Thread by @cremieuxrecueil

Trump is wrong about this. Canada didn't steal the auto industry from the U.S.

The decline of the auto industry in the U.S. was driven in no small part by racism.

Let's talk Detroit🧵

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1889106492508316123

It seems shocking nowadays, but the best major American city for a young person to be in as late as 1980 was Detroit.

The Motor City was America's richest city, not too long ago. Plenty of you reading this will remember a prosperous, beautiful Detroit.

If you're in tech, you might have noticed that a disproportionate number of your friends are from Michigan, and specifically, from suburbs like Troy, Novi, Farmington, Royal Oak, Rochester, and so on.

When Detroit went, so did the reasons for talented young people to stay.

So, why did Detroit decline?

There are stories in here about mounting foreign trade and competition, protectionism-driven complacency, auto worker unions, bureaucratic missteps, and urban sprawl, but all of that's minor next to the impact of Mayor Coleman Young.

Coleman Young was Detroit's first Black mayor. His political ascendance to that position traces to a 1948 Supreme Court decision.

In Shelley v. Kraemer, the Supreme Court made it possible for Blacks to buy properties in neighborhoods that had race restrictions on homeownership.

The effect of the ruling was to spike Black urbanization.

It seems the people who set up covenants knew their offerings would be bought by Blacks if they were able, and they didn't want that.

In cities like Chicago, Kansas City, Baltimore, and St. Louis, the effect was massive:

Detroit was no exception.

After Blacks became legally capable of moving into the places in the city that they could afford, they started doing that right away.

But as Blacks moved into the cities, Whites opted to escape crime, poverty, and integration, to the suburbs.

Detroit went from 83.58% White in 1950 to 70.83% White in 1960. By 1970, the city was just 53.98% non-Hispanic White, and it had skyrocketed from 16.25% Black in 1950 to 43.69% Black by 1970.

The city responded to this in various ways, like with police programs such as CRASH.

During the "long, hot summer of 1967", Detroit was hit with the 12th Street Riot, and the results was that the city wound up aflame with racial tensions that nobody—not President Johnson, nor Governor Romney, or Mayor Cavanagh—could squelch.

White flight kept going.

In 1973, the mayoral race was between a White man—John Nichols, the police commissioner—and a Black man—the protagonist of the story, Coleman Young.

Almost every White in the city voted Nichols. Almost every Black voted Young.

It was a racial headcount and Young came out ahead.

In that election, Young's margin of victory was slim. There were almost as many Whites as there were Blacks in the city, but the Blacks were more motivated to get out the vote.

Young never had another slim margin after that. His rule was about building a lead, by any means.

And it succeeded!

In 1977, he had an 18pp lead over a moderate Black candidate dubbed "the great black white hope". In 1983, he beat his last White opponent by 32 pp. In his final two elections, he beat a Black opponent by 20 pp in 1985 and 12pp in 1989.

He simply ruled.

But the way he got this rule was by ensuring that Detroit had no way back, by guaranteeing that the city would never be America's richest city again, barring some sort of miracle.

Young sought to implement policies to change the city's demographics: more Blacks, fewer Whites.

The Whites in the city recognized Young's efforts, and felt that they were discriminated against.

And Whites responded by moving to suburbs located as close as possible to Detroit, but not controlled by Mayor Young.

7/10 Whites agreed: Coleman Young discriminates!

And Young's policy was crafty.

For example, in response to Whites choosing commutes instead of his rule, he increased the commuter tax rate, while raising the local income tax rate on the remaining, well-to-do mostly White upper crust of the city.

Young targeted building projects so as to make it easier for his supporters to stay in the city.

To be clear, this was an absurd move given the White exodus meant the housing market in the city was busted and houses sold for less than construction costs.

Young also cut public services favored by Whites, including sabotaging the police force, fire department, and trash collection.

At the same time, he promoted immorality that the White population took umbrage with in the form of things like casinos.

Young didn't do anything during this time to attract, keep, or grow the skilled labor force needed for the local auto industry.

So its decline was assured by his rule. No one was going to move back in sufficient numbers to sustain it, and the city ended up all the worse for it.

This one mayor had effectively shut out the existence and future possibility of Detroit's agglomeration economy in making cars.

But to be clear, Coleman Young wasn't even the first Mayor to do this in America.

Boston Mayor James Curley also sought to weaponize demographics.

Mayor Curley was proudly Irish, and he hated Yankees (this used to mean 'northern founding stock Americans'), and none more than the Boston Brahmin.

Between his first mayoral election in 1913 and his last in 1944, he managed to oust the city's Anglos in a reign of impunity.

Curley was insanely corrupt, and did everything he could to aggravate Anglos. He hated Anglos, and if he knew you were an Anglo, a Protestant, or anyone not in his ethnically-new-to-America coalition, he probably hated you, specifically.

Curley discriminated directly and openly.

He would tell Anglos they could get a job under him if and only if they could do the impossible.

He would raise the salaries of roles with few Anglos and lower the salaries of roles with many Anglos.

This was not good for Boston as a whole, just as Young's rule was not good for Detroit.

As in Michigan, people tried to escape Curley whenever they could, and he was happy with that. He wanted an ethno-city, not prosperity, and he was very clear about that!

An even more explicit ruler who caused harm by exploiting demographics is Robert Mugabe, who sought to get Whites to leave Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and to alienate opposed Blacks.

He went so far as to hire his own marauders to kill and harass White farmers in droves.

Thread limit, so I'll say this: Zimbabwe has turned out predictably.

So has Detroit, and so did Boston in the time of Curley. Boston has arguably never recovered, since without Curley, it would very likely have become a far larger, better managed city.

Sources and reading material:

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer…

storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/fa7859…

policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunder…

policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunder…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph…