For one thing in Detroit a suburb is an independent city with it's own Mayor. In other bits of the US [[particularly California) a suburb could be a neighborhood within a larger City, but in Detroit a Suburb is officially it's own City. The area around your building is called a neighborhood.

For another the racial breakdown of the local school says almost nothing about the racial breakdown of the neighborhood. I was in a pretty mixed neighborhood [[Woodbridge), and no white kids went to the neighborhood school. Most were in private schools, or managed to finagle a spot in one of the local suburban systems. The rest [[aka: me, my sister, and one chick) went to "Magnet Schools" which recruited from the entire city.

For a third Detroit's racial problems are incredibly complex.

Basically what happened is that in the late 70s and early 80s the white population fled en masse. Due to the fact that blacks are poor this meant that the City did not have enough taxpayers. With no money you can't afford police, basic city services, schools, etc. so now pretty much every black person who can leave is doing so.

That said, I am giving you a worse impression of the City then is probably warranted Detroit is actually a lot better off then Highland Park or Hamtramck because it still has some tax base, partly on the Southwest side, and partly Downtown. It has historically been able to balance it's budget most of the time, with taxes that are not much worse then imposed by other big US Cities. And since the Auto industry's recovering we'll probably end up with a few years and optimism of surpluses 2013-2015.

But long-term pretty much the only plans to help the City that people within the City actually consider are drastic measures like bulldozing 37 sq miles, declaring it a park, and moving the 50-100k people who live there into a newly-built sub-city.