"Affectionate" would be the best way I could summarize, in one word, Chafets' attitude to his native city. To be sure, in the early going, affection doesn't look like where he's going. We learn that his family was one of the several hundred thousands that fled Detroit's disorder and lawlessness. Moreover, his family lost not, like so many others, just its house and business but also (to armed robbers) Zeev's grandfather.
The affectionate side comes out chiefly in two ways: in memories of his good and tragic boyhood friend Charles from the black ghetto; and in Chafets' passion for Motown music. That passion finds its way even into some of his books about Israel (!) but here he gets to take it to the next level. There's a chapter about Motown stars who give back to their community by running an after-school program for kids, and he finds other Motown stars to talk to. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he took up writing this book in part as a front to give him access to his musical heroes!
Of course there's the political part too. Chafets interviews Mayor Coleman Young, talks to other black politicians (including an extended behind-the-scenes look at a campaign to unseat Young), and then heads for the suburbs to hear from the refugees. It was 1986 and he could write things that would get his college fraternity banned today:
"...Young's name adorns everything. There is a Coleman A. Young
community center on the east side and a seventy-five-acre Coleman
A. Young civic center downtown on the Detroit River. Accomplished
schoolchildren receive financial aid from the Coleman A. Young
Scholarship Fund. The mayor's picture hangs in virtually every city
office, like the visage of some postliberation African leader..."
He skewers the white politicians too. He travels up to the suburb of Southfield, settled by white refugees from Detroit. Good liberals that they are, they welcomed integration as middle-class blacks started to join them. But when the black population hit 1/3 of the total, people started getting nervous:
"The Southfield strategy is based on another irony -- the only
important city in the Metro area that has declared integration to be a
policy goal wants to maintain it by recruiting whites and steering
blacks away...
The idea is to set up a nonprofit office in Detroit that would help
those who want to leave find housing elsewhere in Oakland
County. `[Neighboring towns] can't hurt us', said [one official]. Fair
housing is the law of the land'.
Southfield's leaders were counting on blacks to go along. `The
minorities here understand that if we can't maintain a racial balance,
they will be the losers,', said the mayor. `Their kids will go to poor
schools and live in filthy neighborhoods.'"
Those guys went ahead and made TV spots for Southfield. Chafets watches some:
"Young couples dining in fine restaurants, relaxed businessmen...happy
children frolicking in a safe schoolyard, youthful families walking
hand in hand across well-tended lawns...After watching half a dozen of
the commercials it became clear that they had a common denominator--the
only blacks visible were little girls and light-skinned women...No one
who saw the ads could possibly have guessed that nearly half the
students in the Southfield schools are black."
Oh yeah, I forgot to say Chafets has a great sense of humor too!
(And for a modern postscript on Southfield, this is interesting: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41810267/ns/us_news-life/#.Ub7MWPZ4bqr .)
The affectionate side comes out chiefly in two ways: in memories of his good and tragic boyhood friend Charles from the black ghetto; and in Chafets' passion for Motown music. That passion finds its way even into some of his books about Israel (!) but here he gets to take it to the next level. There's a chapter about Motown stars who give back to their community by running an after-school program for kids, and he finds other Motown stars to talk to. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he took up writing this book in part as a front to give him access to his musical heroes!
Of course there's the political part too. Chafets interviews Mayor Coleman Young, talks to other black politicians (including an extended behind-the-scenes look at a campaign to unseat Young), and then heads for the suburbs to hear from the refugees. It was 1986 and he could write things that would get his college fraternity banned today:
"...Young's name adorns everything. There is a Coleman A. Young
community center on the east side and a seventy-five-acre Coleman
A. Young civic center downtown on the Detroit River. Accomplished
schoolchildren receive financial aid from the Coleman A. Young
Scholarship Fund. The mayor's picture hangs in virtually every city
office, like the visage of some postliberation African leader..."
He skewers the white politicians too. He travels up to the suburb of Southfield, settled by white refugees from Detroit. Good liberals that they are, they welcomed integration as middle-class blacks started to join them. But when the black population hit 1/3 of the total, people started getting nervous:
"The Southfield strategy is based on another irony -- the only
important city in the Metro area that has declared integration to be a
policy goal wants to maintain it by recruiting whites and steering
blacks away...
The idea is to set up a nonprofit office in Detroit that would help
those who want to leave find housing elsewhere in Oakland
County. `[Neighboring towns] can't hurt us', said [one official]. Fair
housing is the law of the land'.
Southfield's leaders were counting on blacks to go along. `The
minorities here understand that if we can't maintain a racial balance,
they will be the losers,', said the mayor. `Their kids will go to poor
schools and live in filthy neighborhoods.'"
Those guys went ahead and made TV spots for Southfield. Chafets watches some:
"Young couples dining in fine restaurants, relaxed businessmen...happy
children frolicking in a safe schoolyard, youthful families walking
hand in hand across well-tended lawns...After watching half a dozen of
the commercials it became clear that they had a common denominator--the
only blacks visible were little girls and light-skinned women...No one
who saw the ads could possibly have guessed that nearly half the
students in the Southfield schools are black."
Oh yeah, I forgot to say Chafets has a great sense of humor too!
(And for a modern postscript on Southfield, this is interesting: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41810267/ns/us_news-life/#.Ub7MWPZ4bqr .)
