Hansen Clarke's win over entrenched incumbent Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick has garnered him some attention. And rightly so. Clarke has a good story. Everything from his upbringing to his win over Kilpatrick is worth a read.
Excerpt:
With a camera-ready face and youthful smile that belie his 53 years
of age, Clarke speaks with force and passion about the crises and
opportunities Detroit is confronting. He is the perfect conduit to
spread the story of an underdog city rising from the ashes of industrial
decay.
While Clarke is unlikely to follow Obama's ascension to higher
office, his life is just as (if not more) reflective of the multi-ethnic
identity and grassroots politics taking shape in twenty-first century
America. Clarke is the son of a Muslim immigrant father and an African
American mother. The former came to the U.S. from India (what is now
Bangladesh) at a time when most Asians faced blatant discrimination and
were deemed ineligible for naturalized citizenship.
In a starkly segregated city, Clarke's father found a home within
Detroit's black community but passed away when his son was only eight.
As a result, Clarke was raised by a single-mother on Detroit's Eastside
just as the city's five-decades-long crisis was sinking in. Clarke
himself is married to a Korean-born woman who was adopted by her
Catholic mother and Jewish father. His faith in the strength of
unconventional family relations was likely solidified by the fact that
he was effectively adopted by his neighbors, who sponsored his Cornell
education after his mother also died prematurely.
Read the entire article
here.
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