Hansen Clarke gets a profile in the Huffington Post after primary win

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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