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Returning to a topic I have been preoccupied with, a recent article in In These Times maps out a compelling narrative about Detroit's decline, and with impressive historical data, positions the story of the city's fall into darkness as something other than a familiar account of failed black politicians.
The right - and truthfully, a broad swath of the media - has been churning out stories tracing Detroit's sad fate to the corruption and misguided politics of Mayor Coleman Young, Detroit's first African American mayor. But in truth, Detroit's problems began long before Young took office in 1974. The origin of Detroit's harrowing slide can be traced to a steep decline in auto-industry jobs between the end of World War 2 and the 1967 riots that, for some, mark a turning point in Detroit's fate. Between 1947 and 1967 Detroit lost 130,000 auto jobs. This occurred even while America's automobile manufacturers were still investing, inspired by the broad national prosperity that characterized the post-war years. Between '47 and 1960, the big three auto companies built 25 new factories, but none of them in Detroit. Many things explain this. New technologies - the desire to build vast, automated, horizontal assembly plants, which offered improved efficiencies compared to the aging, multi-story plants in Detroit - drew the automakers to suburbs and farmland in Ohio, Indiana and Canada. And auto executives also moved work to the union-free South.
By 1961, the city already had its first budget deficit. And the slide accelerated, as the relocation of manufacturing jobs drew workers to suburban plants, and inner-city neighborhoods, located alongside shuttered plants, saw houses abandoned and businesses close. Home buyers were often unable to secure mortgages to purchase homes in struggling neighborhoods, because the loans were seen as too risky. A self-reinforcing cycle was established: struggling neighborhoods were denied the one thing that could arrest their decline, new home owners. The city was unable to afford clearing abandoned homes, and Detroit's reputation as a vast urban ghost town grew.
Not all workers could follow the jobs. The Fair Housing Act wasn't passed until 1968, and by then, greater Detroit's racial makeup was already mapped out - with sprawling white suburbs and the overwhelmingly African American central city. And the stage was set for the story the right now likes to tell, about a hopelessly destitute black city, betrayed by African American leaders.
But this isn't the only way race is portrayed in the media's handling of Detroit's fiscal crisis. Blacks may have destroyed one of America's great cities, but white artists and chefs and IT entrepreneurs are moving in to begin the revival. Story after story feature feisty young men and women, creative types who see Detroit as their canvas. And gallery by gallery, cafe by cafe, they'll bring the city back. And don't forget the urban farmers, poised to put 4,700 of Detroit's 80,000 unemployed workers back on the job. Or stories focus on investors, like Quicken Loans' chairman Dan Gilbert, ready to pour thousands of his millions into creating a tech sector in the Motor City. Over and over again, as photos accompanying these stories suggest, young white professionals - the thing Detroit needs more than anything - are moving in. Look at the picture at the top of this post, which came from a New York Times piece on Detroit's path back. With people like these - so hip, so accomplished, eager to sip wine at roof top parties - can recovery be far behind?
But as much as the idea that black politicians killed Detroit is a fantasy, so is the idea that these modest efforts can reverse the city's decline. Setting aside the media's disturbing racial positioning of the story, a few cafes, a handful of tiny web start-ups, can't save Detroit. The average family in the city has a household income below the poverty line. The city is staggering under a vast debt, which, like many American cities, includes an enormous unfunded pension obligation. The city's dire finances makes delivering public services - like razing abandoned buildings, supplying adequate police protection and public education, building a 21st century transit system - impossible. And this is the stark truth that this black and white media narrative refuses to focus on: Detroit's problems require public intervention, government-led solutions. Bakeries and artist studios can't do the job.
