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Sunday, November 3, 2002
Corrected article: Cornel West is a professor at Princeton University. The university was incorrect in the following story.
 Alan Lessig / The Detroit News
Unlike many
black families, the Stantons -- dad Al, mom Theresa, and children
Alexander, 11, left, and Krystina, 15 -- say they've found
comfortable lives in their mostly white Troy neighborhood, but
return to Detroit to reinforce the family's
past.
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Part 3: Beyond a simple choice
By Brad Heath, Oralandar
Brand-Williams and Shawn D. Lewis / The Detroit
News
The shadows of Metro Detroit's polarized racial history can be seen through an analysis of the 2000 census.
Three communities that border Detroit -- Dearborn, Warren and the Grosse Pointes -- once had much publicized histories of exclusion. Today, only two in every 100 of their residents are black. Across Eight Mile, Mack and Tireman, 80 of 100 Detroiters are black.
Despite the acceptance of a few pioneering blacks in those suburbs, old reputations die slowly.
So do other barriers that suggest simple choice is not the lone explanation for the racial division.
Regardless of their income, blacks are far more likely than whites to be turned down for home mortgages, an analysis of 2001 federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows. That means blacks who earn more than $200,000 are denied mortgages 25 percent of the time, compared to 7 percent of whites with similar incomes.
Blacks face the highest denial rates when the homes they're trying to buy are in the suburbs.
"(Blacks) are still perceived, no matter how much money we make, as too risky," said Veronica Williams, executive director of the Detroit Alliance for Fair Banking. "We may have law and medical degrees and have all these titles behind our names but (lenders) still wonder where we get the money from to pay a $2,000 or $2,500 monthly mortgage."
The Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit still fields more than 150 complaints of discrimination and other unfair housing practices each year, but the number has fallen steadily in recent years. It's a trend administrators attribute to real estate agents becoming more conscientious about fair housing rules.
"Even if we eliminate practices of discrimination, it doesn't mean we're going to have patterns of interracial housing," notes Cliff Schrupp, who runs the agency and who has seen improvements in how blacks are treated. "People who support interracial housing need to act it out. Whites need to be willing to make the move where they are not the majority and vice versa."
Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and author of the book "Race Matters," said segregated neighborhoods persist because of long-held generalizations.
"You still have these white stereotypes of African-Americans being hypercriminal and hypersexual and it's still operative," he said Saturday afternoon during a speaking visit to Detroit. "They don't want their children to go to the same schools as black children or fall in love with black kids."
West added: "The irony is that we are integrated in the workplace but we have this de facto residential segregation."
Few problems in suburbs
Racial concerns are not universal. A growing number of blacks, including attorney Al Stanton and his family, say they've found comfortable lives in mostly white neighborhoods. They've found the suburbs more accepting since a growing number of minorities started moving in.
Still, Stanton takes his son back to northeast Detroit to ensure the 11-year-old doesn't forget his family's past. Stanton and his wife, Theresa, said because their children are growing up in a white neighborhood, they've had to ensure that their kids remember their heritage.
"There are so few African-American children that attend the schools, so my children don't have as many African-American friends as I suppose I used to," said Theresa Stanton, who is chief anesthesiologist at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit.
Others say the benefits of living in mostly black Detroit are worth the cost.
"I never considered living in the suburbs," said Lawrence Hale, who owns a mechanical contracting company in Detroit and whose wife, Jeannette Dickens-Hale, is a Farmington Hills teacher.
Their six-bedroom Tudor is in the city's University district, close to the area's cultural center and not far from the white suburb where daughter Taylor goes to private school.
"This is where I can make my money and this is where my base is," said Hale, an African-American who, with his wife, earns more than $200,000 a year.
Still, the tug of suburban life -- the new homes and top-notch public schools -- was strong enough to lure the Stantons and some other blacks out of Detroit. Their first move was to Bloomfield Hills; then they moved to Troy. Since then, the couple said, they've faced few problems in their new home.
"In our neighborhood, we are the only African-Americans," Al Stanton said. "But there are only 12 houses here. We don't feel isolated."
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