The white population’s abandonment of the city left Detroit with a shrinking tax base and deteriorating, segregated public schools — a system locked in place by a Supreme Court order that halted busing across school district lines. But blacks still in Detroit had one thing left — political power. And they would guard it jealously against any encroachment, real or imagined.

Thus, the city’s black political class sees conspiracy theories everywhere. The investigation of the last mayor by the Detroit Free Press, and his indictment by a prosecutor, are seen as a white conspiracy to undermine black “home rule” of Detroit. The governor’s appointment of an emergency financial manager, once it became clear that Detroit cannot manage its own fiscal affairs, is again seen as a hostile, racist takeover by the state over the city’s elected black leadership.

Racial politics, and that racial prism, long ago ruined Detroit, and now they hamper any chance the city has at a modest recovery. As a longtime friend, one who has stayed in Detroit and worked to help the city, once put it to me succinctly: “Some people would rather be the king of nothing than a part of something.”

So this bankruptcy is sad. But it was, in a sense, inevitable — the final chapter in Detroit’s long slide from glory. Maybe this will be the kind of shock therapy the city needs, the hammer blow that gets the remaining residents to stop living in the past, recognize that the old Detroit is never coming back, and start making the painful sacrifices necessary to build a new, smaller city with what’s left.

I hope so. But somehow I doubt it. If we Detroiters have one fault, it’s that we are addicted to nostalgia and living in our highly selective view of the past.