Using Rachel

I've made the decision a while back to refrain from posting contentious stuff on Facebook and instead to funnel all of that thought- argument-provoking stuff here to my blog. I strayed from my own guidelines this week and re-posted a clip from The Rachel Maddow Show on my FB wall that was related to my hometown. I posted it to FB because I know that few people keep up with this blog, and I thought that some friends who either used to or still do live in my hometown would be interested. Anyway, I feel compelled to write some about it here, especially since there have been several comments to the FB post.

I don't like Rachel Maddow. As I've written before, I generally find Ms. Maddow to be unnecessarily divisive. In this case, her characterization of the troubles besetting Benton Harbor, Michigan, was rather glib and in many cases uninformed. That said, I appreciate that a national figure is calling attention to a situation that is too readily accepted as unproblematic by those who live in the region (or at least not problematic enough to elicit action).

The overarching problem is one of perspective. We typically think about our lives and our social world in individualistic terms. For example, why is St. Joe relatively prosperous? Well, it is full of "good people that work hard," who have "pride" and are "sensible." Why is Benton Harbor so worse off? Well, the implication is that "they" are bad people who are lazy, who lack pride and are irresponsible. By reasoning individualistically, we severely limit the scope of our responses.

A sociological perspective--one that takes larger level consideration into account--would point to institutional problems like race and the economy. Benton Harbor's troubles go back a very long way, but they start to get appreciably bad during deindustrialization. Beginning in the 1960s, Midwestern factories began relocating to the South where labor costs were cheaper (i.e. there were more poor people willing to work for lower wages). This devastated many Northern industrial cities, resulting in the so-called Rust Belt. Once thriving cities such as Gary, Indiana, Detroit, and Benton Harbor, Michigan, saw record unemployment. Many of these recently unemployed were Southern blacks who were part of the Great Migration of the early-1900s. With a lack of social networks and constraints to labor mobility, these places quickly devolved into demilitarized zones. Those who were able to escape, did. These privileged folks had larger social networks from which to draw and fewer constraints to their mobility--oh, and they were disproportionately white, giving rise to the term White Flight. If we look to Benton Harbor, we have almost the perfect example of this. A once racially-diverse, thriving community loses much of its factory jobs and with them the relatively affluent whites to now-greener pastures across the river, leaving behind the poor black unemployed to fend for themselves.

So, what in the way of solutions? The State of Michigan has taken over Benton Harbor's democratically elected government. Given the city's history of failures and corruption, it seems like a completely reasonable solution, but what might be the unintended consequences of such an intrusive action? If we look to the Arab world right now, we see several examples of what happens when people don't feel that they have a voice in their government: they tend to rise up in defiance. Now, it is unlikely that the people of Benton Harbor will become guerrilla fighters, attempting to win back independence from the state, but it is entirely possible that crime rates--already fairly high--will get even worse. What is needed instead are jobs. If Whirlpool really wants to make a lasting difference in the community, it should bring back its factories instead of throwing money at well-meaning but inconsequential civic improvement projects; it should pay for school children to go to college, and it should encourage them to return to their hometown, to make it a better place instead of encouraging gentrification.

To the people of St. Joe: if you don't want authors, academics, and commentators "intruding" on your affairs, then get your goddamn house in order! For too long, we dismissed the black/white, stable/poor dichotomous status quo of the Twin Cities. Everything is not OK.

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UPDATE: the New York Times has a piece on Benton Harbor's emergency management.

(Not) Understanding the Racial, Economic, and Migratory History of Two Midwestern Cities

Here is a story that I wanted to confirm with data:

Benton Harbor, Michigan, used to be more white than it is now. At some point (likely in the late-1960s/early-1970s), the racial proportions of the city shifted, presumably as whites with the requisite economic and social capital fled the city, leaving behind poor blacks without the resources to relocate. Conversely, Saint Joseph, Michigan, Benton Harbor's "Twin City" (the height of unintendedly satirical titles) has become more solidly white and affluent over that period. In short, Benton Harbor's destitution is a story of White Flight across the river into Saint Joseph.

It's a simple hypothesis; however, the data don't seem to be (readily) available to tell this story.  Both Benton Harbor and Saint Joseph are in the same county (i.e. Berrien) and have generally been counted in the same metropolitan statistical area by the Census, which means that it is nearly impossible--at least for a person without specific training in historical demography and a lot of free time--to disentangle the two cities. (If you are reading this and know how to glean the data, please contact me.)

It makes me wonder if this is part of the reason that the two cities have been able to linger for so long in their highly unequal socioeconomic states. If it were easier to demonstrate the social history, perhaps it would have been easier to overcome.

Regardless, here is the history as I see it:
Benton Harbor is currently nearly 90% black and more than 40% impoverished (cite). Saint Joseph, on the other hand, is currently nearly 90% white and less than 7% impoverished (cite). This is the causal chain that I think led to this:

slavery → Jim Crow laws in the South→ Great Migration → deindustrialization → White Flight → Benton Harbor

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Special thanks to Philip Cohen for his help via Twitter pointing me to possible data and Tiffany Julian via Facebook for her help pointing out the limitations of the data.

Full disclosure: I spent the first 18+ years of my life in St. Joe and still have family and friends living there, hence my interest.

Gentrification between Two Midwestern Cities

A quick followup to yesterday's post. Benton Harbor's economy does seem to be improving as of late. The improvements, however, appear largely to be the result of gentrification. Gentrification itself is arguably problematic in that it causes hardship for and ultimately displaces much of the impoverished, long-term residents. My impression of the gentrification that is taking place in Benton Harbor is even more problematic in that it is predominantly the influx of businesses and not residents. In other words, people who live in Saint Joseph are opening businesses in Benton Harbor that cater mostly to people who live in Saint Joseph, but few people from Saint Joseph are buying homes in Benton Harbor. Instead, the so-called Arts District has been carved out of the otherwise dilapidated downtown as a "safe" place for white Saint-Josephines to eat, drink, shop, and golf. It will be interesting to see if residential gentrification ends up happening.

A Further Thought on Benton Harbor

There is a causal problem with the notion that communities like Benton Harbor are in such bad shape economically and otherwise because of a lack of pride. The arrow actually points the other way: civic pride is the result of political-economic wellbeing.

Media Framing, Race, and Individualism

Last fall, the Benton Harbor (Michigan) High School football team garnered a lot of national attention after they won their first game in three years, had their first winning season in 26 years, and made it to the playoffs for the first time since most can remember. Here is a selection of the media attention:

• ESPN: 74-year-old Accomplished Coach Takes Unlikely HS Team to Playoffs
• Sports Illustrated: What Benton Harbor Needed Was Elliot Uzelac
• ABC News: Football Coach and Team Get Big Surprise 'Thank You' on 'GMA'

One thing you might notice in that coverage is that the narrative adopted almost universally by the media is that their new coach, Elliot Uzelac, was the reason for the team's success. Not the community. Not the boys on the field. Uzelac. This is not a post to attack Uzelac. I know little of the man, and I'm fully willing to accept that he is upstanding and well-intentioned. This post is not about a man--and that's the point. This post is about how the success of a community, a school, and a team are distilled down to a story about an individual. And at that, the media have transformed what could have been a story of triumph for a city that is 90% black and 90% impoverished into a myth about an affluent white man. For example, in the ABC piece, reporter T. J. Holmes tells Coach Uzelac in the midst of celebrating with his players, "Yes, you turned around a football team but a community as well" (6:35). This is the White Savior Industrial Complex in action.

Domesticity, Consumption, and Symbolism - KitchenAid Edition

The KitchenAid* stand mixer is an American icon. It is a powerful symbol of domesticity. My wife and I felt compelled, as many betrothed couples are, to put the mixer on our wedding registry after we were engaged and ended up receiving one as a wedding gift. When we moved shortly after our wedding to the town where I'd start my first job, we struggled to find a suitable place to store it in our not-too-small kitchen. In the nearly-four years since we were married, I think we've used the mixer perhaps twice. Given the amount of valuable kitchen real estate that it demands, the paucity of its use, and its surprisingly high price tag ($330-$900 MSRP), it is hardly an efficient product for the average family to own (even though I'll be the first to admit that it is incredibly robust and quality-made). This, however, is beside the point. Our consumption is more often about social signaling to ourselves and to those around us than it is about practicality. Putting a mixer on a registry signals to family and friends a couple's domestic intent. Buying a mixer for the couple signals an endorsement of a specific kind of traditional domesticity. And, displaying a mixer on the kitchen counter (or, as in our house, visibly under the kitchen island) signals to ourselves and to visitors our domestic situation and values.

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Full disclosure: I grew up in Saint Joseph, Michigan, neighbor to Benton Harbor, Michigan, headquarters of the Whirlpool Corporation, parent company to KitchenAid. Whirlpool was and is the center of the local economy there. Many of my friends, along with my sister, have worked for the corporation. I have not received any compensation or consideration for this post.

White Flight, Gentrification, and Golf in a Rust Belt Wasteland

I've written on Benton Harbor before (here and here). Here is a great treatment of some new issues in that community from the NY Times. I find the problems there illuminating as a sociologists, but as a former resident of its twin city, Saint Joseph, I am deeply troubled by the wrongheadedness of virtually everything that everyone is doing there.