Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [98]
Wee Shady: As a toddler Eminem was shuttled across the Midwest, eventually landing in Detroit. (Picture from 1974.)
Detroit has proved itself to be America’s most racially divided city despite an all-encompassing business that blurred the barriers. Auto-industry economics made the factory line color-blind, but the county lines within the city have been painted black and white for centuries. Detroit celebrated its three hundredth birthday in 2001, with little but hope to celebrate, even though times have improved: It is a stagnated city that hasn’t seen a population increase for most of a decade. The city’s fortunes have peaked and dipped with that of the auto industry since 1908; it is an American dream that did not come with a warranty.
Detroit’s juxtaposed soulfulness and divisive delineations have, however, made for unique cultural crossbreeding. In its rifts, self-hate, and innovation, it is our most American city. It is a city founded by French fur traders, where freed Southern blacks migrated to stake their claim next to whites; a city where unions made equality a question of class and racial prejudice ignited more upheaval than in any other city in the nation. Detroit is a city divided from within and in identity is divided from the rest of the country. But more American cities become like Detroit each year, eroded by economic downturn, the loss of manufacturing dollars to overseas vendors, the high cost of living, and in some cases an influx of immigrants and state governments that are more sympathetic to the suburbs. The poverty gap between rich and poor is growing steadily wider in America, as income has shown growth only in the richest ranks of the private sector. Many more American metropolises, like Detroit, are being stratified further along racial lines: Poor minorities generally remain in the cities while poor whites are able to move to affordable outlying areas. It has been so in Detroit since the sixties, if not earlier; now cities such as Newark, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; and New Orleans, Louisiana, are facing similar circumstances. No state exemplifies America’s increasing class divide better than Connecticut: According to the 2002 census, that state was ranked richest in the union, but its capital city, Hartford, was ranked the poorest.
The government’s 1990 census ranked Detroit as the ninth largest city in our country, home to more than 200,000 residents. It was also ranked first in poverty: One-third of the population in the metropolitan area lived below the poverty line. In 1990, there were more single-parent households and more residents on public assistance there than in any other major urban area. Detroit adults were second to last in the top seventy-seven cities for the percentage of who had earned college diplomas. The average worth of a home in metropolitan Detroit was about $25,000, whereas similar homes in Boston were worth close to $160,000, or in Los Angeles, $240,000. The year 1990 was a low point not seen in the Motor City for twenty years.
The history of Detroit reflects the history of the auto industry—and the river running through its rifts. Henry Ford put Detroit and the mass-produced motor car on the map in 1908 and the automobile has remained, aside from housing, Americans’ primary expenditure (consider the number of auto ads shown during an average hour of network TV compared with those of other products). In one fell swoop, Ford’s production-line system gave the city of Detroit a purpose.
The two World Wars established Detroit as the throne of vehicular industry. When World War I broke out in 1914, Detroit’s factories churned out trucks and honed their production capabilities. In the years between the wars (1919 to 1938),