This past Monday in the Student Center, professor John Fike of the EMU political science department discussed how the “Motor City” acquired the reputation it has today
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In his seminar, “Detroit: Historical Factors and Current Challenges,” Fike focused on the city of Detroit and its problems of urban decay and how to solve those problems.
Fike, a former student of Saul Alinsky who was a member of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago and community organizer, said residents need to take a “mutual responsibility” as to how Detroit got in its current condition.
There are no simple answers to the problems he said, but encouraged students to get involved in charity and fight “for the kind of public policy we need” and other solutions such as non-profit organizations.
Detroit’s condition is a symptom “of our national inability to address the systemic causes of social ills.”
According to Fike, these ills stem from strained race relations and unresolved economic issues.
“The Arsenal of Democracy” is what the city of Detroit was once called during World War II. The many auto-manufacturing plants that drew workers to the city were used to build parts to planes and tanks.
The auto industry was a “protected monopoly,” Fike said. He said it was protected by the government, but from the boom and bust cycle the economy has gone through, the Arsenal of Democracy has become “a repository for the poor.”
The attraction of jobs in the auto industry brought an influx of migrant workers and black farmers into Detroit during the early 1900s and again in the ‘60s.
Thousands flocked to Detroit in search of work, particularly in an area nicknamed “Paradise Valley,” which ironically became a slum.
Many of the residents of Detroit gained a “sense of entitlement” to the lifestyle provided by steady, manufacturing jobs.
After the jobs have disappeared, “inequality and discrimination” have robbed the prominently black community of opportunity, and inflation has eroded prosperity – “Detroit has become the home of the dispossessed,” Fike said.
President Johnson and his administration, through the many Great Society programs, attempted to help the impoverished. However, over time many conservatives “came in and dismantled these programs” that have become so important to the city.
Since then Detroit has “resisted new ideas.”
Education has become a low priority in the community and dropout rates have increased.
Fike pointed out the structure of schools has fallen. Attempts to help the city have often been thwarted by a “turf war,” where city council members and leaders of local government are afraid outside help will translate to a loss of power and control over the community.
Such impediments to progress have also led to high crime rates and a lack of businesses in the city.
The professor alluded to a glimmer of hope.
A long as Detroit can overcome these eight challenges: learning cooperation and cohesiveness, eliminating corruption and graft in government, getting citizens to participate in government, identifying and attaining sustainable sources of revenue for the city, getting to school system to educate more efficiently, keeping with promises of pensions and responsibilities to the health care of citizens, and finding a way to use abandoned land — it is possible for the city to make a comeback.
Fike concluded the seminar with a short round of discussion. Attendees inquired from everything as to whether racism was still a prevalent problem in Detroit and why, if there was a demand, no businesses were willing to move in and supply residents.
The seminar was sponsored by American Humanics Inc., one of the non-profit organizations the professor encouraged citizens to become involved in.
