Segregation reveals more about us than we care to admit
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In metropolitan Detroit, we hold certain truths to be self-evident.
We take for granted vast tracts of space -- from the horse farms of Lyon Township to the apple orchards of Washington Township; from the grazing deer in Franklin to the mansions in the city's elite neighborhoods of Palmer Woods and Boston Boulevard.
We assume a right to multiple cars, free parking and an expressway ramp where you need one.
When we feel fenced in, we move. When we need more space, or higher ceilings, or a great room, we go grab it. Every cornfield is a potential subdivision.
Where we err is thinking that this attitude is American, normal, shared by everyone else. That here, in middle America, we are somehow moderate and sensible in our approach to regional growth.
"Detroit is an extreme example, no, the extreme example" of the way job sprawl accentuates racial inequality, says Michael Stoll, an associate professor of urban studies at UCLA in Los Angeles.
Stoll, who published a study this week on job sprawl and how it affects jobs for blacks and Latinos, found in Detroit the ultimate expression of his hypothesis. In a city where, according to a Wayne State study, 78 percent of the region's jobs are being created at least 10 miles from the central city, most of the job growth remains elusive to the largely urban African-American population.
No city topped Detroit in Stoll's measure of the separation between blacks and jobs.
"Oh, how obvious," the Metro Detroit dweller is accustomed to thinking.
The city is more than 80 percent black. The jobs are growing elsewhere.
Where's the news here?
Extreme racial segregation is a fact of life here and, some might argue, a matter of choice. No physical walls or laws prevent anyone from moving anywhere.
Stoll is one of those who argues that the barriers are subtle and formidable: When jobs are opening up 20 miles away, they're tricky to learn about and, logistically, difficult to reach.
Distance creates an information gap and a transportation problem: Cars -- and gas -- are costly, buses few.
Even in cities with good public transportation, like Chicago, he found that job sprawl accentuated racial separation. Essentially, it permits a kind of informal apartheid to flourish.
Kurt Metzger, who directs the Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University, notes that Detroit's racial separation is unique -- and that, no matter what the methodology, studies like Stoll's will inevitably single out Detroit and this region.
"Detroit will always come out the worst," he says bluntly.
Even as he confirms what we already know about this region, he's reminding us of something we'd like to forget: Most of America doesn't live like this.
Metropolitan Detroit represents a severe deviation from the norm.
That's the mirror Stoll and other researchers hold up for us: We've gone through the looking glass without even realizing it.
Yes, we know a painful truth about ourselves. That we continue to tolerate it says something instructive, and disturbing, about our character.
Laura Berman's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in Metro. Reach her at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.
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