There’s a Reason Black Voters in Detroit Don’t Like Abdul

I don’t know where you grew up, but I grew up six blocks north of the Detroit border and one block south of 8 Mile Road, on “the bad side.” It wasn’t bad when I was a kid, or at least not as bad, and as I got older, I spent more time in the city. I went to college downtown at Wayne State and lived for a time in the Cass Corridor, back when that was not a place you wanted to be (it’s quite different now). I saw firsthand why there is distrust and dislike between black Detroiters and Arabs in the city, and I’m kind of surprised no one has talked about it in regard to why Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is doing so horribly with black voters.

Back in college, you didn’t really want to be on the streets in the Cass Corridor at night for too long, and you had to keep your ears open for sounds that set off your senses. I spent a lot of time there, and lived on 3rd Street and Cass for a while, because it was cheap, and that’s where the people from the theater department lived, as it was right near where our classes were. (Yes, I was a theater major for a year, mostly because I was aimless; it was fun and easy, I was good at it and the girls were good-looking.)

There were liquor stores and bars all around that neighborhood; most are still there. The bars were full of regulars of all ethnicities, but largely Vietnam veterans, which was not great for meeting girls (it is a very large commuter college, something like 25,000 students, with very limited on-campus housing and very few people living off campus because it was dangerous).

The liquor stores, or as they’re called in Michigan “party stores,” were a sea of fluorescent lights and plexiglass.

One thing you learn about party stores in Detroit is most have an unwritten rule: if you can carry it to the counter, they will sell it to you. If you look lost, confused, guilty or scared, they won’t. But if you act like you’ve done it before, you can buy anything, even the alcohol behind the glass. Money is money.

But the tension between the people on each side of the plexiglass was palpable. As a white kid, I was in the distinct minority, though by no means alone. Arabs owned and worked in the stores, sitting inside the glass, and black people were the vast majority of the people shopping there, as the city is more than 75 percent black. And they did not like each other.

Not everyone; there were plenty of older black men who’d hang out in the stores and shoot the breeze with the older Arab owner of the store, as they’d likely been seeing each other the majority of their adult lives. But younger men, on both sides of the glass, did not have that history or the respect that goes with it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’d seen shouting matches through the glass over price, the amount of money handed over or the amount of change given back; claims that someone was ripping them off, or the other person was literally stealing. So many threats of “kicking your ass” and calling the police, and the police were called a lot.

 There was no trust – as the owners saw their customers as likely thieves, and the customers saw the owners as racists ripping them off and taking the money out of the city, back to Dearborn.

It was a weird dynamic that didn’t involve most customers – black, white or whatever. Many times there would be yelling while the normal transaction was taking place between them, and others you’d conduct your transaction while the argument happened around you.

But it was clear that these two groups did not like or trust each other. Which was right and which was wrong did not matter, and does not matter; the animosity is there, and it’s not being addressed.

Abdul can’t take the side of Detroiters; that would anger his Arab voter base and a large group of his donors by calling them racists. And he can’t come right out and side with the store owners, as that would just reinforce the racism black Detroiters experience when they walk into those stores to buy milk, a loaf of bread or a six-pack. He’s stuck.

Mike Rogers can win more of the black vote out of Detroit than usual for a Republican by a couple of simple steps. First, ask for it – too many don’t bother. Second, skillfully point out how Abdul is more interested in the well-being of people on the other side of the planet than the people on the other side of the plexiglass, and Rogers will put Michiganders and Detroiters first.

Abdul can’t do that; it would cost him votes.

Unlike Abdul, the fight through plexiglass is one-sided for Rogers. He’s not going to win the Arab/Muslim vote, no matter what. What he can do is use that to take a chunk of the black vote from Abdul, or at least hope many people will stay home, as they’re unhappy with their usual party’s offering.

This is a prime example of the Left’s identity politics coming back to bite them. It plays well in gerrymandered districts, but less so statewide, and even less so statewide when a member of one of the groups they pit against each other for local control is on the ballot.

Let’s hope Mike Rogers knows this and spends some time in the last two weeks of this election taking advantage of it. Call me, Mike, I’ll hook you up.

Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and is the author of the book Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and the host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.

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