David Frum: Who Killed Detroit?
[David Frum is the editor of FrumForum.com. Frum is the author of six books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (2003), and co-author with Richard Perle of An End to Evil: How To Win the War on Terror (2004). His newest book is, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, published by Doubleday on December 31, 2007 and released in paperback in January 2009.]
Who killed Detroit? Why did this once-mighty city fall so much lower than Philadelphia, another capital of heavy industry? Why has it failed to recover from the loss of industry in the way that Pittsburgh and even to some extent Cleveland have done?
I pondered these questions in this space a few months ago. A friend recommended Thomas Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit as the answer to my questions.
The book arrived covered in admiring blurbs from academic reviewers, plus this from the Detroit Free Press’ review: “The most interesting, informative, and provocative book on modern Detroit.” It had won a string of prizes, culminating in the Bancroft prize in history in 1998.
And yes, there is a lot to admire in Origins of the Urban Crisis. Also: a lot not.
As the subtitle declares, Sugrue argues that Detroit was killed by its failure to solve its race problem. But what was the race problem? How did it hurt? Why did it matter? And here Sugrue’s impressive research is badly distorted by Sugrue’s governing ideology.
Start with the impressive part.
The story of Detroit is often told as if the city’s problems begin in the 1960s. Detroit, in this familiar account, emerged from the Second World War an industrial colossus – triumphantly converted to peacetime automobile production in the 1950s – elevated factory workers into the middle class in the 1960s. The city tumbled into crisis, this story continues, after the riots of the 1960s. Crime and disorder drove the industrial middle class into the suburbs, and the energy crisis of the 1970s pushed the automobile industry into decline. The misgovernment of the black radical mayor Coleman Young finished the job in the 1980s.
Sugrue convincingly challenges that story. Detroit began losing industrial jobs in 1945, not 1965....
Read entire article at FrumForum
Who killed Detroit? Why did this once-mighty city fall so much lower than Philadelphia, another capital of heavy industry? Why has it failed to recover from the loss of industry in the way that Pittsburgh and even to some extent Cleveland have done?
I pondered these questions in this space a few months ago. A friend recommended Thomas Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit as the answer to my questions.
The book arrived covered in admiring blurbs from academic reviewers, plus this from the Detroit Free Press’ review: “The most interesting, informative, and provocative book on modern Detroit.” It had won a string of prizes, culminating in the Bancroft prize in history in 1998.
And yes, there is a lot to admire in Origins of the Urban Crisis. Also: a lot not.
As the subtitle declares, Sugrue argues that Detroit was killed by its failure to solve its race problem. But what was the race problem? How did it hurt? Why did it matter? And here Sugrue’s impressive research is badly distorted by Sugrue’s governing ideology.
Start with the impressive part.
The story of Detroit is often told as if the city’s problems begin in the 1960s. Detroit, in this familiar account, emerged from the Second World War an industrial colossus – triumphantly converted to peacetime automobile production in the 1950s – elevated factory workers into the middle class in the 1960s. The city tumbled into crisis, this story continues, after the riots of the 1960s. Crime and disorder drove the industrial middle class into the suburbs, and the energy crisis of the 1970s pushed the automobile industry into decline. The misgovernment of the black radical mayor Coleman Young finished the job in the 1980s.
Sugrue convincingly challenges that story. Detroit began losing industrial jobs in 1945, not 1965....