inequality – Alex B. Hill

White Problems: The Uneven Revitalization of Detroit by the Numbers

How far have we come for racial equity in Detroit? Better yet, what is owed to Indigenous and Black Detroiters as the reparations task force begins meeting? Proposal R to form the reparations task force garnered the most votes from Detroiters (more votes than even Mayor Duggan received) during the 2021 election.

“Detroiters still see and experience racial inequity.”

Infrastructure for broadband internet and electricity distribution exacerbate spatial racism. The metro Detroit health care system was dubbed the “most racially segregated” in the country while nonprofit leadership in the city remains racially under-represented. Detroiters are furious that their own city government over-assessed them by $600 million in property taxes and are eager to see what a Reparations Task Force can achieve. Black developers continue to be overlooked for funding and whites continue to get over half of all mortgages in the city. In many cases, Black Detroiters continue to feel left out of the city’s rejuvenation, either by design or by de facto neglect.

Recently, Detroit has seen multiple racial equity reports released. A new effort, Detroit Equity Inc. with Wayne State University, recently released their Detroit Equity Report at the “Detroit Equity Symposium.” Detroit Future City hosted their third “Equity Forum” where their new Center for Equity, Engagement, and Research presented data from their Economic Equity Dashboard. New Detroit Inc. held their annual racial equity conference in October and publishes a semi-regular data report on racial disparities. Lastly, the City of Detroit convenes an internal Detroit Equity Council that publishes an annual report on city government activities. What data, whose report, and who is leading racial equity work in Detroit? We desperately need some shared measurements.

In 2014, I published an infographic and analysis that highlighted the inequity of resource access in the “revitalizing” city. Many residents noted it reflected what they experienced or had seen while many of the organizations and institutions [white-led] that I profiled pushed back against my analysis while still confirming the numbers were correct. In many cases, the fellowship organizations blamed their corporate partners who made final hiring decisions.

In Detroit, the leading “revitalization” programs still don’t represent the people impacted. The issue of structural racism is bigger than a handful of programs and fellowships, but these programs offer a critical reflection point. Many social problems function with a network effect and racial disparities in employment have been persistent. The fellowships reflected their corporate sponsors and foundation priorities similarly reflect their boards and leadership. Representation matters, but especially when those represented do not reflect the impacted community.

The 25% population loss between 2000 and 2010 was predominantly among Detroit Black middle-class households. On average, the city continues to lose around 5,000 Black Detroiters every year. The 2020 Census shows us that Detroit’s population continues to drop. In particular, Black residents have chosen to find opportunity elsewhere. These charts profiling various Detroit initiatives highlight Black representation specifically as Detroit’s largest racial demographic group at 77% (U.S. Census, American Community Survey, 2020).

Leaders of the Revitalization Narrative

The narrative of revitalization in Detroit is driven by foundations, fellowships, and funding.

Fellowships like Challenge Detroit and the Detroit Revitalization Fellows (DRF) expressly targeted young college graduates and mid-career professionals to come to Detroit. Both pushed back on my original analysis, but welcomed ideas to improve recruitment outreach. Challenge Detroit has been slowly improving representation among its classes of fellows, but dipped in 2022 to 25% representation. DRF saw positive change in one year before falling back to its old ways. The last DRF class was selected in 2017 and finished their fellowships in 2019. The DRF program is currently under-going major changes and updates.

Foundation leadership (specifically foundations that are Detroit-based or Detroit-centric in their work) saw a stagnation and no improvements in representation among senior leadership roles. This is notably different than nonprofits where representation is lacking, but Detroit nonprofits have better representation than foundation leaders.

The new addition in this category since 2014 is the Motor City Match (MCM) program, which was specifically designed to provide support for Detroiters in their neighborhoods. MCM supports both new and existing businesses. While the program came under scrutiny for its overspending on consultants, the representation among awardees was “above average” with a majority going to minority-owned businesses. The program halted operations during the investigation into its use of funds and has since restarted.

Ideas Creation

Idea generation comes from many corners, but speaker series’ and universities serve as hubs of new connections.

The TEDxDetroit speaker series is the most prominent and well attended of the various speaker series in the city. Over time the series has improved representation of speakers, but has had a hard time maintaining Black representation. The 2021 speakers fell to 30% Black representation and 2022 had 41% representation.

New Economy Initiative (NEI) Ideas bills itself on rewarding new ideas in business and entrepreneurship. NEI Ideas consistently supported Black-owned businesses in Detroit. Many NEI Ideas recipients get double-counted across programs like Challenge Detroit, MCM, and/or ProsperUS Detroit. To succeed in Detroit typically means tapping into multiple resources and programs all at once.

Black representation among Detroit-based university leaders dipped in 2016 and never improved. The majority of the city’s university leaders don’t look like the students in Detroit. DRF is also run by Wayne State University along with programs like the Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL) that brings together regional leaders with the goal of advancing racial equity. The program had a short funding gap, but came back with larger fellowship cohorts.

Startup Incubation

Detroit is not Silicon Valley. Programs like MCM or NEI Ideas could fit under this heading as well, but this will include some of the more traditional startup and tech support style programs – but not all are technology focused.

Detroit Venture Partners (DVP) is the most widely known venture capital investment group in Detroit. The firm, by its own stats, shows it has funded just one women-owned business and no minority-owned startups. In Detroit, one could assume there would be more diverse opportunities, but the long-running diversity issue in venture capital is not new. Google has set up shop in Detroit with plans to offer tech training programs in the renovated Michigan Central [Station]. The Apple Developer Academy also launched in Detroit with support from MSU.

Detroit Creative Corridor Center (DC3) existed for a brief period and faced similar issue with difficulty supporting a diverse group of creative businesses in Detroit. The program closed and pivoted to a wholly different program called Detroit Design Core, based at the College for Creative Studies, that leads on Detroit’s UNESCO City of Design designation and the “Month of Design” series of events.

The BUILD Institute has been a standout series of programs that truly served Detroiters and diverse businesses and entrepreneurs. The program regularly had high Black representation until it also took a break and moved into a new space called “The Corner” at the old Tigers Stadium site. Hopefully their full programming will return.

An addition since the 2014 analysis is the ProsperUS Detroit training program. The program is a powerhouse of being place-based, neighborhood focused, and supportive of Black, Latino, and multi-racial entrepreneurs. Since launching in 2012, 98% of program participants have been entrepreneurs of color. No other program in Detroit comes close to this level of representation for Detroiters.

Conclusions

Detroit has a long way to go when the city administration has regularly been hostile to community voices and concerns. The first white Mayor since before 1974 has toyed with discussions on race, but in turn contributed to mass disenfranchisement of Black residents. Task forces rarely have significant impacts on cities and people, but hopefully the Reparations Task Force can at least keep pushing the conversation and influence local foundations, nonprofits, and other programs to adopt an equity strategy in their efforts.

The overall trend of improving Black representation in revitalization focused programs and leadership roles has dipped again in 2022 with two large programs (Challenge Detroit and TEDxDetroit) lacking the gains in representation seen in past years. It is concerning that many of these programs have been unable to maintain consistency in their outreach efforts. It is surprising still that the city has yet to move the needle on offering opportunities for every neighbor to take part in the revitalization of the city. White people in positions of leadership and those who have benefited from these Detroit programs must do more to shift the city towards greater racial equity.

Detroit’s Per Square Mile: Inequality from Space

Development, Maps

Firstly, this was not my idea, but I wanted to test it out in Detroit. Tim De Chant posted on Per Square Mile that inequality can be visualized from space via satellite images on Google Maps/Earth. He previously wrote about the concept that the lack of urban trees represented the absence of wealth in certain areas of a city.

“Research published a few years ago shows a tight relationship between per capita income and forest cover. The study’s authors tallied total forest cover for 210 cities over 100,000 people in the contiguous United States using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s natural resource inventory and satellite imagery. They also gathered economic data, including income, land prices, and disposable income.” (source)

The research basically stated that with an increase in income the demand for trees increased likewise decrease in income showed a decrease in demand for trees. As De Chant writes, the authors found that trees were seen as a luxury item.

This all made the gears turn in my head about how this research and De Chant’s image grabs from Google satellite imaging applied to Detroit.

48205 Osborn (“Deadliest” Zipcode)

I choose 48205 because, “The neighborhood of 44,000 residents accounts for 6 percent of the city’s population, but was home to 15 percent of its murders and 13 percent of its shooting victims.”

48221 Palmer Woods

I used to live in this zipcode, in the University District. I would often run around the Palmer Woods neighborhood because I was fascinated by how different running south past 6 Mile Rd. and running north above 7 Mile Rd. could be such different environments. Census data pegs this zipcode as one of the highest income areas of the city.

The idea seems to work well in Detroit neighborhoods, however the Greening of Detroit is working hard to plant more trees every day in both wealthy and poor neighborhoods.

“Between 1950 and 1980, around 500,000 trees were lost in Detroit to Dutch elm disease, urban expansion and attrition. During that same time period, economic constraints prohibited the city of Detroit from replacing those trees. […] In 1989, Detroit, a typical American city, was losing an average of four trees for every one planted.”

The organization is estimated to have planted over 65,000 trees since its inception in 1989.

the limits of human research

Health, On the Ground

*Please note, the names and details of program participants have been changed to ensure anonymity.

After working with one of my first families, we’ll call the teen Larry, I began to feel limited by the research aspect of my current program. Since it is a research program testing various protocols for successful weight loss, my options and actions were often limited in what I could or could not do to help the family. At the time Larry was the heaviest teen in the program. I remember he was late for our first session at his house because he had missed the bus. I saw him walking down the street and knew immediately that he was who I was waiting for. Larry had knee and ankle problems as well as hypertension at age 15. At the time he was the heaviest teen in the whole program.

I built a strong rapport with the family and really enjoyed going to their house twice a week to work with them. Larry‘s weight fluctuated often, spiking and dropping dramatically from week-to-week. The family often attributed it to the medications that he was taking that cause him to retain water. However, over the first half of the 6 month program, Larry had lost about 20 lbs. from his starting weight. His Mom reported losing about 25 lbs. from participating and helping Larry during the program. She no longer needed to regularly wear oxygen and could walk more often than she was previously able.

In the last two months, Larry began to gain the weight back. Since his weight fluctuated so much it was hard to tell if he was really gaining a significant amount or if it was just related to the medications. By the final session of the 6 month program Larry had returned to his starting weight. His weight loss is considered significant and for him to gain it back is a red flag for larger problems. Research shows that when lost weight is gained back quickly it is much more difficult to lose again. His Mom was worried, he was confused, and I was unsure what to do. I gave the family additional information about other programs that Larry could participate in, but focused on affirming the skills that they had learned and the successes they had over the last 6 months.

It was during the following couple of weeks, which turned into months, that I really began dissecting Larry‘s dilemma. He was a very bright student, had some nice friends who helped him be active, and a very caring mother and grandmother. He took on more responsibility than most because his Mom wasn’t very mobile and yet he was unable to maintain his success in the program. I began to think back to other issues that the family dealt with during the program. The major one that jumped right out for me was their access to food. Larry and his Mom were getting food assistance and usually shopped once a month when the Grandmother could drive them to Meijer, which was located in another city. The family mostly ate frozen dinners that Larry could heat up in the microwave.

Beyond Larry and his family’s motivations, their social and economic situation became their largest barrier. Since they couldn’t afford to purchase healthier foods because they would go bad before the month ended, they were somewhat stuck to buy foods that were cheap and could be frozen. Their lack of money to be able to be more financially stable affected their food security in a similar way. Larry also reported eating a lot more at the beginning of the month. This is common among families using food assistance. One study found

“[…] a corresponding decrease of 10 to 15 percent in food consumption over the course of the month, suggesting some recipients may eat well for the first couple weeks after they’ve shopped and then run low on food near month’s end. This kind of ‘binge–starvation’ cycle has been linked to changes in metabolism, insulin resistance and, ultimately, increases in BMI.” (2004)

Larry‘s Mom would often report that he had eaten all of some food after they returned from the grocery store. Further research has identified connections between obesity and food stamps. The research found that the majority of food assistance receipts went shopping once a month, right after the food assistance amount is credited.

“Obesity cannot be totally pinned on food stamps,” says Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at The Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resource Research and lead author of the study, “but it certainly is related to how the program is structured.”

In this situation, regardless of how committed the family was to weight loss and helping Larry manage his obesity, they were economically stuck in a cyclical nutrition pattern that would negatively affect his weight no matter his level of motivation. Socio-economic factors will win out over motivations every time, no matter the intentions. This is where human research is limited because the cause for failure is not pegged on the systematic inequality related to racial minorities and food assistance programs, but rather it is placed on Larry and his family for being unable to keep up with the program guidelines.

I keep reminding myself that this research will be applied to other programs in the future. Those programs will be able to replicate tactics that were most helpful and hopefully help even more adolescents in programs with more room to address multiple issues: medical, social, and economic.