A Dream Still Deferred In Detroit

New York Times ^ | March 26, 2011 | Thomas J Sugrue

[WeatherGuy]

At first glance, the numbers released by the Census Bureau last week showing a precipitous drop in Detroit’s population — 25 percent over the last decade — seem to bear a silver lining: most of those leaving the city are blacks headed to the suburbs, once the refuge of mid-century white flight.

But a closer analysis of the data suggests that the story of housing discrimination that has dominated American urban life since the early 20th century is far from over.

Detroit is not the only American city to face persistent residential segregation, but it is among the worst: it has ranked among the 10 most segregated metropolitan areas in the United States since the mid-20th century (though the rate of black-white segregation there has fallen markedly in the last decade, as blacks have moved into once-exclusive white neighborhoods).

As Detroit’s black population skyrocketed during the Great Migration from the South, the city’s whites fought what they called the “Negro invasion” with every tool at their disposal. From 1945 to 1965 whites attacked at least 250 black families — usually the first or second to move into all-white neighborhoods — breaking windows, burning crosses and vandalizing homes.

When white Detroiters could not win by fighting, they fled to the suburbs. Indeed, for a half-century beginning in the 1950s, Detroit lost nearly half of its population, almost all whites.

Those who left the city cited various reasons: desire for a little green space, new housing, better schools, freedom from crime. Few of them acknowledged the racial motive behind white flight, that words like “freedom from crime” were code for moving away from blacks.

[count-your-change]

I'm certain his motives and needs were only of the highest order while everyone else’s were those of the bigot and racist.
While King said, “I Have a Dream”, and THE King sang, “Follow That Dream”, Detroit's ambulatory residents just want the nightmare to end and so they leave.

[count-your-change]

One topic I have not seen (perhaps I missed it?) is the effects of attempts at so-called “urban renewal”.
Tearing down the housing of the poor got rid of the housing but not the poor and in addition destroyed the neighborhoods and their ability to provide for themselves.

No wonder upper income whites and black fled the creeping invasion of the Armies of the Poor.
America has always had a bias against living amongst the poor, a truly colorless class.

[Red in Blue PA]

Wonder if the author of this piece lives in a hood?

[PghBaldy]

Shouldn’t Detroit be a paradise, now that the racist whites are gone? /half sarc