Is present-day Detroit partly the result of large-scale "ethnic cleansing" inside the U.S.? (of "Ethnic-Americans")

This is just the latest in a long line of articles pointing out how Detroit is, in a manner of speaking, returning to nature. Their population has shrunk by half since the 50s, leaving large areas of that city abandoned and reverting to a somewhat natural state. And - since they don't have much money of their own - they want federal money to raze buildings and relocate residents.

Certainly, a major part of their problems is due to how globalism scum (why mince words?) helped damage the manufacturing base inside the U.S. in their quest for a flattened world. However, there might be even more to it, and that leads us into the book "The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing " (link). Per a review:

The high-rise "projects" may have been a dismal failure, it is said, but urban renewal was done with good intentions. Not so, [author E. Michael Jones] argues in this immense volume that spans from the World War I era to the 1993 death of Philadelphian Dennis Clark, whose urban renewal career led him from Catholicism through Quakerism to agnostic Irish nationalism and whom Jones makes a touchstone of urban renewal's moral quality. The redlining, condemning, bulldozing, race riots, white flight, and aggrandizement of federal authority at the expense of cities and states that accompanied urban renewal were, Jones says, the consequences of WASP elites fighting to keep hold of the reins of power. Those elites saw the potentially powerful Catholic ethnic neighborhoods, with the church's influence animating them, as their primary political enemies. Armed with social engineering techniques, abetted by the subversive skills of Quaker do-gooders and military intelligence, and further empowered by fellow WASP jurists, they devastated Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston generally and the welfare of blacks in particular. But they maintained power, having gutted the Catholic ethnics, who fell into the trap of overt racism, and driven them into socially atomizing suburbia. Incorporating all the details into his sweeping narrative (the notes just refer to his sources), Jones makes gripping drama out of urban development. Unfortunately, the epic it recounts is tragic.

At least one of those major groups is still active, the American Friends Service Committee, and note also the effort from the Barack Obama campaign to reach out to "Ethnic-Americans".

Sun, 03/14/2010 - 20:54 · Importance: 4