The conflict over what will be the future of the mostly black, and almost entirely working class, people who live in Detroit is not hard to understand. It is a conflict between the few haves versus the many have-nots.The author follows this statement with an accurate description of who the haves and have-nots are.
However, I must quibble with part of the headline: "Mr. Obama, Whose Side Are You On?" Why point to an individual when one makes a class analysis? Obviously he is alluding to an ironic racial issue with someone whose racial identity as seen by the public, and apparently by this author, as African-American. But this identification is quite literally skin deep. Such an allusion is, of course, another manifestation of racism. This explains why Obama only appears to be disingenuous when speaking out about Trayvon Martin in another essay by this author.
Obama was mostly raised by white upper-middle class people, primarily by his grandmother who was a (white) banker in Hawaii. He was educated in an elite private schools in Hawaii (Punahou School) and then on to Harvard and Columbia universities. He understandably identifies with the white power structure because he has been socialized entirely in white mainstream values. It is doubtful that he experienced much racism in Hawaii (and definitely not in his early years in Indonesia) given that it is such a multi-racial state, far more so than any other state in the union. I know that from my own experience living there for five years during which time Obama was in high school.