Democratic Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Plays Race Card In Lieu of Sex Scandal

Eliot Spitzer wasn't the first Democratic politician to be involved in a sex scandal this year. Self-styled "Hip-Hop Mayor" from Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, has created his own mess of lies and deception mixed in with a little adultery. And now as cries grow for him to resign, like a typical liberal Kilpatrick is playing the victim and blaming it all on his race:

You might think the resignation of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer would put more pressure on Detroit's embattled mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, to do the same. But Kilpatrick, seven weeks into his own text sex scandal, shows no signs of giving up the fight. In fact, with a prosecutor contemplating perjury charges and his city council in revolt, Kilpatrick has chosen the nuclear option in this deeply divided city. At the end of an otherwise routine state-of-the-city speech Tuesday night, Kilpatrick went off on a racially explosive tirade against his critics and the media.

"In the past 30 days I've been called a n----- more than any time in my entire life," he told a cheering, invitation-only crowd of 1,500 at Detroit's gilded Orchestra Hall. "In the past three days I've received more death threats than I have in my entire administration. I've heard these words, but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children. I have to say this, because it's very personal to me." He stole a glance at his wife and twin 12-year-old sons standing at attention in a luxury box above the stage. "I don't believe a Nielsen rating is worth the life of my children or your children. This unethical, illegal lynch-mob mentality has to stop."

An African-American man might be making a serious run at the White House, but here in Motown the old-school politics of race still define this struggling city. Census data show this is the most racially divided urban center in America, with 81 percent of the city black and a roughly equal percentage of the surrounding suburbs white. Politicians on both sides of Detroit's cultural fault line—the 8 Mile Road made famous by Eminem—have stoked racial fears for decades in order to get elected and stay in power. Kilpatrick, a Democrat, is no stranger to this tactic. There was plenty of racial rhetoric in his bruising 2005 re-election campaign.

From Marion Barry to Ray Nagin to Kwame Kilpatrick, when the chips are down due to their own ineptitude, the finger will never be pointed at themselves.