The Other Detroit

Wunderkammer Magazine recently commissioned me to write a piece on Detroit for their Politics and Society section. I took the opportunity to write about a side of the city that gets significantly less attention in the popular media—the “other” Detroit, if you will. It ended up being a bit too long to post here in its entirety, but it’s worth a read nonetheless.

An excerpt:

I take Interstate 96 eastbound from Ann Arbor. It’s the first warm day of 2008, and the combination of a bright sun and light breeze makes for a beautiful spring afternoon. After 35 miles of Midwestern nothing, I reach the city limits of Detroit. Small, decrepit housing lines the edges of the Southfield Freeway as I approach the exit for North Rosedale, a neighborhood located on the northwest side of the city. As I pull into the local Community House and park—the only privately owned park in the city—the smell of freshly cut grass is almost intrusive. A youth softball game is underway, and parents lounge in folding chairs. Along the edges of the park, residents—predominantly African-Americans—walk their dogs by large, single-family English Tudors. Almost without exception, each two-story house on each tree-lined street adorns a perfectly manicured lawn and a large wooden front door. It’s a middle-class oasis. A distinctly suburban feel, in fact. But it’s not the suburbs. It’s Detroit.

[...]

North Rosedale Park is the anti-slum. A middle-class majority remained after racial turnover, separating North Rosedale from countless other urban neighborhoods throughout the country. Homes are large, and social cohesion throughout the neighborhood is strong. Residents are tremendously proud of their neighborhood, and perhaps more importantly, committed to the city they call home.

[...]

No story or investigative report has captured this side of Detroit, the North Rosedale side. It’s not the bombed out train station, nor is it the urban prairie. It’s not the empty factory, nor is it the large housing project. It’s not the homeless man pushing his cart down a desolate downtown, nor is it the young woman waiting in line for a welfare check.

No, it’s the daily struggle of the urban middle class, the plight of a forgotten population. It’s the neighborhood where Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm lived briefly before ultimately moving to the suburbs. It’s half a mile from where Detroit historian Thomas Sugrue grew up, a neighborhood his parents hoped to one day “be wealthy enough” to call home. It’s the tree-lined streets, the well-maintained community park. It’s the colorful gardens and golden retrievers. It’s the uneasy, yet unwavering middle class in an otherwise unsettling and unsure urban abyss.

It’s the other Detroit.

Special thanks to my editor, Dara Lind, for her encouraging comments and thoughtful critiques.

There’s No Such Thing as Stupid People

But there are certainly stupid, asinine attempts at “investigative” reporting:

A few factual corrections:

“Detroit sucks, but why? Well to start, it’s no secret that Detroit is run entirely by Leftists. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a liberal. It is the city of entitlement programs.”

Yeah, and every mayor of Boston and Chicago has been a Democrat since 1930 and 1931, respectively. But Boston has the 8^th highest housing prices in the nation, and Chicago is currently the 3^rd most populous American city. Both Boston and Chicago have enjoyed Democratic dominance far longer than Detroit, yet continue to be prosper at the aggregate level. The obvious rebuttal to Crowder’s report is the classic “correlation does not mean causation” statement, but that would imply Crowder actually illustrated a correlation between, well, anything.

“How did it get this way? It all started with Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh in 1961.”

Yeah, well, no. Crowder is about 30 years late in his pseudo-historical analysis, as the well-documented decline of Detroit began with the major auto manufacturers—not the auto unions—in the 1930s and 40s. Federal highway construction as a military mobilization tool aided industrial decentralization and the racially restrictive postwar housing boom, and, you guessed it, Detroit’s affluent residents fled en masse. Unfounded fear of a growing murder rate combined with racial resentment over school desegregation measures and the Detroit metro region morphed into a chocolate city with vanilla suburbs by the late 1970s. This meticulously documented social and economic change—the actual root of the city’s decline—came well before contemporary UAW bargaining agreements, the housing crisis, or even Kwame Kilpatrick’s indiscretions.

To suggest that Detroit somehow represents the archetype of Democratic leadership is either grossly dishonest or insanely stupid. A cursory view of any map of home foreclosures, population loss, or median household income decline illustrates a clear geographic pattern: The deindustrialized Rust Belt, northern Florida and much of California have been the hardest hit by our most recent recession. The states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Florida and California are all in serious trouble, and their respective histories and contemporary troubles run much deeper than simple party politics.

Oh, and that scene at the end? The one of the Michigan Central Depot, a bombed out former train station? That building is actually owned by a billionaire trucking tycoon, and closed down in the 80s during the Reagan era of, er, prosperity. It has nothing to do with auto bailouts, or Democratic politicians, or teacher’s unions. If anything, it represents the effects of economic excess and corporate neglect.

Like many journalists before him, Crowder is a lazy opportunist. I understand his schtick—the cutesy, hip young conservative that serves up clever quips against liberal politics. But if this simplistic garbage is any indication of the relative intellect of young conservatives, well, their "movement" leaves a lot to be desired.

The 40-Year Fall of the Black Middle Class

(Administrator's Note: The following piece was written by SSL Guest Contributor Steven Brown, an incoming graduate student in Harvard's department of sociology. He can be reached at ksbrown2@gmail.com)

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the mid-60s, large numbers of African-Americans began working for manufacturers like GM and Ford – jobs that did not require college education, but still paid strong living wages. Because of these companies, with their ever-growing workforce and strong unions, the black middle class of the day grew rapidly.

But now, forty years later, that same demographic segment is struggling, according to a piece published in the New York Times magazine in late June – "G.M., Detroit, and the Fall of the Black Middle Class". The article follows one man facing potential layoffs from a G.M. plant closing, highlighting him as representative of the large black middle class supported by Detroit car manufacturers. Marvin Powell is almost 40, married with two kids, with a mortgage, and making about $50,000 a year. He started working for G.M. at age 26, a few years after dropping out of college.

Two things strike me about this article. The first is the claim that Mr. Powell and others like him are middle class, and the second is the argument that the faltering auto industry is causing the black middle class to suffer. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that black auto workers were not at the forefront of upwardly mobile African-Americans. What I am saying is that what defined middle class a generation ago doesn’t hold up so well now.

Back then, earning a living wage and being able to mortgage a home of your own was a pretty reliable way of measuring middle class. Nowadays, being part of the middle class seems to be more about education and occupational prestige than about income. (Think about popular notions of white-collar vs. blue-collar.) Keeping in mind those who discuss the importance of wealth, being middle class today seems more about creating opportunities and weathering storms than about how much you take home every month. Just last year, then-Senator Obama was getting large amounts of press over his inability to court the “white, working-class voter.” A Pew Report described “white, working-class” as those without college degrees, making under $50,000 a year, and were often popularized in the media as living as union-members living and working in the Rust Belt and Texas. In other words, if Marvin Powell were white, he’d be working class. But since he’s black, he’s middle class.

To show my hand, I’ve long suspected the idea that there were different popular and empirical standards for what constitutes a “black” versus a “white” or mainstream middle class. There are indeed grounds for differentiation, like the fact that blacks were only very recently integrated into the middle rungs of the American workforce in any meaningful way. Also, the median household income for blacks in 2000 was only $29,530, compared to a national median of $46,000. By that standard, the auto worker’s salary looks quite substantial. But this differentiation is problematic. Different race-based standards under the umbrella of “middle class” obscure the distance between relatively well off blacks and non-blacks. To use a crude metaphor, if most of the people in your neighborhood are 5 feet tall, just because you’re 5’6”doesn’t mean that you’re actually tall. You’re not that short, but you’re not that tall either.

I mentioned earlier that a generation ago, being a unionized auto-worker would make you middle class, but not anymore. What changed? The explosion of the service economy (along with service economy wages) that required more sophisticated skills and higher levels of education is one reason. The simultaneous fall of manufacturing during the 70s and 80s is another. Think about how difficult it would be to transition to a non-industrial job after 20-years on a factory floor without a bachelor’s degree or technical certificate – a hard task made harder if you happen to be a black man looking for a job.

In addition to employment trends, social scientists developed more sophisicated ways of understanding class mobilty and security, putting more emphasis on education and considering wealth and assets, “last hired, first fired,” and continued job discrimination (not to mention numerous residence-based issues). A revisionist take by today’s methods of measuring class could show that black auto workers were never securely middle class. My guess is that black workers were disproportionately hit when foreign competition ate into the market share and caused layoffs. I would also assume that black workers would have a harder time moving if one plant closed in Flint and another opened in Mississippi.

Furthermore, the “cost” of being middle-class has also risen substantially. The cost of owning and buying a home, the cost of re-locating for work (as many in the service sector do), and the costs of sending children to school have all gone up quite a bit. And then there are the issues that affect the black middle class disproportionately, like owning homes in areas where values rise slowly, if not eventually decline.

My argument is not that the current failures of the auto industry are causing “the fall” of better-off black folks, but that the grounds have been shifting underneath their feet for decades. This segment of the black middle class has been falling for years, first out of the middle class, and now possibly and tragically out of their way of life.

Sometimes, Even the Players Have to Watch From the Sidelines.

Legendary Detroit Tiger Alan Trammell made a career playing baseball at Old Tiger Stadium. But as the stadium’s demolition reached a close last week, the legendary player turned casual spectator, standing by as the stands came crashing down and the field turned to rubble.

There’s something profoundly touching about this photo. Something tragically beautiful about a man peering through the fences, saying goodbye to the structure that once defined his life. Something that is almost too moving for words. Something deeply depressing, yet surprisingly inspiring. Something debilitating, yet invigorating.

A lot of “de-” words epitomize Rust Belt decay: depopulation, decentralization, deindustrialization. Common images include abandoned homes, vacant land, and the jobless. When most of us think of cities like Detroit, we imagine an urban abyss. When many of us envision the post-industrial Midwest, we picture an urban wasteland.

Yet, in a very real sense, this photo captures urban decline better than any other image in the popular imagination could. As policymakers debate urban “shrinkage,” this is the image we need to consider. This is the scene we need to recall as our civic leaders use an army of bulldozers to plow through under-populated urban neighborhoods. This is the moment we need to remember when we debate what to do in America’s cities. This moment, this player turned spectator, captures the gravity and magnitude of urban decline. This photo sets the tone for our discussions, and study, of urban America.

The face of urban decline isn’t really a face. No, it’s an old ball player, watching his former stadium crumble to pieces. The contradictions of this photo—a former star peering through a fence, a historical landmark turned to rubble, a touching moment emerging from decay—define urban decline. The rise and fall of an American city, captured in one brief, fleeting moment. A picture almost too moving for words.

Urban..."Shrinkage?"

The aptly titled website “100 Abandoned Houses” accurately assesses one of Detroit’s most pressing problems. The current foreclosure crisis has exacerbated a preexisting, citywide concern, and housing vacancies are rampant. With painfully vivid photos, “100 Abandoned Houses” illustrates the dramatic effect this crisis has had on Detroit’s housing stock.

A similar scenario is occurring across the country. But Michigan’s 12.6% unemployment rate certainly isn’t doing the Great Lakes State any favors. I’ve been upfront with my feelings about Detroit, so it should come as no surprise that I find these developments deeply depressing.

This housing problem in Michigan has spawned two very different reactions. The first follows a resident-led, community empowerment approach. The Detroit Free Press recently profiled a handful of Detroit residents that have bought foreclosed homes in their own neighborhoods. These individuals, including North Rosedale Park resident Marsha Bruhn, poured tens of thousands of dollars into these homes, fixing them up and flipping them for a modest profit. These residents care about their communities, and are doing their best to help in the face of daunting challenges.

The second approach is—I kid you not—referred to as urban “shrinkage.” Yes, “shrinkage.” I couldn’t make this up even if I tried. This urban policy of “planned shrinkage” has been around for a while, but has only recently gained widespread support. Essentially, the policy wipes out entire city blocks and replaces homes with green space. The city is able to counter decline by “shrinking” the city’s land mass. Decrepit housing blighting your city? Just bulldoze them and alter your municipal borders!

Flint, Michigan has heeded the call for shrinkage, and city officials are actively pursuing the policy to resist the recession’s onslaught. The New York Times ran a piece on their efforts a few weeks ago, quoting government officials who chose the policy as “a last resort.” A drastic measure was in order, they claimed. Tough decisions lie ahead, they lamented. Which neighborhoods will be “shrunk,” and which will remain? “It will be a delicate process to decide which to favor,” one city official acknowledged. Delicate…well, that’s one way to put it.

Flint’s proposed urban policy sounds a lot like Harvard economist Edward Glaeser’s disposition to urban decline. Glaeser suggests that economic vitality in urban neighborhoods requires housing that will continuously decay and be rebuilt. Detroit, by contrast, contains durable housing—housing that is built to last for decades. Durable housing decays much slower, and as such, impedes a city from the natural process of growth and rebuilding. If this argument sounds confusing, well, it’s because it is: Glaeser claims that urban vitality requires continuous, and cyclical decay. Sounds a bit contradictory to me. And it also seems to ignore that there are actual people living in these houses. You know, actual people that benefit from a stable—not fluid—housing market.

I’m no housing economist—which is part of the reason why I recognize the, shall we say, human aspect of housing development. And this is not exactly one of Glaeser’s strong points. His infamous article, “Urban Decline and Durable Housing,” originally carried the subtitle “Why Does Anyone Still Live in Detroit?” This title is worse than insensitive. It’s more than just a little offensive. This kind of logic—the same logic of “shrinkage”—effectively dismisses generations of history and humanity that defines the very pulse of urban centers. Not to mention the pressing questions: Which neighborhoods will be demolished, and who will make these decisions?

This type of urban “development” is not without historical precedence. Detroit once had a vibrant Black Belt, complete with locally owned shops and businesses. When the federal government needed to demolish a few neighborhoods to make way for an interstate highway, guess which neighborhoods were bulldozed? Well, it was…uh…a delicate process to decide which neighborhoods would stay, and which would cease to exist. Sure, marginalized neighborhoods with the weakest political power were quickly bulldozed, but that doesn’t mean the process wasn’t handled with care.

With 60,000 housing vacancies in Detroit alone, we can’t afford to simply bulldoze away decline, attempting to forget it was ever there in the first place. For Michigan, as well as the rest of the country, the question is this: Do we want to empower and revitalize our urban neighborhoods, or do we want to shrink and decimate them?

I Put On For My City

As a graduate student, my scholarly “career” is largely based on pointing out everything that’s wrong with the world. I dissect every little intricacy of U.S. public policy, deride American culture for its excesses, and lambast other scholars for “unconvincing” arguments. Rarely do I get an opportunity to point out what’s good in the world, which social policies work, and which scholars impress me.

Two recent articles in the Detroit Free Press have given me a reason to rejoice in the prospects of positive civic engagement—that is, something good to write about. On April 15th of this year, the Free Press ran an article on Bryan Barnhill, a Detroit native and recent Harvard graduate. Upon graduation with a degree in government, Bryan had numerous job offers throughout the East Coast. Nevertheless, he was committed to return home to Detroit. Quoted in the Free Press, he said

"I was inundated with the negative press going on in Detroit, and I was also being inspired by the political and social transformation that was happening in our country with the election of Barack Obama. I'm not prepared to take flight and leave Detroit, because where there is crisis, there is opportunity [emphasis added].”

Yet, Bryan couldn’t find a job anywhere in the city. Attempts to contact city agencies specializing in urban planning, real estate, and politics all failed. Here is a young man with dedication, drive, and commitment, unable to find a job in a city that needs his knowledge and expertise most.

This past Friday’s Free Press ran a follow-up on the newly employed young man. After the original article ran last month, Bryan received countless job offers and even a few pleas to run for City Council. Today, Bryan begins work at Southwest Solutions, a non-profit organization focusing on psychiatric counseling to mentally ill people in conjunction with community organizing and real estate development. Bryan’s specific duties include housing and real estate programs, and he is excited about his new job. I have to say, I’m excited too.

Bryan represents everything that is courageous about Detroit, everything that is valued at Harvard, and everything that we as a nation expect from our young people. This is the kind of non-tangible, non-measurable action we need, beyond bricks and mortar housing and resources. His commitment to his city—a city in need—is unparalleled and commendable. I, for one, wish him all the success in the world.

We need more Bryan Barnhills in Detroit. Hell, we need more Bryan Barnhills everywhere.

I Spoke Too Soon: Athletes and Civic Engagement

Well, it looks like I might have been a little premature in my prognosis from last night's post.

My friend Shilpin alerted me to this article in yesterday's Detroit Free Press discussing Larry Foote's trade to the Detroit Lions. Foote, a Detroit native and former star linebacker for the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), discussed his desire to make the Lions a winning franchise and his excitement to return home to Detroit. Foote expressed unparalleled optimism--and committment--to the city:

“Detroit is on the up-and-up,” Foote said. “We’re starting fresh with the football team. We’ve got a new mayor. We can’t do nothing but go up, to be honest.

“But people have got to be willing to roll up their sleeves and get to the root of it and turn things around, and I’m definitely one that’s on the positive side of that. I’m excited. Just off the field, just doing stuff in the community and reaching these young kids and getting this place turned around.”

Don't get me wrong; I'm still pretty skeptical about the role of sports stadiums in urban revitalization efforts. And I'm also pretty worried about the low voter turnout in the mayoral election. But Foote's comments signal a shift in our thinking about sports, politics, and civic engagement. The business of sports hasn't done much for ailing cities, but maybe athletes can. Let's see if Foote makes good on his word, and maybe others will follow suit.

So Much for Civic Engagement

NBA Hall of Famer Dave Bing won Detroit's mayoral election last night. With former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's arrest in August and the auto industry bailouts fresh in our collective memory, this is certainly a welcomed piece of good news.

Or is it?

Bing, who made a cameo in one of my earlier posts, will finish out Kilpatrick's term, ending on December 31st of this year. There's a few points of interest in this story. First of all, Bing is a former businessman, and his election rehashes old conversations about the idea of business leadership as viable political experience. Bing also won in a pretty tight fashion - 52% to 48% - and maybe there's a story there about split constituencies, or conflicting political alliances. But the telling storyline here is the voter turnout: 15%. Fifteen per cent of registered voters actually voted.

Look, I recognize that voter turnout is typically low during special elections. Hell, Bing will barely be in office seven months before his term is up. And voter turnout for the 2005 Mayoral race was only about 33% - certainly not impressive.

Still, with Kilpatrick's national news-worthy scandal and the continued decline of the city, you'd think more people would be passionate about this election. This low civic engagement points to what some social scientists call the low "collective efficacy" of impoverished neighborhoods. Communities with low levels of collective efficacy are less cohesive, less socially organized, less likely to exhibit social control, less politically engaged, and more likely to concentrate violence and perpetuate existing poverty. Detroit, on the whole, certainly qualifies as one such community.

A dew days ago, ESPN columnist/reporter/pundit/all around brilliant analyst Jemele Hill wrote an extensive piece on Bing that's worth checking out. Hill wrote about Bing's NBA career, his relationship to Detroit after retirement from the NBA, and his vaguely articulated "platform" (Change the business climate. Reduce crime. Focus on education). This is certainly a compelling story for ESPN, but how good is it for Detroit?

It's tough to say what changes Bing will make; it's an understatement to say that his policy platform is a little on the light side. Will Bing's election fix Detroit? Probably not. But a good start might be to invigorate civic engagement and get Detroit residents excited about the democratic process. Because they certainly aren't excited now.

Study Abroad in Spain? Try Detroit

The Fall of 2006 was a pretty tumultuous time on the University of Michigan’s campus. Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm was facing (what seemed to be) a formidable challenge from Dick DeVos, and the campus was alive with discussion of the ballot initiative aimed at ending affirmative action.

Ann Arbor had always been a hotbed of sorts for student activism, from the Students for Democratic Society to more recent challenges of affirmative action. Unlike previous Supreme Court cases, in 2006 Ward Connerly and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative successfully lobbied to put Proposal 2 on the state ballot, legislation that would ban race-conscious admissions policies and hiring at public institutions.

I was on campus at the time, marginally active with campus events (I’ll let you guess which side of the debate I was on). In the end, the Proposal passed with a strong majority, and the University was forced to augment their admissions policy.

At the same time, a courageous, brilliant, and charismatic young activist named Rachael Tanner proposed a unique program for her final paper in her Urban and Community Studies course. Michigan had plenty of study abroad programs, even a program to send student to Washington, DC. But what about a partnership with a closer neighbor, like Detroit? What about a…Semester in Detroit?

Tanner proposed the project in our class, received feedback, and hit the ground running. Just this past year, the program sent its inaugural class to live, learn, work, and engage with Detroit. Students are taking classes and work part time for a local non-profit, all while living in the city’s cultural center.

The program, aptly titled Semester in Detroit, was recently featured in the Detroit Free Press. I think the possibilities for this program are limitless, and future research may want to closely analyze its impact. If the program is effective at raising awareness and making a tangible difference, maybe this is something we can, and should, replicate across the country.

Reframing "Detroit"

I can’t help but have a visceral reaction to this video.

I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s just something about Detroit that moves me. Let me repeat: Detroit moves me. I care about Detroit.

My broadly defined “research interests” include the study of urban poverty in America’s cities. To be fair, I’m more interested in integrated neighborhoods than slums, but the general idea is that I’m interested in cities, in suburbs, in places. These research interests will serve as the basis for my career as a sociologist. Naturally, these interests suggest that I should care about metropolitan inequality in the abstract, regardless of the city. But I don’t.

I don’t know exactly why Detroit holds such a special place in my heart, mind, and spirit. Maybe it was my undergraduate education at the University of Michigan. My studies of history and sociology certainly had a Detroit slant. Maybe it was my job in Detroit during the summer of 2006, working for a non-profit housing and community development organization. Maybe it was my trips to the Detroit Institute of Art or other cultural centers. Who knows, maybe it was my trips to Comerica Park for Tigers games. Whatever it is, Detroit matters to me. I believe in Detroit.

That said, there’s something about this video (and others of the same ilk) that’s slightly unsettling. When people speak of Detroit, often there’s a sense of pride in deprivation, a feeling of redemption in despair, and a connotation of dignity in decline. In this video, there’s almost a weird acceptance of Detroit’s present state, as if Detroit is special because of its decline, not in spite of it.

While I applaud Eminem’s intentions in this video, we need to change the rhetoric we use when we discuss Detroit. We can’t accept urban decline. We can’t be Detroit apologetics, trying to wash away the fact that this city’s population is dramatically declining as we emphasize Detroit’s vibrant and unique culture. We can’t jump on the Detroit-bashing bandwagon, either. We can’t write off Detroit as simply the natural result of a city dependent on a single industry. And it’s not that we have to “take the good with the bad,” acknowledging Detroit’s vast wasteland of vacant homes while we simultaneously laud the city’s perseverance. This approach isn’t proactive, nor does it address the fundamental problems this city faces.

No, we need to be critical Detroit supporters. We need target the city’s problems, collectively, and work to fix them. We need to reframe the issue of urban decline, at once harnessing the tremendous will of the city’s populace while we incorporate the support of distant suburban residents. Our framing of the issues requires that residents of Livonia realize they benefit from a vibrant Detroit just as much as residents of Corktown. We need to recognize our shared fate and common purpose in metropolitan America. We can’t turn our backs on Detroit. We can’t accept decline, nor can we simply wish it away.

Some may call me an urban idealist, but I like to think Detroit has a shot. Let’s try to convince the rest of America.