Race And Inequality In Detroit Summary

Improved Essays
The Origins Of The Urban Crisis: Race And Inequality In Postwar Detroit is a book written by Thomas J. Sugrue. Detroit once was considered a promised land for African Americans but because of economic restructuring in rapidly became communalized. Throughout the whole book Sugrue discusses the hardship of detroit from years 1943 through around 1968. He speaks on of course race and inequality but also the housing crisis of Detroit as well. Sugrue breaks this book into 3 parts which took me a while to pick up on. The 3 parts was called Arsenal, Rust, and Fire. The first part (Arsenal) goes into detail about how Detroit had such a hard time with housing. Due to the rapid increase of the automobile industry during world war 2 Detroit …show more content…
He argues that those developments usually associated with crumbling cities mainly deindustrialization were not responses to the urban crisis of the 1960s. Rather, they were what created anger and frustration among African American residents and quickly sparked the red hot summers of the 1960s. Deindustrialization changed the roots of Detroit I believe as Detroiters, black and white, fought a battle that would define Detroit politics for decades to follow. Sugrue also argues that explosions of racial antagonism were central to Detroit's culture as early as the Second World War. Sugrue also argues that white people lost confidence in liberalism and the New Deal state as a result of their experiences defending their neighborhoods against black homebuyers. This fact that black neighborhoods where crowed forced black residents to push on the harsh constraints imposed on them by pitiful white landlords and a racist culture. Black Detroiters tried many ways to manage their community's expansion but Sugrue argues that white people experienced these tactics as threats to their own economic and social well being. Sugrue is quick to point out the white violence against black people, or the fast paced abandonment of beat down areas. Sugrue's knowledge of economic and social history helps us better understand the decisions of Detroit residents in the 1940s through 1960s. Surgues main point of this book is how Detroit transformed from a wartime boomtown to a city struggling with post war recession and how the effect of African Americans fleeing to the city had a toll on the city. He had a very well thought out research on race, political economy and the urban roots of Detroit. He argues that by using Detroit as a case study, he is then able to place the city in a general historical context. It was a lot of

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Majora Carter starts off her speech by directly addressing her primary audience who she proclaims is at the conference because they have heard about sustainable development and how it can correspond to “save us from ourselves.” We can infer that she is referring to the primary audience due in part by knowing that the primary audience are those who receive the speech directly from the source and were present during her presentation. Her secondary audience would include people like myself who have viewed her speech through TED’s website or other any other sources. We can infer this as such because secondary audiences include anyone who “indirectly” views or hears a speech. Carter starts off her speech by presenting a story about what led her…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    “In the early 1940’s, Detroit was at its industrial zenith, leading the nation in economic escape from the Great Depression” (Sugrue 19). However, today Detroit does not carry the same legacy’s it once did. It wasn’t until after WWII that Detroit suffered this shift. In his book, “The Origins of the Urban Crisis”, historian Thomas Sugrue strives to give an explanation to this shift and find the answer to why Detroit has become the site of persistent racialized poverty and what exactly caused the urban crisis in post WWII Detroit.…

    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Black On The Block Summary

    • 1841 Words
    • 8 Pages

    These economic and political aspects had greatly defined social homogeny and stratification. Although this book focuses on a study about the historic rise and the renewal of Chicago’s North Kenwood–Oakland neighborhood, Pattillo firmly states that "... this book is not a study in the causes and consequences of gentrification," (Pattillo, 20). However, it is about urban renewal, public housing, and mixed-income communities where the Black community negotiate with each other, the outside players, and various layers of public decisions that frame what is preferable and what is possible…

    • 1841 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ms. Moore starts off with an incisive criticism of segregation, its underlying causes and the apparent unwillingness of Chicago Mayors to focus on it. However, Moore argues that even so, the South Side is a “magical place”. She describes it as a strong community with “vibrant business, bars, funeral homes”. The author briefly describes what is beautiful about having been raised in the South Side and then proceeds to relay her point to the readers: Diversity is worth celebrating, high-poverty segregation is not. She then explores the negative effects of segregation and then proceeds to briefly examine the effects on segregation the housing crisis had.…

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Book Critique: Racial Equality in America, by John Hope Franklin. This paper is developed to display a summary of "Racial Equality in America", by John Hope Franklin, and to make a critique of the book. The first part shows information about the author and the credentials that confirm him as an important spokesman for racial equality in America. Also, after the summary, I will try to give my humble vision on how to change the "obsession" of Americans regarding racism (adjective copied by me from Franklin).…

    • 2219 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Detroit Mayoral Election

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In the 2013 mayoral election for Detroit, MI, the citizens experienced in a close race {55%-45%} the victorious win of Michael E. Duggan over Benny N. Napoleon, to become the first white mayor to lead the city in four decades. The great city of Detroit has for long experienced much calamity that has in a sense permeated throughout every vein in Detroit, and is responsible for its decrepit semblance. Mayor Michael Edward Duggan has brought to the city an energy that has been much needed and deserved to those residents that dream of the return of the motor city they once knew. In the run for the mayor of Detroit, MI in 2013,…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the great country of the United States, most citizens of this society see what they want to see but never the reality of the criminal justice system. Bryan Stevenson’s book, “Just Mercy”, is his own perspective of what it is really like being a lawyer for wrongly convicted people in hopes of reform in the criminal justice system. After the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012, many citizens countrywide was outraged at the fact that Zimmerman was not imprisoned for murdering an innocent seventeen year old. This sparked the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter movement. This movement alone brought attention to the inequality and violence against African-Americans internationally.…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Who Dat?, By Marc Perry

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Like Perry, they discuss how race and economic standing factor into the decisions being made in post-Katrina New Orleans, and they focus on how the low-income community Ninth Ward has faced “chronic neglect” from city services and is victimized (Breunlin and Regis 2006: 749). They argue that actions are being taken to make today’s New Orleans population “whiter and wealthier” than it was before the hurricane and destruction (Breunlin and Regis 2006: 758) Furthermore, they explain that majority of the New Orleanian upper-class is mostly white and Republican, and that it strives to reduce the overwhelmingly black-and-constraining underclass by creating policies that intentionally undermine and displace them (Breunlin and Regis 2006: 756). Both Breunlin and Regis are Louisiana natives, and have close ties to the people and land in New Orleans, and they ask the opinions of several former residents of the Desire Public Housing Development that was “torn down in the name of ‘progress’” in the Ninth Ward and find that despite the negative connotations that often get associated with New Orleans and especially the Ninth Ward, these displaced people love the places they lived before Katrina (Breunlin and Regis 2006: 744-745, 750-751). Like Perry,…

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America blossomed in the 1950’s. The economy was booming; household gadgets, like refrigerators, were becoming more widely available, and suburbs developed, separating people from the chaos of a city and creating a small-town environment. As the middle class of the suburbs expanded, however, so did the widening division between the white and black opportunities. Blacks were left without the prospects whites had to improve their lives. This inequality created tension within the black community as some searched for any outlet to gain control over their lives.…

    • 1078 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, cities in America are still racially segregated today; the white still hold a bias against the minorities of being second-class citizens, and the real estate industry has a historical preference of white homeowners. If the process of racial desegregation is a road, the minorities are driving so slowly hoping to achieve the goal one day while worrying if their family members, who are the majority of the United States, will welcome them, and if real estate businessmen will limit them to a segregated housing market because of the businessmen’s goal of maximizing profit. In this paper, I would focus on experiences of African Americans and argue that housing policies did not effectively promote housing integration because the white segregate…

    • 379 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    New Urban Poverty

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The “New Urban Poverty” is what has developed as a result of work disappearing in urban areas. The book, More than Just Race, by William Julius Wilson, Professor of Social Policy at Harvard, argues that “the disappearance of work and the consequences of that disappearance for both social and cultural life are the central problems in the inner-city ghetto.” The new urban poverty that Wilson describes is comprised of years of data compiled that create for a better understanding of the injustice that exists in Detroit and other inner cities alike.…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In her book “Southside,” Natalie Moore addresses the means of segregation within Chicago’s neighborhoods, by focusing on racial preference, diversity, identity, and effects it has on black neighborhoods. Natalie Moore shares her own view as a black women living in the south side of Chicago, examining how racial segregation within communities has created a “white” and “black’ Chicago, leading to racial inequalities. Moore asserts the importance of diversity within Chicago, but suggests that racial inequalities and the “legacy of segregation and its ongoing policies have kept the city divided” (Moore#). She links problems such as underemployment and violence which are directly associated to the south side, and connects it all back to segregation. Even more, segregation of the white and black communities has lead to preference making which naturally segregates black and white neighborhoods.…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Racial Inequality

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The legacy of racial discrimination and oppression towards people of black descent in America, is one of inequality and mistreatment. In “Being Poor, Black, and American,” William Wilson writes about three types of forces that hinder the progress of blacks in society: political, economic, and cultural. Society’s dialogue on the current socio-economic status of most African Americans leans towards blaming blacks for their own lack of effort and judgment; however, these situations are deeply rooted in factors beyond the control of most ordinary black folk: the government’s deliberate initiatives to create of internal ghettos with project standards of living, the lack of circulation into minority communities, the transition away from a physical…

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Misfit Sermon Analysis

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages

    23. Eds. Margaret Haerens and Drew Kalasky. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 184-189.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He proceeds with a description of the many social problems affecting the black community in Philadelphia, with particular interest in those living in the Seventh Ward. He narrowed his survey to this area in order to provide accurate information about housing conditions and social class. The author used census data to identify wider general trends regarding the issues of population distribution, marital status and literacy. Du Bois used ethnographic data to cover topics on prejudice, crime and discrimination. A historical analysis was used to provide a broad context for comprehending the development of various issues like growth of support structures such as churches and community development of the black people in Philadelphia…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays