Detroit: Deadly No.2

"You've got a vast city of working people who no longer have insecure lives, people with high school and less than high school degrees who can earn enough to buy a house, a car, a boat, and sent their kids to Wayne State University."
"What happened in Detroit is not particularly distinct. Most Midwest cities had white flight and segregation. But Detroit had it more intensely. Most cities had deindustrialization. Detroit had it more intensely."
"It was the Silicon Valley of America. It was home to the most innovative, cutting-edge dominant industry in the world. The money there at that point was just staggering."
Kevin Boyle, history professor, Northwestern University

Detroit, America's leading industrial city, an vital bulwark after the First World War, and the rise of the automobile industry. Thousands of poor blacks seeking employment migrated from the Southern United States for assembly line jobs, and to eventually become part of the middle class. A separate, segregated, avoided middle class comprised of proud, hard-working blacks who made a life for themselves and their families.

That was then. In 1950 Detroit had a population of 1.8-million, the country's fifth-largest in population. And then the industry began to drain itself out of the inner city core, building offices in the suburbs and the white managers followed. Soon enough the burgeoning and excellence-sensitive Japanese auto industry made its assertive appearance jostling aside the preeminence of U.S.-built cars. The quality-control, performance and superior engineering of imports had its impact.

Back then, Detroit had an outstanding, if not quite impressive reputation as the murder capital of the U.S., vying with Chicago for title. And now that its population has been halved by a mass migration primarily of whites, leaving over 80% of Detroit in black home ownership, it is Flint, Michigan that takes the number one spot for murder, a city even poorer than Detroit, which holds firmly onto the number two spot in the country.

The black migration into Detroit helped bring prosperity to the city. But the economics wasn't everything, after all; the whites felt compelled to leave for whiter pastures any time the integrity of their communities was disrupted by the sudden appearance of the first black family aspiring to live in nice neighbourhoods of nice homes so their children could attend schools with better academic records and in their turn aspire to the American Dream.

There was in existence a social bankruptcy reflected by the fact that there were two conflicting solitudes, neither trusting the other, each fearing the other, and each perpetrating atrocities one on the other, committing their communities firmly to the idea that separate is far, far better. Black culture was separate and apart from white culture, and it was that way deliberately.

"The neighbourhood is so different -- the street lights go off, there's more violence and gunfire, the elementary school I went to is closed and boarded up. I remember as a child winning the 'beautiful block' awards ... just to see the decay is something that bothers me."
Sareta Cheathem, Detroit resident

And now, famously, Detroit is financially bankrupt. "I think it (the fiscal disaster) was inevitable because the politicians in Detroit were always knocking the can forward, not confronting the issues, buying off public employees by increasing their pensions", offered a Detroit native who wrote a Time cover story on the city in 2009.

"I don't think it'll ever come back to the city it once was. The bankruptcy is not in itself a solution. It will presumably clear the debt. Something will have to happen for it not to repeat this pattern five or 10 years from now. Hopefully this will make life livable in this city I think it's doable. But I'm not sure there's the will to do it", said Professor Boyle.