Where were you during the 1967 Detroit Riot?

[kryptonite]

The majority of whites in Detroit in 1950 were not uneducated migrants from the south. The majority of them were European immigrants and their descendants who had come to the US during the period 1880 to 1930 plus the postwar DPs from Europe. These people did not "bring their prejudices with them" when they came to Detroit.

Thanks for that post. my entire family is from the deep South and most of them worked in the Detroit factories in the 50's and 60's. They were extremely poor and few had more than a few years of school. They worked with black people and never said anything negative. However, my relatives encountered a great deal of anti-southern sentiment. Racism was heavily entrenched in Detroit before the Appalachian migration after WWII. Plus, southern whites and Europeans encountered their share of discrimination.

And my white southern relatives stayed in Detroit until long after the riots before moving to the suburbs.

The original posting was very unfair to southern whites and quite biased, thanks for defending them against such a derogatory blanket statement. Nobody brought racism here to Detroit. Few people are migrating here any longer and there is still plenty of racism and bias against all groups.

[Stosh]

Thanks for that post. my entire family is from the deep South and most of them worked in the Detroit factories in the 50's and 60's. They were extremely poor and few had more than a few years of school. They worked with black people and never said anything negative. However, my relatives encountered a great deal of anti-southern sentiment. Racism was heavily entrenched in Detroit before the Appalachian migration after WWII. Plus, southern whites and Europeans encountered their share of discrimination.

And my white southern relatives stayed in Detroit until long after the riots before moving to the suburbs.

The original posting was very unfair to southern whites and quite biased, thanks for defending them against such a derogatory blanket statement. Nobody brought racism here to Detroit. Few people are migrating here any longer and there is still plenty of racism and bias against all groups.

There are always exceptions to everything. Your family is no different. They may not have voiced their predjudices, but they were there. Everyone has them.

Let me reiterate. EVERYONE.

Lots of people stayed after the riots. What makes your family so different?

Oh, not the southern whites, no.. handwringing at it's finest. I implicate everyone, and you seem to cherrypick what you want. Classic...

[Susan Messer]

Thanks, English. And, again, to you Kathleen, for mentioning the honors college thing.

The question of why Detroit didn't recover in the same way that other cities did is way beyond complex, with roots in history, sociology, economics, and so on. I have a friends who tells me that after the Detroit "riots," people in his neighborhood started having meetings [[mixed race) in each others' living rooms, to try to get to know each other, understand each other, talk through their concerns, build community. More of that might have proven fruitful. But economics--profit motive of real estate developers and so on, residents' instinct to protect their investments [[sell your house while it's still worth something)--are pretty powerful. Also, at one of my book events a woman said that it's one thing as an adult to decide to take a stand, stay put, work for change, and another to subject one's children to schools that one fears may be dangerous for them or substandard. Even rumors that a school may be dangerous or substandard can scare parents away.

[pffft]

Stosh,
Much of the blockbusting going on in the '60s was in comfortable middle and upper middle class neighborhoods in NW Detroit, where the residents were far from being uneducated...

Educated people are capable of being scared out of neighborhoods too, alas.

[Stosh]

Stosh,
Much of the blockbusting going on in the '60s was in comfortable middle and upper middle class neighborhoods in NW Detroit, where the residents were far from being uneducated...

Educated people are capable of being scared out of neighborhoods too, alas.

Comfortable middle class neighborhoods in NW Detroit are still there, for the most part, arent they? You don't have the devastation leveled in other, less affluent and educated neighborhoods, do you? They may have blockbusted, but targetted the same demographic in the replacement residents.