race in Dearborn

From today's Free Press:

Police are trying to learn who was behind racist graffiti that was spray-painted on the home of an African-American family in Dearborn over the weekend.

Sometime late Saturday or early Sunday, someone used brown paint to scrawl "Get out" followed by a racial slur. It was then followed with the words "and no love, and all for one," police said.

Dearborn as a site of racism has a long and storied history. Sean, a student in my Comp. 106 class, writes about long-time Dearborn Mayor Orville Hubbard and his namesake statue, whose arms stretch over the city, reminding citizens of his staunch segregationist views. In addition to the Hubbard statue outside of city hall, this mythic pic of Hubbard standing on Michigan Avenue suggests the Hubbard mythology of putting his body between Detroit and Dearborn to keep African-Americans in the former and out of the latter. From David Good:

Despite his record, Hubbard, intriguingly, saw himself as almost a moderate on the race issue, even while giving in to racist invective of the worst sort. "I'm not a racist," he once protested to his assembled department heads, "but I just hate those black bastards." Once, in an apparent effort to show a group of appoinees and a reporter how broadminded he was, he approached a black parking attendant at one of his favorite luncheon spots and, with a flourish, kissed the man on both cheeks. "See," the mayor told his entourage, "I don't hate n-----s."

Trashcans around town still tout "Keep Dearborn Clean," the dubious mantra of an ad campaign started by Hubbard himself.

Stephanie, also from my Comp. 106 class, writes about Fordson High School in Dearborn. Fordson is the ironic postscript to Hubbard's rasist legacy, enrolling 95% Arab-American students.

Contradiction. Irony. A city with a history rooted in segregation and white supremacy. A city known nationwide for its Arabic communities. I saw images from Toledo this weekend, the race riots, the anarchy, and thought about Dearborn, thought about the fragile peace of communities, thought about the three high-profile cross burnings that took place in Butler County, Ohio, during my three years living there, thought about discussion of race in Comp. 106, where last week a student in the class shared an anecdote of being victimized by a racist epithet not thirty years ago but in recent weeks.

What does a community do with its own racism? How ought a university within that community take a role in confronting both the community's history and the community's present?