Thread by @TomSugrue

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 1. Detroit's long history of organized white resistance to African Americans in the housing market and on the shop floor, which I write about in Origins of the Urban Crisis, is definitely part of the story. That resistance found serious support among key political figures...

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 2. Major figures who abetted and legitimized white resistance include Detroit mayor Albert Cobo (1950-1957), Dearborn mayor Orville Hubbard (1942-1978), and Oakland County executive L. Brooks Patterson (1992-2019).

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 3. Metro Detroit was also the site of massive white resistance to school integration. White supremacists bombed school buses in Pontiac in 1971. nytimes.com/1971/08/31/arc…

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 4. Up North--the refuge of many white Detroiters with few nonwhites--is in my experience (we still need a lot more research on the topic) a hotbed of conspiracy theories about Detroit.

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 5. As an aside, one of my relatives in Presque Isle County stocked arms and fortified his cottage for Y2K out of fear that the n---s from Detroit were going to raid the area in the expected chaos of early 2000.

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 6. While I am not an economic determinist, it's clear that the state's profound economic woes fertilized racism. Michigan has a long history of blaming racial others for job insecurity from WWII hate strikes to the Vincent Chin murder.

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 7. Throw in the "Murder City" tropes and the "if it bleeds it leads" sensationalism of the local news media, along with fervent law and order politics in a state with a deeply entrenched gun culture, and you have all of the ingredients for militarization.

@dynarski @KevinMKruse 8. Michigan's militias need to be understood as part of a long history of intense segregation and entangled racial and economic resentment that was legitimized by elites, elected officials, and reporters who would never pick up a gun themselves but who stoked the anger.