Leslie Woodcock Tentler, who grew up in metro Detroit and earned a Ph.D in history at the University of Michigan, reflects on the city and its future in an essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal that is both analytic and personal.
She analyzes Detroit's population loss and writes that alone did not mark the city as unusual.
"Eight of the nation’s ten largest cities lost population, nearly all of it white, over the course of the 1950s. None of these cities, however, was as dependent on a single industry for its survival as Detroit. None was so disproportionately blue-collar in its population. And none had its fortunes directed to the same extent by an economic elite that did not live locally. (Henry Ford, who was certainly a local, never built a plant within the Detroit city limits and held aloof from local efforts at civic improvement.) If my parents intuited an uncertain future for a city they loved, they had good reason to do so."
In a more personal vein, she writes:
"One can still find love in the ruins of Detroit, but it’s harder now. So much of the city has disappeared that recent visits have left me disoriented. (I tend to navigate by landmarks, an astonishing number of which are gone.) A new generation of urban pioneers now hoists the banner of optimism—“say nice things about Detroit!”—while I alternate between rage and despair. Yes, there are signs of life there, some of them new, like the city’s flourishing arts scene. But the decay is so vast and the human suffering so appalling that optimism seems not just delusional—an old Detroit problem—but almost obscene. Still, the city would be even poorer without it. Cheers, then, for the probably deluded optimists who say nice things about the imploding city they now call home. Given Detroit’s status as the nation’s busiest border crossing with Canada and its access to the world’s largest source of fresh water, even I would admit that it likely has a long-term future in an increasingly globalized and water-starved world. Still, I worry in the shorter term about those many Detroiters who have been cast off as so much detritus in globalization’s wake.
"That human wastage brings us to the real significance of Detroit’s collapse. The Detroit of my childhood, though in the first stages of decline, was still a place where working-class people could live in comfort and security. The blue-collar city of my youth boasted the nation’s highest rate of homeownership. Working people paid dearly for their relative affluence: even unionized plants were dirty and noisy, most jobs were mind-numbingly repetitious, and overtime pay can’t compensate for the toll exacted by excessively long hours. But that affluence was still a notable achievement, the result of strong unions locally and—honesty compels—relatively weak competition from overseas manufacturers. It made upward mobility possible for the next generation and fostered a strong communal ethos, albeit one that was ultimately undermined by race-based fears and resentments. We do well to remember, however, that a good many African Americans benefitted from the era of working-class affluence. The tragedy is that it ended before they were able as a group to enjoy the same shot at upward mobility as their immigrant predecessors."
Leslie Woodcock Tentler is the author of "Catholics and Contraception: A History" and "Seasons of Grace: A History of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit.' A professor of history at the Catholic University of America, she previously taught at the University of Michigan and U-M Dearborn. She is daughter of the late Leonard Woodcock, UAW president from 1970 to 1977.
