Stories of Detroit

Even if you don’t know much about Detroit, Michigan, chances are, you have heard about the rise and fall of its motor industry. Nicknamed, “Motor City,” Detroit was a growing metropolis in the early 20th century while its manufacturing industry prospered. However, many of these jobs were lost in the late 20th century, as American manufacturing declined. Politicians, businessmen, and journalists now point to the city’s high poverty rates, unemployment, and vacant homes as a cautionary tale. As the crown jewel of the Factory Belt, the issues Detroit faces, are often correlated directly to the decline of the manufacturing industry. This conclusion is easy to draw, as the timeline of economic deterioration for both city and industry clearly coincide. And it would be foolish to discount the impact that manufacturing has had on the city. Yet, this narrative simplifies the complexity of Detroit and its citizens and understates the effects of the social and political dynamics of the city.

Specifically, as is often the case, the issue of race has been grossly overlooked in the telling of Detroit’s story. Since its bankruptcy in 2013, stakeholders have used the popularized white-washed account of Detroit’s history to advocate for a recovery effort that focuses on industry first. But the economic struggles faced by Detroit’s majority African American population cannot only be traced to the decline of industry but also deep-rooted racism that Black Detroiters have continued to fight.

To begin to understand Detroit as it is today, we must look back to the early 20th century, when the manufacturing industry was booming. During this time, masses of European immigrants and Black citizens who were escaping the Jim Crow south were moving to the city for jobs. While Europeans might have faced some discrimination, they were quickly assimilated into Detroit’s neighborhoods. African Americans on the other hand, faced many more barriers to acceptance.

Since WWI, white citizens of Detroit actively prevented the integration of their neighborhoods and schools. Discriminatory housing and lending practices such as restrictive covenant contracts and redlining exacerbated racial inequality by blocking black Detroiters from acquiring wealth. These practices denied people who lived in African American neighborhoods loans and prevented African Americans from purchasing or renting certain homes.

White Detroiters also took an active role in ensuring racial inequality of education. Although Brown v. Board of Education was passed in 1954, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the NAACP successfully convinced the courts to acknowledge that the Detroit government had purposefully separated white and black students into unequal schools. In response, the courts enforced the busing of white students from the suburbs and black students from the inner city to integrate the schools. However, this bussing was stopped shortly after in 1981 when the court went back and overturned its own ruling. The implications of these rulings are severe. They reveal that for decades, the white-controlled government of Detroit consciously sent young black students to inferior schools. As Sarah Hussain argues in her essay, Education Essentials: What the State of Michigan Is Not Addressing, providing a quality education for the youth is essential in ending the cycle of poverty and absolutely necessary if one hopes to build a better future for Detroit. Because the inequality of education was only addressed in the 1970s, and then promptly reversed in 1981, it means that the majority-black adult populus that lived in Detroit during its decline and that currently lives in Detroit was simply set up to fail. Black Detroiters, who now reside inside the city, were never given an equal education to enable them to be competitive with the white citizens of Detroit who later moved to the more affluent suburbs outside city limits.

Although many black individuals were hired into the manufacturing industry in Detroit, the majority of employers set limits on how many jobs could be given to black workers. The culture of discrimination continued even when President Roosevelt issued Executive Order #8802 in 1941, which stated that black and white employees working in factories manufacturing munitions must be treated equally. In response to this minor attempt at equality, white workers in Detroit organized a series of “Hate Strikes.” During these strikes, white workers would walk off the job if a black worker was promoted. In June of 1943, 25,000 white employees walked off the job because three black workers were promoted. This was one of the catalysts to the largest race riot during WWII, where white and black Detroiters fought with each other in the streets of the city. Only after the Fifth Army was sent in did it end, leaving 34 Detroit citizens dead.

Racial conflict persisted in Detroit throughout the following decades and led to another large race riot in Detroit in 1967. The racial tension in Detroit did eventually cool down quite a bit. Unfortunately, however, it was not a recognition of the racial disparities and a reconciliation between the black and white communities that caused this settling — instead, it was a complete avoidance of the issue as a whole. Starting in the 1950s, in accordance with the suburbanization of America and coupled with the media’s manufactured fear of Detroit’s black citizens due to the racial riots, whites moved out of the city in droves. The movement of white citizens into the suburbs was explicitly racialized, meaning it had everything to do with race. Formal and informal policies ensured that black residents were not welcome. In 1950, 1.5 million whites lived in Detroit and made up 83% of the population. By 2000 the population of whites had dropped to 117,000 people and 12% of the city. The Detroit metropolitan area became the most segregated metropolis of the century. As one can imagine, because of the economic and social advantages whites were given throughout the history of Detroit, especially with regards to housing, education, and employment, their mass exodus from the city was detrimental to Detroit’s tax base. It became a lot more difficult for the city government to cover the 143 square miles of city and provide basic public services.

One huge symbol of the shifting racial demographics of the city came in 1974 when Detroit was able to elect its first African American Mayor. It was a fortunate event, in that it allowed the black communities of Detroit to be represented. However, because of the racial prejudices that continued in the white suburbs of Detroit, suburban officials were distrustful of any partnerships with the now majority-black city of Detroit. The lack of partnership between the city and the suburbs was more severe in Detroit than in almost any other metropolis and only exacerbated the economic decline of the city. Even today, the city and the suburbs of Detroit have a detached and uncoordinated bus system. The problems of poverty that the underserved communities of Detroit have been facing are clearly rooted in a history of racial discrimination and conflict. For most of Detroit’s history, the city was economically and politically controlled by white residents who were not only unwilling to invest in the black communities, but actively working against them. When the white citizens of Detroit fled the city, they abandoned the black communities that they had subjected to severe racism and unequal segregation. When the white citizens had control over Detroit, they quite literally had designed the black communities to fail, and then when they left the city, they continued to refuse to partner with them in any way or attempt to fix the wide array of problems that they had created. Although the decline of industry within Detroit definitely contributed to its financial hardships, it is irresponsible to believe that the economic issues within the city can be addressed without focusing on the racial and social problems as well.

Now three years after Detroit filed for bankruptcy, some are praising new investment in the city as the long-awaited “renewal”. Celebrated and wealthy investors such as Phillip Cooley and Dan Gilbert are largely credited with this “revival” for bringing hip new restaurants and company headquarters like Quicken Loans to the center of the city and financing the new M-1 Rail tram. Although these investments in the downtown enhance the image of the city, what must be examined is the depth of the impact on the city as a whole. The greater downtown area that these entrepreneurs have invested in comprises a small 5% of Detroit’s geography and population. One of the city’s largest problems is lasting unemployment, and although these investors claim they are bringing jobs into Detroit, most of the jobs that have been created are taken by the new white population coming into the city. With the current focus of investments in Detroit, what is essentially happening is not a “revival” of Detroit, but a widening of the gap of inequality between the 5% and the 95%. In fact, the way in which Detroit is redeveloping is reminiscent of the segregation it has experienced throughout its history manifesting as a distinct divide between the downtown “revived” Detroit, and the rest of the city.

One can see this divide clearly by examining how municipal services have changed — or not changed — after the new investments into the downtown of the city. Detroit has notoriously bad municipal services, largely due to the economic difficulties of the city. For most Detroiters, a call to 911 means hours of waiting for the police to arrive. One might assume that bringing more money into the center of the city might allow services like the police department to be better funded and better run. Instead, people downtown call the private security forces that work around the center of the city and Wayne State University. The wealthier class in Downtown, who doesn’t want to deal with the dysfunctional city police, has turned to the privatization of public services instead of trying to improve the whole system for the sake of all citizens.

It is also true that the public transport system in Detroit is in critical need of improvement, but the new M-Rail that Dan Gilbert has helped finance which concentrates only on the downtown area, is not the solution. The proposed M-Rail fails to serve the vast majority of the 25% of city residents who are too poor to own a car and regularly travel 15 kilometers by bus to get groceries. Instead, the M-Rail will be used by the already affluent and increasingly white residents of downtown.

The current change in Detroit is not a revival, but an exacerbation of the same issue that has been affecting cities across the country. What is happening in Detroit is a gentrification of the most affluent areas of Detroit, which inherently creates a severe increase in the economic inequality within the city. While downtown is benefitting from new infrastructure, shiny office buildings and pretty parks, if one travels a short 5 minutes out into the surrounding city, the scene completely transforms. The streets are overgrown with weeds; blocks have been turned into large fields with only one or two houses still standing and others abandoned in decay. Jocelyn Harris, a lifelong Detroit resident, lives just six miles east of downtown in one of the only occupied houses on her block. The situation in her neighborhood is in no way reflective of the supposed “revival” of Detroit. Instead, the city closes the gates of her local parks when they should be open. The neighborhood school just recently shut down, and when community members proposed turning it into a community center, the city decided to instead sell it to a private developer.

Current investors in Detroit argue that one must invest in the wealthier neighborhoods first, to catalyze a transformation in the less affluent neighborhoods. But a quick analysis of other large cities clearly indicates that this type of “trickle-down economics” does not work. In New York, for example, rents have reached a record high, yet half the city’s residents live near the poverty line. What would really allow Detroit to prosper would be to give autonomy to the existing black communities. However, any efforts in improving the outer neighborhoods in Detroit are underfunded and few and far between.

The Detroit Creative Corridor Center is Detroit’s creative business incubator which funds creative ventures in the city, but the majority of projects they fund are not black (70% are for white artists) and are not based in Detroit’s outer neighborhoods. Despite comprising 83% of the population, black communities and voices have been largely left out of the “revival” effort in Detroit. Once again, those in power are refusing to provide the black residents of Detroit the resources they need to sustain their communities.

If there continues to be this failure in acknowledging the importance of including the black community that makes up the majority of the city, Detroit has little hope of recovery and is in danger of repeating its past. One step in including black voices in Detroit’s recovery effort is to recognize the role that racism has played in Detroit’s deterioration. The investors currently trying to “revive” Detroit believe that the issues the city has faced are linked solely to industry. They think that the fall of Detroit was directly caused by the decline of the auto industry, so they have responded accordingly by bringing “new and diversified industry” into the city. And this might have been the way to revive Detroit if industry was Detroit’s only problem. However, an examination of Detroit’s past and present reveals that the severe social and economic issues the city faces are largely a product of relentless racial discrimination and the disenfranchisement of the black community. The racism that has caused so many of Detroit’s difficulties is the underlying issue that needs to be dealt with. Industry and jobs can be brought into the city, but without addressing the oppression of the black community of Detroit first, the problems of social and economic inequality will only be aggravated. The racially charged history needs to be examined and the current voices of the black community need to be listened to if we really want Detroit to heal.