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

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

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.

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.

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

When you are dealing with an area like Pottstown, you have a much higher poverty level, which means more kids at risk, and all the societal things that go along with being poor. This becomes a tragic reality to urban communities. Poverty is absolutely a contributing factor in crime. A factor is the sense that people are looking for an easier way to make a dime, so they turn to the drug trade which in turn creates involvement in other crimes. Some believe that economy is a big factor in turning Pottstown around. Mainly, because helping the homeless with housing grants will not help improve crime unless jobs are available to the unemployed so they can remain in their newly found homes. Without an improved economy and financial stability residents will revert back to old ways, return to the streets, and continue a life of drugs and violence.

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.

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, once the New York City of its time, nick named the “Motor City” as it contained one of the leading car manufacturing centers of the automobile industry. As a metropolis for the first half of the twentieth century, Post World War II, Detroit became an economic fortress and focal point in American History. Detroit’s economic stronghold placed the city in a position that was once beneficial. From the surging employment opportunities perpetuated by the booming automotive market to the development, and implementation of substandard housing and the casual labor market, Detroit became the land of opportunity that loomed with an air of new beginnings. Today, however, Detroit continues to reap the aftermath of contradictory political

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.

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.

Why Memphis has one of the highest crime rate city in the US? Over the past decade, Memphis has become an attractive city for many tourists around the world to visit. It has historical landmarks related to famous characters such as Elvis Presley. Furthermore, Memphis has one of the top music destinations in the world and the city where many forms of music were established and still being recorded till today. Moreover, Memphis is a good place to live because it has a lot of historical places, incredible foods, cool weather, friendly population, famous characters, and lovely music. All that describe the bright side about this wonderful city. On the other hand, Memphis also has a dark side that we can’t deny or hide it that is the

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

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.

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.