Another Bad Idea in Detroit

By a vote of 7-2, the Detroit City Council decided to spend $30 million per year in public funds to establish an “Africatown,” a race-based business district solely for black businessmen and investors, designed to be a business district similar to Chinatown or Little Italy. According to a study used by the City Council, the black population is being underserved and passed over economically by other nonblack residents.

More specifically, the report complains that entrepreneurial immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East are opening up too many stores and selling too much of everything to blacks. In doing so, it's alleged that these money-grubbing greenhorns are stealing jobs and business opportunities from blacks.

Apart from being unconstitutional, this is just an idiotic idea. First, 83 percent of Detroit is black, so it's hard to see how carving out a black business district is going to change the dynamics of the city in any real way (apart from the redistribution of $30 million via the government). Additionally, businesses don't succeed in the long run because they receive money from the government. Businesses succeed because they sell goods or services that people want at a reasonable price. Little Italy and Chinatown were not designed by the government to help people "get ahead." They were formed because immigrants flocked there on their own in an effort to work hard and make a future for themselves.

Little Italy, in short, was successful because the spaghetti was good, not because someone got a handout from city council.

{Linking post to OTB's Traffic Jam}