American History

At the center cities expense, military-industrial development was fostered in sub-urban areas during World War II as the federal government promoted industrial de-concentration as a safety precaution to air attacks. New plant constructions like the Chrysler Warren Tank Plant (Detroit) and the Willow Run aircraft complex were subsidized and taken advantaged by firms which began plant operations in 1941 and 1942 respectively. Since the Korean War, the governments unrelenting support for industrial de-centralization went even further and that 92.5 percent of its total funding for new plant construction and purchase of equipment went to firms situated in outlying parts of the region in contrast to 7.5 percent allocated to firms within Detroit. When the parallel plant policy was implemented by the Department of Defense, tank engine production which was originally operated by Chrysler shifted to New Orleans, Delaware and Newark. Furthermore, aircraft engine construction which Ford had spearheaded in Detroit amidst the Second World War was transferred to sites in Missouri and Chicago and light tanks manufacturing to Cleveland. Detroits share on the federal defense budget had been further diminished along with the rising power of the Pentagon-financed Sun Belt and its congress politicians. As a result, Congress Southern members pushed federal military spending towards their home states which doubled their national defense budget from 1951 to 1960. Industrial centers in Detroit, Northeast and Midwest have largely benefited from defense dollars on the West. However, the fast conversion of plants from defense to civilian production (due to high demand for cars) during the Post-war left Detroit area unattractive to manufacturers of new high-technological aircraft and electronics. Detroit lost 56000 defense jobs in 1954 which influenced the decline in employment in other industries. As a result, a spatial mismatch between urban African American and jobs was created as firms moved out the city, influenced by either market considerations or the government. The job flight was worsened with the persistent housing discrimination often experienced by urban blacks. Although there were a few large suburban plants who hired blacks, smaller firms preferred not to. As the gap grew between job opportunity and black workers, the latter started to rely on parts suppliers (former automobile manufacturers) which more often than not, hired 5.8 percent of whites that is, the job was not exclusively offered to blacks despite the situation. According to a survey following the closure of Murray Auto Body in 1954, 76 percent of black employees had already exhausted their unemployment benefits in contrast to 27 percent of the whites. In the article, Sugrue focused on the direct impact of government and economic policy towards de-industrialization and how the latter had contributed to cities decentralization and social segregation. How did he come up with such conclusion then Using Detroit as a perfect model, he emphasized how the state was transformed from being a Second World War democratic den into a ghost arsenal in the Post-War years, by simply arguing on facts about budget allocation and subsequent government decisions as influential factors towards the decentralization of cities (Detroit being one) intensifying the issue on ethnic, employment and housing discrimination.

The Silent Majority
During the post-war growth boom, one of its most identified features was the changing of American Souths physical landscape along with the transformation of its political culture. It was in this respect that most families have relied on government programs for massive subsidies as a result of the implementation of residential segregation. Taxes were reduced, new highways were constructed and mortgage interests were lowered and made affordable to white suburban families. In addition, urban renewal policies which were originally concentrated to black residents in Charlotte were bankrolled. At the back of these improvements, however, white-collar families were outraged about these changes as many had depicted residential segregation as the class-based outcome of meritocratic individualism rather than the unconstitutional product of structural racism.  Residents argued that many of them have made biggest investments from their home, its location to schools where they send their children being one. Home-owners claimed that this step taken by the government created a new version of the American Dream  one which is race-conscious and one which is unconstitutionally-exercised in social engineering furthermore, a violation of free-market meritocracy. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report in 1968 which asked reconsideration of the middle-class on their unpopular historical interpretation that the white society is implicated in the ghetto and that the white institutions were the ones which have created and maintained the existing order. Furthermore, the Kerner Commission argued that in order to push through with present policies, the division of the country into two different societies should be made permanent that is, whites should be located in outlying and suburb areas while blacks must be located in central cities. From this point of view, it is obvious that Lassiters approach in his book differed from the first as it tends to look at racism being the determining factor of how federal policies were shaped between 1960s and 1970s, rather than to look at it the other way around. In addition, the American dilemma of racial segregation had triggered the creation of a new dilemma which embodied a fusion between class segregation and racial discrimination. Unlike the first article, the second book claims that the decentralization of cities was a by product of the combined persistent issues on racism and metropolitan class struggle as a pre-requisite to racial integration. Its strengths are embodied in Lassiters ability to specifically identify three fundamental transformations which occurred between 1940 and 1970 (1) the replacement of the Black Belt with the Sunbelt as the center of political power in the South (2) the development of the suburban landscape and implementation of residential segregation and (3) the collapse of the New Deal Order and fading of the Southern distinctiveness.

Boston against Busing
Ronald Formisano discussed how 1960s had shaped anti-busing or desegregation campaigns and demonstrations in Boston 1970s. Formerly, it was the blacks, feminist women, gays and long-haired college youth who have dominated the streets in the 1960s but surprisingly it was the housewives, middle Americans and blue-collar ethnics who filled the streets a decade after  the so-called heirs of the 1960 protesters. Although it was the black civil rights movement which served as their immediate model, most of them were middle-class white youth and southern blacks favored by the working class, low-middle and middle classes. Rather than emphasizing on the mutual effect of racial segregation and the cities de-centralization, Formisano described how Bostons populist character had emerged out from these issues. The focus of Boston anti-busing was largely circumstantial with respect to judicial tyranny and not merely as a product of peoples anxiety. Due to persistent sense of unfairness, injustice and rights deprivation, however, the new citizen revolts emerged in the 1970s as a direct protest to the bureaucratic government and big businesses. The movements of neighborhood defense and democracy in action have become prominent during this period which aimed to regain some measure of power as in the words of Harry C. Boyte. Furthermore, one of the books agendum was inclined to discuss how decentralization and issues on racism affected primary social institutions like education. Going back on August 26, 1963, in an attempt to promote the dream of brotherhood and racial integration, 250000 black and white marchers gathered in front of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Ten days prior this event, the citys all-white committee met with local NAACP leaders to discuss demands with respect to public schools in black neighborhoods. As black activists discussed the school segregations first de facto, committee chair Louise Hicks called for an immediate adjournment which had disappointed them. The author of the book aimed to discuss the back lash of the racial integration attempt proposed in the second book. In addition, Formisano had most likely viewed education as a den of persistent racial and ethnical issues eminent in the south while affecting cities like Chicago and San Francisco in the north, where in the 1960s for instance, efforts were made to integrate schools by African-Americans. In Chicago, however, limited attempts of student transfers provoked protests by the whites (white school population fell 25 from 1975-1977)  a manifestation that even though racial integration and policy on desegregation have been implemented in the prior decade, official immobility on the part of the government may have failed to provide a perfect closure on the issue.  Formisanos approach is strengthened by the fact it dwelled on a more specific context to merely discuss the effects of cities decentralization, the issue on racism in schools being one, in a much smaller scope.