General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: OK, born and raised a Detroiter. Over 60, and here's my take on what happened. [View all]Noslenca
(1 post)As I posted earlier today on Facebook after seeing a couple of HuffPo articles - one about a proposal to build a wall around Hamtramck to keep other Detroiters out, and a second about the history and present of the Birwood Street wall:
//Another brick in the wall...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/wall-to-keep-out-detroiters-hamtramck-detroit-segregation_n_3637284.html
Missing from nearly all explanations I've seen for Detroit's slow descent into the abyss is the role of walls around much of the city's perimeter designed to separate the races - and to deny financial services, including mortgages, home improvement, insurance and small business loans to those living within it - mostly the city's Black or lower-income residents.
It's called 'redlining' - an official policy given the stamp of approval by the FHA back in the late 1930s. Redlining happened in pretty much every American city. Few, however, bore as visual a 'redline' as Detroit. Eminem rapped about the most famous wall along 8 Mile near Wyoming. There were others.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/detroit-race-wall-birwood-black-people-art_n_3192373.html
Despite federally legislated attempts to eradicate the practice, redlining didn't disappear in any meaningful way until the mid-1990s. It's still in force, spun on its axis into 'reverse redlining' - the practice of charging higher interest rates or premiums to individuals living or investing in formerly redlined neighborhoods - or charging unfavorable rates based upon external factors such as race or gender regardless of income or ability to pay.
One Detroit blogger recently questioned whether the entire Rust Belt, almost none of which has reasserted its former prosperity since the collapse of manufacturing began over 30 years ago, isn't somehow being redlined as well...sentenced to a long anguishing death.
Thinking back on the once prosperous city I grew up in, and the struggling place it is now, I have to wonder as well.//
I'm disappointed to see freeways, suburban shopping malls, school desegregation, riots and poorly-made cars cited as reasons for Detroit's demise while the Federal Housing Administration, banksters and insurers continue to escape culpability.