Eric Riley is on the Archives Writing Team, contributing articles about the city of Detroit, race & politics.
Favorite thing to do in Detroit: "Going to Knudsen Bakery with friends for donuts, then driving to Belle Isle reminiscing about the giant slide.
by Eric Riley
When a white person coming to the city is unilaterally and unquestioningly held as the best thing for Detroit then we have a problem. It’s a problem because it heralds the young millennial white professionals and hipsters as heroes on the urban frontier, and the only people that have ever mattered for Detroit’s success. This romanticization of Detroit’s past almost always focuses on the near two million population figure and the abundance of jobs and businesses in the city. What’s left out is the part of the past filled with the murder of black and brown bodies, razing of historic communities, and the intense racial segregation.
by Eric Riley
Lately there has been a trend in the most popular (i.e., corporate) media outlets in Detroit (WXYZ, Fox2, and the Free Press) in their astounding lack of investigation or substantive criticism of white male figures in power. For many the first white male power figure with media backing that comes to mind is Dan Gilbert, CEO of Quicken Loans and – according to any of the news outlets I’ve mentioned – the undisputed savior of the Motor City.
by Eric Riley
“Its just, I’m sick of dealing with their bullshit. I just want to work on my own stuff, but I keep getting pulled in to do everyone else’s job. ‘Luke do this, and Luke do that’ And on top of that I have to listen to a bunch of absent minded white old people talk about a city they’ve never lived in. If Jen says one more thing about the homeless scourge in Downtown…I don’t know, I mean the money is good but I get fed up with all this sometimes.” After I finish my rant, I throw my head back onto the headrest and look out the window.
by Eric Riley
Detroit’s history of racial segregation; the white supremacist policies that degraded and razed black and brown communities while allowing white people to flourish; and the continued victimization of black and oppressed communities through evictions, gentrification, and other state practices of mass violence, make it a microcosm of our country’s larger issues. As Detroit moves into this new epoch I believe a formal transitional justice process should be established to acknowledges the true experiences of marginalized communities in Detroit and its surrounding suburbs.