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Once Again, the Rest of America Is Ignoring Detroit
Why do so few people seem to care that the Motor City is a Covid hotspot?
When five-year-old Detroit resident Skylar Herbert passed away last month of complications from coronavirus, she became the youngest Covid victim in Michigan. Her death came as a bitter shock to many: Just weeks before she died, most scientists and researchers agreed children were more likely to spread the virus than suffer from it; if they did contract coronavirus, experts predicted, the symptoms would be mild. Herbert, a daughter of dedicated Detroit first responders, provided a tragic counter to that theory. She also put a face on the ailments facing her hometown — struggles that are too often ignored.
Data collected by the state government from March 11th through April 4th found there were 43,950 confirmed cases of Covid-19 across Michigan. The total death toll currently stands at 4,135 victims; as of Sunday there were 547 new cases and 29 deaths. Detroit alone has seen 9,394 infections and 1,097 deaths. Yet, once again, the city’s voice is absent on the national stage.
As America’s auto hub, it was here that industrial factories were turned into arms manufacturers to aid the Allied efforts during World War II. But the city was soon after torn apart, a victim of post-war suburbanization, racist housing policies, and discriminatory loan practices. By the end of the ’50s, a sharp divide had emerged between the “haves” and the “have-nots”; the haves, of course, were always White.
Compounding matters were the city’s many failed criminal justice reforms, perhaps most infamously the Detroit PD’s S.T.R.E.S.S unit (Stop The Robberies, Enjoy The Streets), a group that operated in the ’70s and whose brute force and search-and-seizure tactics were disproportionately focused on young, Black men. By 2013, Detroit had become the first U.S. city to ever file for bankruptcy.
Detroit has been left to fall apart, and now we’re seeing what we always do in the time of mass tragedy: It’s the Black communities that suffer the greatest.
