75th Anniversary of the 1943 Race Riots

[dtowncitylover]

Forcing people to get along has the same effect as outright prejudice. People have their reasons to live as they want. Detroit won many legal battles, but did Detroit win the minds?

Uh no I never said we had to force people to live together. However we now know it was wrong to not allow African Americans into neighborhoods of their choice instead of allowing them only into the Brewester Homes or Black Bottom. Is that so hard to understand? I didn't realize I had to explain that.

[Colombian Dan]

Uh no I never said we had to force people to live together. However we now know it was wrong to not allow African Americans into neighborhoods of their choice instead of allowing them only into the Brewester Homes or Black Bottom. Is that so hard to understand? I didn't realize I had to explain that.

Detroit forced and apparently still does, forcibly "integrate" it's public schools by race. Made no sense then in the 1970s to force students by race to attend schools away from their neighborhoods. Using force to socially re-engineer cultural thinking patterns was one of the worst ideas in the last century. When Detroit government forced school integration that was the final nail for most Detroiters; also put suburban sprawl into overdrive.

[archfan]

Detroit forced and apparently still does, forcibly "integrate" it's public schools by race. Made no sense then in the 1970s to force students by race to attend schools away from their neighborhoods. Using force to socially re-engineer cultural thinking patterns was one of the worst ideas in the last century. When Detroit government forced school integration that was the final nail for most Detroiters; also put suburban sprawl into overdrive.

You're right. If only those folks back in 1943 had only waited in their red-lined district 75 years until everyone was ready to get along...

Oh. Nevermind.

[EastsideAl]

You're right. If only those folks back in 1943 had only waited in their red-lined district 75 years until everyone was ready to get along...

Oh. Nevermind.

Don't argue with the trolls, particularly the racist ones. It is dishearteningly depressing though that ugliness like this would pop up on a thread that is about an event that began when mobs of white people literally forced themselves violently on black people just trying to go about their lives [[riding streetcars, going to Belle Isle on a hot day, driving down Woodward, walking down John R, etc.).

[kathy2trips]

Forcing people to get along has the same effect as outright prejudice. People have their reasons to live as they want. Detroit won many legal battles, but did Detroit win the minds?

Indeed, there's a difference between tolerance [[a.k.a. "live and let live" as they'd say in the 1940s) and government mandated social engineering.

dtowncitylover unfortunately makes his determination of the cause of the 1943 riots through the lens of modern perceptions of the situation. Let's look at an August 1943 editorial from the Free Press regarding the Dowling Report on the cause of the riots, and the authors frustration at the report's shortcomings:



Of course, there were red-lined districts; I am not defending those. But there were many who were not, and indeed, there were. However we cannot ignore the "birds of a feather [[flock together)" mentality that existed in the 1940s. Does it surprise you that blacks also wanted to live with other blacks? That they had little in common with white, often Catholic or Orthodox, frequently non-English speaking people? Just two years later, in 1945, the Detroit Free Press reported on a new subdivision [[NOT housing project) that was being built so black people could enjoy a sense of community in a residential neighborhood setting?



As far as my politics are concerned, I consider myself an independent, capable of critical thinking. I applaud both my family dinner-table discussions and my teachers and professors [[particularly Neal Shine, at WSU) for cultivating my abilities in this area.