OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.