‘because the middle class is still very much there, they just moved to the suburbs’
That is the case for most urban areas. Where do you think the middle class in Detroit went? The same place as the middle class in Cleveland, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and NYC went, the suburbs. The problem is that a city can not be only a few very rich and a large amount of very poor. The tax and social structure simply does not work.
The death of most cities was the desegregation through busing of most of the major cities.
The plain fact is that middle class whites do not want their children sitting next to poor blacks. NEWS FLASH: Middle Class Blacks don’t want their children sitting next to poor blacks either.
When the Federal Government took away the right of self determination via the public schools through desegregation court orders, people decided to vote with their feet.
In doing so they turned formerly middle class inner city neighborhoods into lawless wastelands and exurban farms into tract houses and McMansions.
Until inner city governments provide unlimited numbers of educational options through unrestricted vouchers, middle class families will never move back into the cities.
Once again liberal policies destroy everything they touch.
“Where do you think the middle class in Detroit went? The same place as the middle class in Cleveland, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and NYC went, the suburbs. The problem is that a city can not be only a few very rich and a large amount of very poor. The tax and social structure simply does not work.”
I get what you are saying, but the fact is that this population shift is common to most all cities in the U.S., and only Detroit is suffering “Detroit-style consequences” as of yet. So, I can’t logically ascribe the blame for those consequences to the middle class moving to the suburbs. If that was the case, then every city would look like Detroit, but they do not.
There are other factors at play that made Detroit what it is today, and those factors just aren’t present if every urban area, no matter how much some FReepers seem to wish that they were.
There is still the need for an honest national conversation about race and the issues of the urban black underclass. Obama has set the chances for that back another 10 years, minimum.