist enemies and himself as its only trustworthy defender.

For some whites and a few blacks, Kilpatrick's polarizing rhetoric hearkens back to the late Coleman Young. But the purest model for this style of fearmongering is Cuba's Fidel Castro, who continues to exploit his citizens' distrust of America more than a decade after the Cold War ended. Like Castro, Kilpatrick can make a convincing case that Detroit is surrounded by foes that covet its assets and wish its leaders ill.

Racism, including the overt kind that showed its ugly teeth in Livonia this week, is as much a fact of life for Detroiters as the U.S. trade embargo is for Cubans.
But, just as tens of thousands of Castro's constituents have abandoned Cuba for the economic opportunity of the great Satan, many of Kilpatrick's are leaving Detroit for its hostile suburbs. Each year, thousands of working-class families trade the empty cant of racial solidarity for the hard currency of safe schools and reliable municipal services.

Oomph.

Yeah, I'd say Kilpatrick has been taking this whole "us against them" stuff way too far.

TECHNORATI TAGS: DETROIT, FIDEL CASTRO, KWAME KILPATRICK

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 23, 2005 01:44 PM