Detroit’s Packard Plant closed in 1957, says Thomas Sugrue, a decade before Detroit’s 1967 riots and even longer before the election of Coleman Young, two events often pointed to as the beginning of the end for the city.
It’s hard to separate myth and legend about Detroit’s decline from fact, he says, and most myths are persistent and pernicious – he’s fond of the word “pernicious,” for which this language nerd gives him points.
Some commonly believed myths considered causes of the city’s problems:
. That the federal social safety net created a cycle of dependency that hasn’t been broken
. That poor people behave badly, and have thus created and/or deserve their circumstances
. That it’s the result of the rise to power of black radicals – “aided and abetted by ‘misguided’ white liberals” – who seized city government and alienated “regular white people.”
. That Detroit was a thriving city until the 1967 riots, and that the riots were the pivot point for the city. It’s a myth, he says, that’s particularly persistent among white residents, and puts far too much weight on a single incident.
. Coleman Young
All of this conventional wisdom has bits of truth, he says, but the real answer is policy decisions, the flight of capital and commerce away from the city and persistent segregation in housing.
“The flight of capital, discriminination, the Balkanization of the metro area because of politics… that all three occured silmutaneously, that all interacted with each other, that they were mutually reinforcing, had devestating consequences,” Sugrue says.
Detroit lost 144,000 manufacturing jobs between 1947 and 1963, before globalization, before competition from Asian automakers… the city’s economic decline started in what’s considered the “golden years” of Detroit’s prosperity.
Detroit, as cliche went, was “arsenal of democracy,” and job-seekers streamed in from the South, expecting an enlightened work environment, only to often be stymied by the same kind of insitutionalized discrimination they’d fled.
He’s telling the story of an African-American auto worker who couldn’t find work in post-war Detroit… in contrast, his dad, a young white kid who didn’t really want an auto job and didn’t have a great track record, was consistently able to find employment.
Entry-level jobs started to to disappear as business owners sought a lower-tax climate, and labor-saving technology that eliminated the same jobs was introduced.
“Jobs that provided the first rungs of economic opportunity were disappearing,” he said.
Detroit lost 144,000 manufacturing jobs between 1947 and 1963, Sugrue said, before globalization, before competition from Asian automakers… the city’s economic decline started in what’s considered the “golden years” of Detroit’s prosperity.
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