The Symbolism Behind Detroit's Bankruptcy

I have never had much use for symbolism in literature. I regard most of it as sophistry propagated by professors and lit teachers with limited writing skills and boundless imaginations. I feel that if Hemingway had wanted to make a point he was literate enough to spell it out in plain English rather than drop literary bread crumbs to be followed for generations after his death until finally Professor of American Literature Zero Nobody at Arizona State University divines the message behind the hidden allegory and tells his inattentive class what Hemingway was trying to say.
When a movie critic writes of bankruptcy the results are predictable. Since the author has not faced the sad fact that bankruptcy is merely the logical result of expenditures exceeding revenues for a protracted period of time he is free to treat bankruptcy as something symbolic. In Why the Right Hates Detroit Andrew O'Hehir writes that the real reason behind the Detroit bankruptcy and the destruction of New Orleans was white America's distaste for jazz.

Is it pure coincidence that these two landmark cities, known around the world as fountainheads of the most vibrant and creative aspects of American culture, have become our two direst examples of urban failure and collapse? If so, it’s an awfully strange one. I’m tempted to propose a conspiracy theory: As centers of African-American cultural and political power and engines of a worldwide multiracial pop culture that was egalitarian, hedonistic and anti-authoritarian, these cities posed a psychic threat to the most reactionary and racist strains in American life. I mean the strain represented by Tom Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” (imagine what he’d have to say about New Orleans jazz) or by the slightly more coded racism of Sean Hannity today. As payback for the worldwide revolution symbolized by hot jazz, Smokey Robinson dancin’ to keep from cryin’ and Eminem trading verses with Rihanna, New Orleans and Detroit had to be punished. Specifically, they had to be isolated, impoverished and almost literally destroyed, so they could be held up as examples of what happens when black people are allowed to govern themselves.

Watch out Memphis and St. Louis you're next.
My point is any hack writer can write a morality play. Especially when he affords himself this caveat.

Both tragedies were shaped by larger economic forces and historical trends that lay (or at least appeared to lie) beyond the control of individual politicians or policy makers.

Both were beyond the control of individual politicians or policy makers? The politicians who presided over the collapse of Detroit are not to blame but everyone else is? After all;

Speaking broadly, those in city government there inherited an unsustainable situation in a downward-trending economy, pursued their own short-term objectives and only made things worse.)

Inherited an unsustainable situation? Just like Obama inherited all of his troubles from George Bush? And the pursuit of their short term goals lasted for two generation before the inherited mess got the better of them?
This guy is a fiction writer without a plausible plot.