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"It is only through the complex and interwoven histories of race, residence, and work in the postwar era that the state of today’s cities and their impoverished residents can be fully understood and confronted". When the Detroit-born sociologist-historian Thomas Sugrue echoed these words in his 1996 work The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, his words may not have necessarily been taken at face value. However, today, after the 2013 unprecedented declaration of bankruptcy in Detroit -- "the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history by debt" -- his words seemed to develop a new meaning as the spotlight fell on Detroit and its history.

Inequality has been rampant in many U.S. cities over the past few centuries, but perhaps none so surprising as in the City of Detroit, which was once considered to be the future stronghold of the American manufacturing industry. Inequality took root in Detroit gradually, in different forms, but it was not until the later part of the 20th Century that scholars began taking a closer look at what had caused the downfall of that city. The results were not surprising by any means: Inequality, which comes in a multitude of forms and fashions, has been hugely impactful in bringing Detroit and surrounding areas to new lows, both socially and economically.

History
Background In the early-to-mid 20th Century, there was a substantial African-American influx in Detroit. The Great Migration (1910-1930) and subsequent migration movements saw immense movements of Black Americans to Northern cities, notably Detroit.

Before World War I, Blacks were 1% of population of the slowly-growing city. The manufacturing industry was beginning to take hold on the area, and before long this tiny proportion would grow into a much larger number. “The demand for manufacturing products [in WWI] created an even larger demand for workers” in economically-developing parts of the nation.

In addition to this, Blacks migrating from the South desired better opportunities and felt that their chances of a good life would be better in up-and-coming cities, like Detroit. “The two major concerns of the migrants [were] housing and jobs," as these were the common roots of struggle in the Southern states for Black Americans . Rumors circulated Southern Black communities that Detroit would provide a remedy to both of those sources of trouble, and so the migrations grew in numbers. Although the city was still developing at the onset of the first migration waves, Detroit was well-known for its “unsurpassed economic opportunity” at the time, due to its reputation as a booming manufacturing hub in the early wartime years.

Between 1910 and 1930, a period deemed "the first Great Migration," the Detroit Black population skyrocketed from around 6,000 to 120,000. Still, however, due to the parallel influx of immigrants from overseas and other whites from the countryside, Blacks remained a mere 10% of population at the onset World War II. This number, like the initial 1%, would not stick. By 1960, Black Americans made up 25% of the city's population, and today they make up a statistic estimated to be over 80% of the population.

Initial Causes of Segregation These migrations, highlighted in the previous section, were known to have induced resentment among the white residents of the city. Developers seeking to build new white neighborhoods were only given financing by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to build these new developments if they agreed to construct walls dividing new white neighborhoods from the Black neighborhoods. “...The Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods…” This is a process known as redlining, and its effects were widespread and have lasted to this day. Redlining let FHA officials know which neighborhoods were suitable for Blacks and which for whites. This ultimately led to skyrocketing rates of segregation throughout the Detroit Metro Area.

According to one FHA manual: “incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities”. While unsubstantiated by any evidence or fact, the FHA claimed that property values of white homes would decrease if Blacks were allowed to purchase homes in those neighborhoods. The FHA manual went on to instruct agency employees not to back mortgages in Black neighborhoods.

In addition, the “Federal Home Loan Bank Board sponsored the development of residential security maps that made most minority neighborhoods off-limits for lending”. Under the provisions of the FHLBB was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), which was responsible for real estate appraisals nationwide. The HOLC was responsible for developing residential security maps “to stabilize the housing market” post-Depression Their appraisals and maps were used locally to determine whether real estate investments were ‘safe’ or ‘hazardous.' A closer look at their appraisals, however, indicates clear intention to segregate on the basis of race One neighborhood was characterized as being comprised of “undesirables,” more specifically “aliens and negroes”.

When car companies moved their factories and offices to suburbs, Blacks had trouble relocating there due to extensive suburban FHA redlining. Detroit became known as the “most segregated metro area in the country, with African Americans confined to narrow sections of the city and much of the suburbs a no-go zone” Past Issues In summary, a variety of historical issues led to the changing of Detroit's reputation as America's most promising city to perhaps America's most segregated. The Federal Housing Administration's redlining policies, in combination with the movement of car company HQs to suburbs that barred Black Americans from residence (i.e., Ford), led to levels of segregation that seemed almost impossible north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Unemployment in the inner-city was rampant as jobs fled to the suburbs, and the quality of city institutions like schools and other public resources declined as an expected side effect. It is important, in addition, not to forget the prominence of racial biases among Detroit's whites that led to these factors, which certainly did not help the already-harmful cause. What was to come of Detroit's previously fantastic reputation?

Timeless Trends in Inequality
Geographic Segregation Detroit Metro Area suburbs, notably Dearborn, were not free of segregation’s wide influence. Ford’s HQ was in Dearborn, and many jobs opened up there in the early and middle 20th Century. However, one infamous Dearborn mayor, Orville Hubbard, who was in office for more than 35 years (1942-1978), was open about his rather positive views on segregation. He called mixed-racial children the spawn of a “mongrel race” and worked to make sure white Dearborn remained that way. “Hubbard's motto while in office was “Keep Dearborn clean,” which many believe actually veiled the the truer meaning: Keep Dearborn white". The slogan remains on police cars in Dearborn”. Hubbard was considered “the most outspoken segregationist north of the Mason-Dixon line” Blacks who could afford suburban lifestyles were rarely given the opportunity to reside in suburbs. “[Blacks] weren’t welcome in Dearborn, so they began settling in [...] Inkster”. For all intents and purposes, Dearborn -- the most convenient location to live if you worked for Ford -- was “closed to black residence”. In 1983, 5 years after Hubbard left office, the Black population of Dearborn sat at a minuscule 83, of the 92,000 total residents there.

Economic Inequality When “white flight” began in the mid-1900s, Detroit’s tax base decreased substantially due to the loss of many wealthy whites into the growing suburbs. As a result, school funding decreased, job opportunities decreased, and public works funding decreased. Beyond the scope of these effects, it is crucial to note that, when overall tax bases decrease, city taxes increase to compensate for the losses. In an almost cruel twist of irony, the Blacks who were virtually forced to remain in the City of Detroit and surrounding areas had to pay greater taxes to continue fueling the dwindling tax base of the metropolitan area as a whole.

The effects of white flight are too numerous to count, but the most prominent takeaway from the process was that a population of mainly working-class Blacks were left to fend for themselves, and redlining prevented them from leaving the city limits (for the most part).With jobs fleeing the city for the wealthier suburbs, the Detroit Area became more and more hopeless for Black Americans seeking work.

The question that remains is: Why did white flight occur in the first place? Most agree on a few general justifications for the process: “Land was plentiful in the suburbs, housing and schools were newly built, and because they wanted to get away from their black neighbors and buy homes in the racially segregated suburbs”. Evidently, however, white flight goes beyond its detrimental effects within the realm of segregation; in fact, Black residents of Detroit were greatly harmed by the waves of movement of whites to the suburbs. Educational Inequality Michigan's percentage of black students attending highly segregated schools is the second highest in the nation. An overwhelming 40% of the state's black students attend schools in which at least 90% of that school's student body is black. Research has proven that these segregated schools have a direct correlation with low achievement and students are much more likely to not reach the state standards on math and science proficiency. Out of the 240 most highly segregated schools in Michigan, 149 of them are located in Detroit, the city’s population is 79% black.

It is clear that, unlike the real, working world, schools in the Detroit metro area are notoriously the antithesis of diverse. While school integration (via busing, etc.) seems feasible at first glance, the demographics themselves are too defined by segregation for legitimate progress to take place. “Detroit Public Schools (DPS) board passed a plan in 1970 to integrate the de facto segregated schools in the city by developing districting plans that would bus White students into schools with larger Black populations.” The State of Michigan intervened and ordered Detroit Public Schools to stop the integration plan, but the District Court in Detroit later sided with DPS and ordered desegregation. After a several-year long debate, the Supreme Court ruled in Milliken v. Bradley that “District Courts cannot redraw the lines of integrated school systems to achieve racial balance,” so long as localized segregation was not intentional or planned. This ruling took a toll on the Black American community as a whole, as it seemed to imply that even the Supreme Court -- the most 'objective' branch of government -- was not on their side. Detroit's public schools remain heavily segregated to this day, and future efforts to integrate the school systems of the city had to find loopholes around the Milliken v. Bradley ruling.

Civil Rights Movements
There is a lengthy history of movements combating inequality in the Detroit Area, some of which predated the more widely-known Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

In 1937, women working at Detroit’s Woolworth’s -- a notable retail store, deemed “the Walmart of its day” -- went on strike, modeling their movement after the General Motors sit-down campaign in Flint that same year. On February 27, 1937, women throughout Detroit’s Woolworth’s manufacturing facility protested low wages and collectively stopped working, demanding better treatment and more livable wages from company executives. The sit-down lasted a full week, with women bringing in mattresses and food supplies to allow them to continue occupying Woolworth’s locations in the Detroit area. Eventually, the company made the necessary concessions in collaboration with workers’ unions, an unprecedented victory for female workers in the U.S.

On June 20, 1943, a substantial and particularly brutal race riot broke out in the streets of Detroit, concerning the treatment of Black migrants moving from the Southern states to find work in the State of Michigan. Black Americans living in Detroit experienced police brutality on account of their race as well as challenges with regard to their living conditions, including unparalleled shortages in housing for poor Blacks. Just a year prior, white immigrants living in Detroit clashed with Black Americans attempting to move into a newly-constructed housing project in a mainly-Polish neighborhood within the city. The 1943 Detroit Race Riot was not planned by any means, but it undoubtedly escalated into a citywide demonstration when Blacks and whites clashed after a small fight broke out in one neighborhood of Detroit. The riots led to violence throughout the city, causing stores to be looted and ultimately a handful of deaths after then-president FDR gave the thumbs-up for 6,000 troops to intervene in the conflict. While the 1943 Race Riot did little in terms of causing the city or the state to make concessions for struggling Black Americans, it certainly indicated to the rest of the nation that World War II was not a sudden unifying force throughout the nation, as some perceived it to be. In 1948, the NAACP of Detroit -- considered “the largest Branch of the NAACP since its inception” -- helped push for the McGhee v. Sipes ruling in the Supreme Court. In essence, what had caused the case in the first place was the efforts of several whites to push a particular Black family (the McGhees) out of a predominantly-white neighborhood of Detroit based on “restrictive covenants” barring Blacks from living in what was considered a Caucasian-designated part of the city. Up to this point, there was a documented restriction in the property deeds of certain parts of Detroit (among other cities in the Midwest) stating: “This property shall not be used or occupied by any person or persons except those of the Caucasian race”. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall represented the McGhees as an attorney on behalf of the NAACP (he was also an active member of the organization), and the NAACP additionally hired sociologist Mel Tumen to testify “that racial categories were not scientific” in court. Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the McGhees, concluding that “no state or federal court could enforce” restrictive covenants. This was not only a victory for the NAACP but the Black American movement in Detroit as well.

A common misconception is that Dr. Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech was first delivered in Washington D.C. on August 28 1963. When in fact, he delivered this famous speech two months prior in Cobo Hall, located in Detroit Michigan. On June 23rd 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King led the Detroit Walk to Freedom organized by the the Detroit Council on Human Rights (DCHR). This was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Detroit Riots in 1943 in which 34 people were killed, the majority of whom were African American. The march was to be a peaceful protest, in which 125,000 people participated in holding signs demanding racial equality, and over 15,000 people spectated from sidewalks, rooftops and windows. Participants of the rally moved in almost complete silence. This was the largest civil rights display in the nation's history, and was described by Dr. Martin Luther King as “one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America." One of the most powerful aspects of the march was that not only regular everyday citizens participated, representatives from organized labor, clergymen, as well as state and local government officials joined the march. The march began at a twenty one block staging area located at Adelaide Street. The route itself was down Woodward avenue down to Jefferson Avenue, eventually ending at Cobo Hall in which 25,000 people filled the building to its capacity. This was when Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his first rendition of the “I Have a Dream” speech. The march raised over $100,000 towards the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was the civil rights organization Dr. Martin Luther King lead.

Persisting/Current Issue: Arab-American Muslims
While the focus of the media in recent times has been on the effects of inequality and its not-so-distant cousin segregation on Black Detroiters, minimal attention has been paid to other racial and ethnic divisons.

In the city of Dearborn, for instance, there is a notably large Muslim population, comprised mainly of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East. The migration of Arabs to this region is not a new development, contrary to popular belief; in fact, the process began in the mid-1900s and continued throughout the rest of the century into the present day. Arab-Americans in Dearborn have faced all sorts of social barriers, as local officials and employers have been vocal about the onset of Sharia law in the area. Politicians, especially on the right-wing of the political spectrum, have insisted that Arab-Americans in Dearborn are working to institute Muslim religious code in local establishments; although this myth has been disproven, this "pet theory about Dearborn" continues to spread via the Internet, and occasionally through the mouths of Presidential hopefuls like Bobby Jindal. Some have even gone so far as to equate "today's Muslims [with] yesterday's Nazis". In 1985, the mayor of Dearborn "distributed campaign pamphlets referencing the city’s 'Arab problem'".

In an interesting twist, it is not only the white residents of Dearborn that have been vocal about their desire to keep Dearborn out of Islam's supposed clutches, but Black Americans as well. "Concentrations of Arab and black residents in Southeast Michigan are segregated by geographical frontiers," as the two groups tend to avoid living within the same neighborhoods. Arab-Americans tend to hire one another in their own respective communities, and vice versa. Estimates also show that "a quarter of violent crime in Detroit happen within 500 feet of gas stations," many of which are owned by Lebanese-Americans residing in the area. While this, of course, could be purely coincidental, the reality is that evidence would point in the opposite direction: clashes between Black communities and Arab communities is documented and legitimate.

In terms of economic inequality, the Arab-American poverty rate in some parts of Dearborn is through the roof. "In some areas [of Yemeni-dominant southern Dearborn], poverty rates rival those of Detroit, and four out of 10 children live in households with incomes at or below poverty," demonstrating that Arab-Americans struggle greatly with finding affordable housing and employment. Business owners often opt not to hire Arabs due to their lack of experience in certain fields or even for political reasons (i.e, the widespread Sharia Law myth). Many employers fear hiring Muslims due to rumors of connections with radical Islamic groups. Dearborn's schools, especially in areas dominated by Arab populations, are poorly-funded and struggle to push children through high school. While there is no singular reason for these tendencies, the reality is that the segregation of Arab-Americans into neighborhoods essentially free of wealthy Americans has lowered the tax base (as it did to Black Americans in Detroit in the past). With poor schooling, the poverty of Dearborn's Muslims becomes cyclical in nature; Dearborn's Arab-American inhabitants continue to "earn little in comparison to the general population". There is no doubt that there were once legitimate reasons for the inequality: few residents knew English or were well-educated. But the fact that "a lot of the kids [in Dearborn] speak English as a second language" to this day may mean that something must change, whether it is educational in nature or economic, or more likely -- both.

Current Efforts to Combat Inequality
While the City of Detroit is widely panned for its minimal progress on combating inequality, there have certainly been improvements over the past several years.

In 2016, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan “asked the lawmakers to create a Detroit Education Commission that would determine where any new public schools could open,” due to the fact that these decisions have been made rashly over the past few decades. One news source stated that “charter schools … [are] cannibalizing more desirable areas, and weakening the public schools” in the Metro Detroit Area. Mayor Duggan, and other city politicians, have realized this trend and are working to make sure that the newly-opened public schools are being constructed in areas that truly need a public school, as opposed to neighborhoods that already rely heavily on charter schools.

In addition, Federal agencies have worked to provide Detroit Area schools with grants to help take the burden off of the city. The Detroit Public School system, which has long struggled with high drop-out rates and notable student underperformance relative to national scores, will utilize the Federal grant money for a variety of reasons, including giving students more personal attention (through class size downsizing) and “partner[ing] with businesses in the community for mentoring and internships”. Ideally, these grants will put Detroit Public Schools back on their feet in the near future.

Mayor Duggan has also worked to improve the mass transit system in Detroit, which in years past has been so poorly-operated that residents of the city simply cannot find a way to potential employers. Not only did a 3+ mile streetcar open in May 2017, but the city bus system has improved dramatically due to the restructuring of the city’s once-decrepit Department of Transportation. To combat brutal bus reliability rates and the dangers of public transportation in the city, the city government “bought new buses, hired additional drivers, worked with the police department to create a new transit unit, and installed interior and exterior cameras on all buses”. These improvements have led to a turnaround in ridership, and ideally residents will be able to better access sources of employment not directly in their neighborhood.

As recently as March 2018, “the City announced a plan to create a fund that will extend and preserve ‘affordable’ housing to 10,000 units that have low-income requirements, and to built [sic] 2,000 more”. Mayor Duggan has worked with his own colleagues in the city government as well as other cities across the nation to develop a plan allowing for low-income residents to continue living and working in Detroit. Ideally, this will reduce homeless and it will keep young people off of the streets, as public housing is crucial to combat issues like street violence and high unemployment rates.