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Originally Posted by
Detroitnerd
He was born in the city and grew up in the city. Why don't you read his book?
Anybody that you worship as devotedly as that must be not worth the read.
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I must say, I don't understand. You have no desire to read up on the history of the city, yet you categorically seem to believe you understand the history of the city. This is willful ignorance, isn't it? Why should anybody take you seriously?
I never asked you to take me seriously. I don't take you seriously at all, so we are even, I guess.
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This is your analysis of a book you haven't read. A book you have said you will not read. That's a fail, friend.
I read the Cliff Notes.
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Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once prosperous industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Probing beneath the veneer of 1950s prosperity and social consensus, Sugrue traces the rise of a new ghetto, solidified by changes in the urban economy and labor market and by racial and class segregation.
In this provocative revision of postwar American history, Sugrue finds cities already fiercely divided by race and devastated by the exodus of industries. He focuses on urban neighborhoods, where white working-class homeowners mobilized to prevent integration as blacks tried to move out of the crumbling and overcrowded inner city. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.
In other words, the same blah blah blah you have been running here for years. Your point?
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That's just one factor. Are you not reading? After all, I've gone to the trouble to respond to your questions. The least you could do is read and make intelligent comments ...
Don't be so put off. You could be actually working, instead of trolling a message board.
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This is not about blaming anybody. This is about understanding what has happened and why. Because if you don't understand the complex forces that created what we have today, you will overly simplify what happened, or arrive at conclusions that are wrong. Unless you're unconcerned with that, and are willing to repeat the mistakes of the past. I won't blame ignorance, but willful ignorance is a crime.
Why aren't you in jail then? Like I said, the past is done. Move on?
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I take the time to answer your questions, and this is the kind of glib response you offer? That's not dialogue, friend. That's trolling. Pure and simple.
Thank you!
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First of all, Joseph Campau doesn't intersect I-75. And, even though Hamtramck was more than 80 percent Polish in the 1980s, yes, quite a few of them have died off and some have even migrated north. It's interesting how new ethnic groups are following the same path of Poles who have left. That friendliness to immigration has helped Hamtramck a lot, making it the most diverse city in the state, if not the country.
I never said I did say they intersected. Exit routes. One surface street, just to make you happy.
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As for having enough money or sense to leave, I think you miss the point. The reason Hamtramck has done so well is that so many Poles stayed, enriching local institutions, not splitting and taking their resources with them. You can either stay and defend your investment or you can take your marbles and leave. Luckily, Hamtramckans decided for the most part to stay and protect their considerable investments.
Good thing they had a police force to back them up.
Sonn enough that will change though, unfortunately.
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Poles in Detroit had their own "northern migration" starting around 1900. In 1903, the Packard Plant opened on East Grand Boulevard, which was then the outskirts of town. Poles started moving northward, to live closer to the factory. When Dodge Main opened in 1914, the movement was in full swing and what is now Hamtramck started filling in. By the 1970s, the neighborhood around Dodge Main was more integrated than Hamtramck. Thanks to General Motors, which could have located its plant elsewhere but chose to have Poletown demolished by the city, a barrier was erected between the old neighborhood and Hamtramck. And Poles did live down around there south of the freeway. Several lived there until they died. I had the pleasure of seeing a photo documentary of the residents of that neighborhood, and it was a good mix until even 20 years ago. Unfortunately, those old folks don't live forever.
Their kids had choices. They chose not to live next to the oncinerator, or the stockyards, or the rendering plant, or the hulk of the Packard.
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There is a block of really cool people that live on Farnsworth Street down there, just west of Moran.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=chene,...307.88,,0,1.31
Take a look. These are people who've bought up the whole street, more or less, and know each other, watch the street, behave like a cohesive neighborhood, much like the Poles of the neighborhood's heyday. They're not leaving. They're not taking their resources and splitting. And, as a result, the street looks great. And that's with crime, spotty police service, etc.
That's my point, really. What makes a neighborhood good? When good people stay there and defend it. What makes a neighborhood bad? When good people leave and take away their resources. It's a rule of thumb, and there are some variables at play, but that's why Hamtramck and that block of Farnsworth Street survive
.
Been there. Wait till the church closes.