A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
VOLUME XVII, NUMBER 4, FALL 2017 A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship John Henry O’Sullivan: Olsen Make Europe . Great Again William Voegeli: First, Class Diana Schaub: Museum of the American David P. Revolution Goldman: Must We War with China? Neal B. Freeman: Bill Buckley Joseph at the Epstein: White House Talking Like a Politician Cliord Orwin: Vincent Phillip Against Muñoz: Empathy e Founders Algis Valiunas: Martin Luther in Full Joshua Dunn: James Hankins: e Reformation’s Legacy Hurricanes John Daniel Davidson: Christianity in America Edward and Feser: Presidents Charles Horner: Christianity in China Fake Science A Publication of the Claremont Institute PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $8.95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Angle of Descent ne of america’s finest poets, his death in 1980, he had traveled far from by Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. But for Robert Hayden, was born in Detroit Black Bottom, which became a racial ghetto African Americans seeking a better life, not Oin 1913. Before his second birthday in the 1930s and ’40s, at the peak of the Great so much. his parents’ marriage broke up, and he was Migration, which brought 6 million African By the 1940s, huge numbers of recent ar- raised by a neighbor couple in Black Bottom, Americans out of the Jim Crow South. In rivals—black, white, and immigrant—were an impoverished district near the Detroit Riv- 1943 Detroit exploded in black-white vio- competing for good jobs and decent housing er. Named in colonial times for its dark fertile lence. In the 1950s the city’s industries began in a metropolis that, despite its boomtown soil, Black Bottom was ethnically mixed at to relocate to the suburbs and rural areas (a reputation, did not have an unlimited supply the time, with black and white migrants from change that, together with automation, hurt of either. These newcomers were not saints. the Deep South crowded into rickety wooden They were human beings, with the usual houses alongside immigrants from Italy, Po- tendencies toward idleness, vice, and crime. land, Russia, and Germany. Discussed in this essay: What happened is easy to see, if you look at it Bullied by other children for his slight stat- with two eyes instead of one. White Detroi- ure and coke-bottle glasses, Hayden might Detroit, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. ters managed to curb those tendencies more not have survived had it not been for his fos- Screenplay by Mark Boal. successfully than their black counterparts, be- ter parents—who did their duty by him, de- Annapurna Pictures cause the latter’s aspirations ran into a mad- spite the bitterness of their lives and what he dening array of obstacles that made Jim Crow later called “the chronic angers of that house.” look simple by comparison. We know this from his most famous poem, black workers the most), and its oldest black In his prize-winning book, The Origins “Those Winter Sundays”: neighborhoods were leveled for highway con- of the Urban Crisis (1996), native Detroiter struction. In 1967, 50 years ago this summer, Thomas J. Sugrue describes in painstaking Sundays too my father got up early the city exploded again. If Hayden had writ- detail how the barriers to black social mobil- And put his clothes on in the blueblack ten an account of this history, he might well ity were erected and sustained by Detroit’s cold, have titled it Angle of Descent. corporate executives, factory managers, em- then with cracked hands that ached ployment services, union leaders, real estate from labor in the weekday weather made Seeking (But Not Finding) a Better Life brokers, lending institutions, and govern- banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked ment officials at every level, including the fed- him. olstoy wrote that all happy fam- eral. The few plants that sought to hire and ilies are the same, but every unhappy promote blacks were immediately subject to Hayden’s struggles began early and lasted Tfamily is unhappy in its own way. The wildcat strikes by angry whites. One of these long. In 1966, when his poetry was just be- same is true of America’s great cities. Among occurred in June 1943, followed by sporadic ginning to attract notice, he said to a gather- the most racially troubled of our cities, every street fighting between blacks and whites. On ing of black writers at Fisk University, “Let’s one is racially troubled in its own way. In the Sunday, June 20, the city park Belle Isle ex- quit saying we’re black writers writing to black case of Detroit, the troubles are rooted in its ploded in what can only be described as a race folks—it has been given importance it should meteoric growth as an industrial powerhouse, war. Three days later, when federal troops not have.” This was the heyday of the Black beginning with the automobile in the 1910s finally restored order, 34 people had been Arts Movement, an offshoot of Black Power, and peaking during World War II, when its killed, including 17 blacks shot by police, and so Hayden was swiftly denounced as an Uncle mighty factories were repurposed to build 675 had been seriously injured. Tom. Stoic as ever in the face of bullying, he warplanes, tanks, armored cars, engines of As for the barriers, they remained. And replied, “Baby, that’s your problem, not mine.” all kinds. At that time, Detroit was dubbed over the next decade their human cost be- Hayden published his fourth book of po- “the arsenal of democracy.” And so it was—for came more and more evident. In 1963, writes ems, Angle of Ascent, in 1975. By the time of millions of people in countries being ravaged Sugrue, “crime rates rose precipitously,” and Claremont Review of Books w Fall 2017 Page 95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm social workers “in the oldest [black] neighbor- that was before overdoses from fentanyl, her- hoods…found alarmingly high rates of juve- oin, prescription opioids, cocaine, and meth- nile delinquency.” amphetamine became the leading cause of Alarmed by these changes, Detroiters in death for Americans under the age of 50. in the “better-off” areas organized “property owners This generalized blight forms the backdrop associations” and “neighborhood improve- to this summer’s commemoration of Detroit’s next issue ment associations” to (in the words of one 1967 riot/rebellion. (I use both words because such group) “protect their investments, to to use just one is to whistle to one or the other control their community,…and to prevent side in the dogfight now passing for political the spread of blight.” Sugrue quotes a 1957 debate in America.) study in which a number of affected families In Detroit itself, major media outlets and explain why they abandoned their old neigh- cultural institutions made a point of reach- CRB Winter 2017/18 borhoods—because those areas were “start- ing out to all citizens, especially those who ing ‘to go down hill’” with delinquency, crime, remember 1967. While not exactly a “truth and the general “rowdyism” of “loud, vulgar and reconciliation” process, these efforts re- Hadley Arkes people…who had wild parties and used vul- flected the humility and common sense of Conservatives gar language.” a city that has been through the wars. The & Free Speech To the “woke” anti-racists of 2017, words white mayor, Mike Duggan, was just re- like “blight,” “rowdyism,” “loud,” and “vulgar” elected by a population that is 83% black; the John Marini & are “code” (or, if you prefer, “dog-whistles”) African-American police chief, James Craig, Michael M. Uhlmann for entrenched attitudes of racism and white is respected throughout the city; a recent supremacy. Such attitudes were definitely at poll finds more optimism about race in De- Our Bureaucrat Rulers work in mid-20th-century Detroit. But so troit than national polls find in the country were other factors, including the emergence, at large. Bradley C.S. Watson in the ghettos of Detroit and other cities, of At the heart of Detroit’s commemoration Progressives in Decline? what is now called “the underclass.” If you was the Historical Society’s Oral History think that wanting to move away from the project, which interviewed hundreds of citi- Matthew Continetti underclass is pure racism, then consider: the zens about those five days in 1967 when 43 Why Senators “better-off” Detroiters cited in the previous people were killed; 1,189 were injured; 7,200 Write Books paragraph were not white. They were black. arrested; 388 lost their homes; and 2,509 lost But they, too, feared the blight. their businesses and livelihoods. Also inter- Mary Eberstadt viewed were several of the (uncounted) fire- Cheap Sex The Blight fighters, police officers, National Guardsmen, U.S. army soldiers, and ordinary citizens who Allen C. Guelzo oday the blight has no color. it is risked their lives to contain the destruction, The Gilded Age found in countless cities, suburbs, and not add to it. Tsmall towns where Americans of every Similarly, the Detroit Institute of Arts’s race and ethnicity are tempted by what anoth- Home Movies project uncovered 45 hours of Joseph Tartakovsky er Detroit writer, Charlie LeDuff, calls “Work footage taken by Detroit residents through- Herbert Hoover versus the Hustle.” Describing his coming of out 1967. Most of these home movies are not age in the 1970s in the white working-class about the riot/rebellion, needless to say. But Samuel Gregg enclave of Westland, just 12 miles west of De- the project also acquired rare news footage Hayek & Keynes troit, LeDuff writes: from the local ABC affiliate (the only TV sta- tion to cover the events).