It is fair to say that Detroit was one of the first victims of the civil rights revolution, given what happened to it relative to where it was pre-revolution. After the war, Detroit was the most prosperous city in the country. In 1950 the city had 1.8 million people and the highest per capita income in the country. Then the civil rights revolution unleashed hell on the city, leading to a collapse of its economy and population. Motown is now roughly a third of its peak size and gripped by urban poverty.
Despite remaining the symbol of the urban decline unleashed by the civil rights revolution, Detroit is not the worst city in America. St. Louis continues to sport the highest murder rate in the country at 66 per 100,000. Baltimore is always the bridesmaid in the murder Olympics at a respectable 56 per 100,000. Detroit is third, but the murder rate is 40 per 100,000. That is still ten times worse than the most dangerous European cities, but well off the pace in America.
Detroit has also stabilized to some degree. A few super wealthy men have tried to rescue parts of the city from the locals. The billionaire Dan Gilbert spearheaded the revitalization efforts in the city that have carved out some green zones that host business and the sports and entertainment areas. The Ford family continues to play an outsized role in the city. The result of these billionaire efforts has been to arrest the collapse of the city and slowly claw back some civilization.
It was not just the generosity of some oligarchs that saved Detroit from total collapse but also the recognition that the locals cannot be trusted. The state of Michigan stepped in and suspended the lunacy of democracy in the city. The city was ushered through Chapter 9 bankruptcy and an administrator was appointed. Many local politicians were arrested so they could not interfere in the repair efforts. Ten percent white Detroit continues to have a white mayor.
When you walk around Detroit now, you can get a glimpse of what lies ahead for majority-minority America. Like Brazil, Detroit is three cities. There is the war zone that has been cordoned off as best they can. Then there is the area where the more stable black population lives and then you have the economic zone. A weird balance has been struck where the more stable black population works in the economic zone and does not get rustled by the measures required to maintain it.
Walk around Greek Town on a Friday night and the thing you cannot help but notice is the lack of local color. This is the tourist part of the city located near the big sports arenas and the large office towers. It is called Greek Town because it was populated by Greeks before the savages were unleashed by the civil rights revolution. Like everything created in America over the last half century, Greek Town is named after what was destroyed in order to make the new thing.
The reason for the lack of local color is the police presence. It is not just cops milling about like you see in less violent cities. This is the sort of policing that is intended to be an unwelcome mat for a specific group. At all of the entrances to the area are cops who man metal detectors. They select who must go through the detector and then get the pat down once it inevitably sounds the alarm. One can guess as to who they select for this special form of inspection.
In fairness, Detroit is not the first city to take this approach. Baltimore was a trail blazer in this regard, having condemned the area around the harbor and then handing it to developers and urban pioneers in the 1980’s. The deal was that pioneers and developers would build a white fortress to serve as an entertainment and tourist zone, while the city would provide security. This meant aggressively policing the border between the green zone and the black zone.
Detroit appears to have used Baltimore as a template, but also learned from Baltimore how not to screw it up. Got to Baltimore today and it is a mess. The Inner Harbor is vacant and the former tourist areas are overrun by locals. Nature is reclaiming that which was carved out of the urban jungle decades ago. Detroit, in contrast, is holding the line and that is mostly due to elite support. The oligarchs are not going to let their investment be swallowed up by the jungle.
It is too soon to know if Detroit can survive with this model. The upper middle-class white population escaped the city and refuse to return, unless it is for a ball game, concert or for work. On a Friday night when there is no major event, Greek Town is a well-guarded ghost town. You can walk into the best restaurants and get a seat at what is usually their prime hours. The pricing reflects the fact that the entertainment industry is built around the major events.
That is the trade-off to politely working around the problem instead of rudely going after the roots of the problem. There is a lack of authenticity to Greek Town. It feels like the Potemkin “town centers” that are now part of the suburban white fortress that is getting attention from the kooks. They do all the things that you expect from the organic urban centers of old, but they lack that hard to describe sense that can only come from the produce of an authentic community.
It is tempting to think that maybe that is the compromise that will define the future, but these transactional communities have a poor record. The reason is the cost of maintaining them is much higher due to the lack of social capital. People in a new development have only the investment in their home. They have no investment in their neighbors, who come and go. Eventually, everyone finds a newer, cleaner white fortress because the old white fortress is beginning to crumble.
That is what makes Detroit worth watching. It was the first victim of the civil rights revolution, and it may be the last chance to figure out how to maintain an urban area within the moral construct of civil rights. If like Baltimore it collapses under the pressure of diversity, then there are no arguments left for maintaining the moral framework of civil rights, but if it survives as a post-modern apartheid city, then it can be the model for how to maintain civilization in a majority-minority America.
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