On Wednesday evening, January 9, 2007, the Anti-Defamation League will host the first session in their new 5-part series - Weaving Our Community. As described by the League, the goals of the series are:

• To educate members of the greater community about the history, nature, and extent of anti-Semitism, racism, and other biases with a preliminary focus on metropolitan Detroit.
• To learn how anti-Semitism, racism and other biases have contributed to the division and tension among the communities of southeast Michigan.
• To work together to recognize, expose, and to address the underlying causes of this divisive trend.

The five sessions are as follow:

1. A Community Divided: Segregation in Metropolitan Detroit
2. Dispelling Myths and Stereotypes of Muslim and Arab Communities
3. A Conversation with Abraham H. Foxman: Evolving Trends of Anti-Semitism
4. Immigration Today: Balancing Our Security, Humanitarian and Economic Interests
5. Impact of a Community Divided: Moving Forward

The overall program series will provide terrific background on a number of issues that are critical to “our community.” I am honored to have been selected as one of the two speakers who will “kick-off” the series on Wednesday evening. I am also excited about the opportunity because I will be sharing the stage with Thomas J. Sugrue, PhD, professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of one of the quintessential books on Detroit – The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.

Dr. Sugrue will open the program by using his book to describe the historical processes – post-World War II – that caused Detroit and other urban cities (and their metropolitan areas) to become highly segregated. As one review of his book wrote:

“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. 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.”

My portion of the program will overlap briefly on demographic shifts between 1950 and 1990, and then describe and discuss the post-1990 period when we witnessed African American residents moving from Detroit to the suburbs in unprecedented numbers, joining major streams of recent immigrants. While racial (Black/White) segregation appears to be breaking down in some regards and needs to be celebrated, there is evidence that communities, schools and other institutions are struggling with its aftermath. We read about incidents of cross-burnings, racial and ethnic epithets, both uttered and written (many times scrawled on walls), and actions such as the defeat of Proposal 2, but we are not as aware of the resegregation that is going on in suburban communities and schools.

These issues, along with the segregation that we are experiencing along economically[1], both across race and ethnic groups and across the region – Detroit vs. suburbs, must be recognized and addressed head-on if we are going to truly be one region pulling together across all political, geographic and demographic lines.

To learn more about this program, please click here.

Kurt Metzger
Research Director
United Way for Southeastern Michigan Community Investment and Partnerships

[1] Detroit resident income averages less than half that of its suburban (in total) neighbors. Nowhere else in the country is the differential so great.

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