Detroit Blacks seek business district
Detroit has a Greektown section that tempts visitors with moussaka and baklava, and a Mexicantown neighborhood with Latin American groceries and restaurants. Now, politicians are pushing for a business district identified with the city's biggest minority group -- blacks. The plan, dubbed "African Town" by some proponents, has stirred fervent opposition, in part because the new district would be established using taxpayer money that would be available only to black business owners. A majority on the City Council has endorsed its basic tenets. But the plan is unlikely to become a reality. The mayor is against it, and many community leaders say the very notion undermines the city's efforts to promote economic revitalization through regional cooperation. The plan was drafted by Claud Anderson, author of a popular book on black economic empowerment, PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America. Under his proposal, the city would dispense grants and low-interest loans to blacks only, using a $30 million minority-business-development fund that Detroit's casinos agreed to pay into long before the African Town idea surfaced. Detroit, with a population of just fewer than 1 million, is more than 80 percent black after a decades-long white exodus. [
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