Essay about The Real Side of Detroit: The Diverse City

Detroit, Michigan grew up around the automobile industry. At its peak, Detroit was the fifth-largest city in the United States, becoming the home to over 1.8 million people by 1950 (Davey, Monica 2013). The prolific population was due greatly to the success of the auto industry in the city. At that time, Detroit was flying high, its name coined “The Motor City” (americaslibrary.gov), and automobiles greatly impacted commercialization. From transporting goods to hastening production, to selling parts, to manufacturing and selling new automobiles, the auto industry completely transformed Detroit. Things seemed

The greatest problem that the society faces in the inner city black community is the interpersonal violence and aggression created by the troubled youth in their society. By simply living in this kind of violent, innocent people are affected by crimes such as burglaries, carnapping and drug related incident and shootings.

Crime is something that happens every day. Many people fear it, but it is a factor that people cannot escape. In places, like Detroit, people are surrounded by violent crime. Either they are the victims of it, or the committers, but it was not always like this. During the sixties, Detroit was one of the most lucrative cities in the country. Many people moved there to seek jobs in the automotive factories which increased the population to 1.85 million. (Padnani, 2013) However, this is not the case now. Many of the factories have moved, putting people and their families at a disadvantage. A numerous amount of workers relied on these jobs to feed their families. Since then, Detroit has faced a significant amount of hardships that has caused the city to deteriorate effecting education, employment, and the crime rate each factor acts as a chain reaction. The lack of diversity in the city can be a factor of the crime rate as well because Detroit is filled with a large population of minorities. Many politicians have looked for ways to solve the problem, but nothing has been proven to work.

In American society, race and racial issues are viewed in a black and white manner. The media portrays matters of race in the simplest terms without taking intersectionality into account. Social class, economic factors, and historical factors impact how racial issues are regarded and handled in specific geographic locations. John Hartigan demonstrates this in his book, Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness of Detroit, which describes the dynamics of three local communities: Briggs, Cork Town, and Warrendale. Hartigan examines how white identity varies in these three neighborhoods due to other social factors. Comparing how these local communities respond to race versus the media’s response shows how categorizing people into monolithic groups based only on race is a tactic that ignores the real issues and delays finding solutions.

Detroit, Michigan is a city that has had racial confliction and disharmony from the embryonic

In the novel, Detroit: An American Autopsy, Charlie LeDuff, a former reporter for The Detroit News and The New York Times, provides a personal account of his experience of returning to his hometown of Detroit after journalistic work in New York and Los Angeles. Detroit has long been a prime example of urban decay: it is a city that presents images of mass unemployment, political corruption, looming bankruptcy, abandoned buildings, and senseless slaughter. It has gone through major economic, political, and demographic decline in the recent decades, with even the city’s notorious and once thriving automobile industry struggling with increasing global competition. Once deemed as “Paris of the Midwest”, LeDuff portrays the city’s lost prosperity

The nature of racial issues is extremely complex and something that is not universal under any circumstances. There are so many different factors that play into racial issues, starting with social class, economic status, historical relations, and even the way those so called tensions are portrayed within the media. In John Hartigan's book, “Racial Situations; Class predicament of Whiteness in Detroit” he talks about his experiences having lived within different communities in Detroit and he discusses the results of having studied three different environments with different social classes. The three places he discusses are Briggs, Corktown, and Warrendale.

Detroit was once one of America’s biggest and most important cities. Motor City, home to most car manufacturers in America. Had a thriving economy with all the manufacturing jobs involving automobiles. This city of 1.8 million people in 1950, is now only about 700,000. The death of Detroit was caused by many factors. Especially the changing job market and industry relocation. Many companies moved away from Detroit, either into the suburbs or other countries it was cheaper to produce products in. This lead to a massive population decline in Detroit. The next cities to suffer this, Seattle and Portland.

Excess suburban housing constriction that has left residual concentrations of poverty and dilapidation in the City of Detroit that also serve to reinforce household retail demands for suburban locations.

The main causes of this economic collapse are the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan due to globalization, the subtle racism of residents leading to the suburbanization of the Detroit area, and a group of crooked municipal government leaders that stole from the community. Despite these overwhelming obstacles Detroit is on the mend, and many see a bright future for this once great city.

Lower-class areas tend to create an atmosphere that the area is not being “taken care of” due to the poor conditions and would most likely not care about the determination of making effort in changing that area. This is a great environment for criminals because they may think that nobody would mind their criminal behavior. These neighborhoods attract street people, youth gangs, prostitutes and the mentally disturbed and this creates a fearful atmosphere for the residents in the area. If people too afraid or just not care about their area, this creates higher levels of violent crimes because the standards for the area are so low.

Detroit is known as the “motor city.” If the city implements new changes to the infrastructure, business environment, labor markets, social environment, Detroit will definitely turn around and can become a major place for successful future businesses. With it’s innovation, technology, diverse networking the city’s future businesses will continue to grow and thrive.

The city of Detroit is sad sight to behold. Once a thriving city, Detroit used to have a population of approximately 1.8 million people and at one point, it was one of the well-paid cities in the United States. Now, Detroit only has a population of about 700,000. The drop in population was the consequence of job loss and many other problems that Detroit is faced with. These problems include: the city filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the nearly 80,000 abandoned buildings, the highest crime rate in the United States of large cities, and the decrease in manufacturing jobs in the city. In addition, these grave problems have caused the children and next generation of Detroit to suffer, but everyone can make a difference in small ways.

New York crime grew at an alarming rate from the 1980’s to 1990’s even as early as 1970’s shows increase in crime. Some statistics from New York Law Enforcement Agency Uniform Crime Reports 1960-2009 (www.diastercenter.com): Murders: 1970- 1,444, 1973- 2,020 1976-1,976, 1979-2,092, 1982-2,013, 1985-1,683, 1988-2,244, 1990-2,605, 1998-924. It was said that during those time that when the sun went down the neighbors was infested with gangs and drug dealers and with the most of the crime taken place in Brownville and East New York (Gladewell, 2005). It wasn’t until 1998 that crime had took a sudden decline and dropped 64.4% in Brownville and East New York (Gladwell, 2005). So what brought on the sudden tipping point? Depends on who is asked is where you will get your answer. New York police will tell you that their police strategies dramatically improved, criminologists will tell you that the crack trade and aging of the population is what made that change. Economist will point to the city’s economy improvements over the course of the 1990’s that effected the employment. It would be hard to say that one particular issue is the reason why without being able to take that situation out to see if it had an effect, but with them all, improvements were made and a tipping

On December 10th 2014, Detroit exited the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S history. "We're going to start fresh tomorrow and do the best we can to deliver the kind of services people deserve," said Mayor Mike Duggan(Davey,2014). Although both the government and citizens suffers a lot through the bankruptcy, after experiencing the loss of population, pension and healthcare hole and solving the problems with retirees creditors and bondholders, the city Detroit is expected to be improved than before such as the services and infrastructure. Even though all the financial slate is clean, there are still some problems remaining about how Detroit shifts its fate. For example, stopping the large migration of taxpayers and bringing jobs to those