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If there is a model city of racial progress in the U.S., Detroit should be it. All the surface signs are upbeat. Since 1974, Detroit has had a black mayor, Coleman Young, whose aggressive leadership is respected nationally and has given him influence in Washington. Six of the nine members of the city council are black, including its president. So is Chief of Police William Hart, as well as Superintendant of Schools Arthur Jefferson and a majority of the county supervisors.
Moreover, that black power has been effectively used. Young has developed a rapport with the city's long dominant white businessmen, including Henry Ford II, and persuaded them to pour millions of dollars into revitalizing the downtown area. Because of the riverfront Renaissance Center and other new convention facilities, Detroit will be the host of such major events as the Republican National Convention in July and share with nearby Pontiac the glories of holding football's 1982 Super Bowl. A downtown that was deserted by 6 p.m. a few years ago now bustles with normal nighttime traffic.
Wayne State University's sophisticated medical center and a network of neighborhood clinics serve the black population, which constitutes 60% of Detroit's 1.2 million residents. New housing projects, many built by black-owned construction companies, have spread mostly into the black neighborhoods. In an unabashed drive to help blacks, Young has openly favored black firms when awarding city contracts. He has insisted that every time a white officer is promoted in the police department, a black one must be elevated too; the 35% of the force that is now black has a high proportion of officers who rank above patrolmen.
Despite all that, there are many black leaders who feel that little has really changed to make life for most blacks better since the dreadful days in 1967 when riots killed 43 people and left 5,000 homeless. "There is an illusion of progress," says Roy Williams, president of the Detroit Urban League. "Blacks have been deceived into thinking they have made more progress than they really have."
Why the doubts? For one thing, Detroit's black leaders point to the public school system, which is 85% black. By the time a Detroit student is in the eleventh grade, he has fallen two years behind the national norms in reading. Lamont Crenshaw, a black clinical psychologist, echoes a point made by urban educators across the country: "There are kids getting out of school who can't read, who can't write, who can't fill out an unemployment form. What are they going to do?"
What many do is wind up jobless. The rate of unemployment among blacks in Detroit is estimated at 30%—more than twice that of whites. Already thousands of black autoworkers have been laid off in the current recession.
Despite good intentions and hard work by white and black leaders, frustration, fear and anger are growing among blacks. Crenshaw has little faith in future progress: "In the year 2000, we'll have a mall with two big stores and a glamorous riverfront. But you will still be able to go up to the top of one of the Renaissance Center towers and look out on one of the worst ghettos you'll ever see."