From the Editor: "Escape from Detroit" by Paul Kersey

An unblinking look at the collapse of the "Paris of the West"

Paul Kersey’s Escape from Detroit: The Collapse of America’s Black Metropolis is a fascinating sociological study of modern Detroit. First self-published by Kersey in 2012, it was a successful but controversial hit that pulled no punches when explaining the shocking collapse of a city once popularly called the “Paris of the West.” Thomas Sowell, the prominent Black economist and political commentator, cited the book in a 2013 article titled “Race-Hustling Results.” Recognizing that Kersey raises serious questions that warrant thoughtful response, he wrote:

His books … raise tough questions. It would be easy to simply dismiss Kersey as a racist. But denouncing him or ignoring him is not refuting him. Refuting requires thought, which has largely been replaced by fashionable buzz words and catch phrases, when it comes to discussions of race. Thought is long overdue. So is honesty.

In a later academic article, “Human Biological and Psychological Diversity,” published in 2017, Bo Winegard et al. dismissed Escape from Detroit as “irresponsible and insensitive,” carefully avoiding any engagement with its radically politically incorrect claims.

Detroit, the largest city in the Midwestern state of Michigan, was settled in 1701 by French explorers Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1658–1730) and Alphonse de Tonty (1659–1727). Constructed from white oak and confined to less than a hectare in what is now downtown Detroit, the settlement’s early economy centered on the fur trade and agriculture. By 1815, Detroit had developed significantly and was officially incorporated as a city. In 1901, Henry Ford established his motor company there, contributing to the city's rapid industrial growth. By 1907, the Detroit River carried 67 million tons of shipping commerce—surpassing both London and New York City in volume. In the early twentieth century, Detroit emerged as the world’s automotive capital and became the fourth-largest city in the United States. Today, however, it ranks among the most violent and impoverished cities in the nation. How could such a remarkable success story nosedive so rapidly?

In his introduction to Escape from Detroit, Paul Kersey argues that the city’s collapse began with the growth of its Black population, which he claims led to White flight and, subsequently, the total transformation of Detroit along racial lines. He includes a table illustrating this demographic shift: from 1.4 percent Black in 1900—when Detroit was considered an economic marvel—to 81.5 percent Black in 2000, by which time the city’s decline was well underway. Kersey contends that Detroit’s fate was effectively sealed in 1948, when the US Supreme Court held that state enforcement of restrictive covenants in real property deeds—which prohibited the sale of property to non-Caucasians—violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This all sets the theme of the book, which presupposes a race realist outlook (one not discussed by the author in the original) that values the importance of both intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) and behavioral trait differences between Whites and Blacks. This is important to understand from the outset, as Kersey believes that the state of modern Detroit is merely a reflection of the inherent qualities of Blacks, and cannot be explained by secondary effects like political failings, or conspiracy theories like “systemic racism.”

Kersey spends most of his ink attacking flawed arguments used to excuse the collapse of Detroit and similar cities, and drawing upon data and news stories to paint horrifying scenes of the staggering state of Detroit’s decay and dysfunctionality. For example, he takes on Thomas Sowell’s claim that Detroit’s collapse is due to “liberal social policies,” pointing out other states and countries that are successful despite the very same “liberal social policies.” The real explanatory factor, Kersey argues, is that they lack significant Black populations that would otherwise drag them down (Kersey does indeed raise “tough questions”):

A city, a state, a nation—all three are but a reflection of their citizenry. Detroit thrived when it was a majority White city. Under majority Black rule, however, it has become the laughingstock of the world. Liberal policies seem to be working fine in Vermont. But, strangely, they fail—and conservatives point this out with glee—when Black people are in charge, as this is an easy way to blame Black failure on liberalism (= leftism).

It is perhaps strange, ostensibly at least, that Norway can succeed and prosper under liberal conditions. Ditto for Vermont. But a sizable Black population that relies on the same nanny state and welfare system is a lethal combination. After all, you only get more of what you subsidize. Economically a nation can have either a space program or a significant Black population, but it cannot have both.

Examples of the city’s dysfunction include: Detroit Public Library’s purchase of $1,000 chairs, and the $8,900 spent on eight stainless-steel trash cans, despite a nearly 50 percent illiteracy rate; a (potentially shady) school for illiterate Black teenage mothers; the case of Otis Mathis, the illiterate Detroit Public Schools president who “fondled” himself while at work; accounts of residents eating raccoons to survive; more than 21,000 homicides in the city since 1969; and the case of paramedics forced to huddle in a broken-down ambulance after responding to multiple shootings (the service was strained due to the Detroit budget crisis). He also references the Monument to Joe Louis (a clenched Black fist, symbolic of power and violence), paid for by White people, and erected downtown in honor of boxer Joe Louis, located near the site of the original French settlement—interpreting it as cosmically poetic. Indeed, the city is portrayed as a place in deep decline:

[T]he picture of modern Detroit is apocalyptic: Michigan Central Station and its eerie abandonment; the amazing details on the facade of the Metropolitan Building juxtaposed with its graffitied and trashed interior; Lee Plaza, once home to the elite of Detroit, and its infestation of homeless druggies; the Grand Army of the Republic Building, a castle erected in 1900 for Civil War veterans, and its boarded-up windows; and the Broderick Tower, once the tallest tower in Michigan, now stands deserted.

Kersey repeatedly emphasizes what he views as a Black-driven collapse of civilization, suggesting that such declines could be prevented if White individuals were permitted to speak openly about racial differences and challenge the anti-Western myths of racial egalitarianism, “multiculturalism,” and “White racism” that are upheld and enforced predominantly by White liberals in order to help usher in the new liberal regime of totalitarian multiracial democracy. As Kersey writes:

America has been held hostage by disingenuous White liberals and Black rage for too long. To abandon the official position [that] … ascribes all Black failure to the legacy of White racism and slavery would represent a complete capitulation to the reality that the past forty-four years of attempted social programming (to deny that nature does trump nurture) would represent an event on par with the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Cultural Revolution in China.

One of the pivotal moments in Detroit’s history that Kersey frequently revisits is the 1967 Detroit riot, which followed the earlier 1943 race riot. The 1967 unrest began with a police raid on an unlicensed bar, and quickly escalated into five days of intense violence, resulting in 43 deaths, hundreds of serious injuries, and extensive property damage. In response to this Black “insurrection,” Governor Romney deployed the Michigan Army National Guard, and President Johnson sent in units from the US Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Commonly described as one of the worst riots in American history, it is often portrayed in mainstream narratives as the culmination of decades of “institutional racism” and “entrenched segregation.” Kersey challenges this unrealistic interpretation, arguing instead that the riot was precipitated by perceived “police brutality” within a Black community already statistically overrepresented in crime. He cites data indicating that, in 1967, while Black residents made up approximately 26 percent of Detroit’s population, they were responsible for nearly 65 percent of serious crimes. Ultimately the riot led to more White flight: between 1940 and 1970, the city’s White population declined from 90 percent to 55 percent, and by 1980 had fallen to just 34 percent, as many White residents escaped to the White suburbs. Reflecting upon the 1967 riot today, especially in the wake of the chaotic George Floyd riots, it seems as though nothing has really changed in America.

While Escape from Detroit does not present new empirical data or academic research, its primary value, in this author’s opinion, lies in its unapologetically blunt and unrelenting portrayal of Black-run Detroit’s complete failure. The book’s tone is deliberately unfiltered, offering a brutally honest narrative that is very rarely encountered in mainstream works. As the global balance of power continues to shift demographically toward the Global South, readers should perhaps reflect not only on Detroit’s decline but also on similar cases, such as post-apartheid South Africa. Escape from Detroit once again reminds us that highly functional societies (created by genetically highly functional people) are—after all—the exception, not the norm, and can only exist in a global world via active discrimination.

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Written by Escape from Detroit editor, Lute Currie. If you enjoyed, get the book for yourself to read more!