Ray Suarez says he isn’t politically correct. Rather, in The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999, he wants us to acknowledge what has been happening in American cities since the ’60s, and our collective responsibility for it. By this point we’ve already figured it out: The issue is and always has been race. Our attitudes toward race have turned our country into a contradictory behemoth, with impoverished black cities having their last breaths sucked out by the sprawling white suburbs. In short, we blew it.
The Old Neighborhood by Ray Suarez (Free Press, $25)
Suarez has done his homework. He does what he does best as the host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation: He lets people talk (and talk), playing more the role of moderator than the commentator. Everyone from suburbanites to urban do-gooders, from developers to public-housing officials, weigh in; with Suarez’s analysis, the result is an important piece of journalism.
In the course of the book he examines the neighborhoods of the old American industrial core, with brief forays to Miami and Washington, DC, and reveals what makes them tick (or not). On his tour he slays quite a few shibboleths, while occasionally inserting his own opinions. To Suarez’s credit as a reporter, however, his bile doesn’t often show and doesn’t mar his narrative. “When discussing their own family’s history in America,” he writes, “many people plead ‘not guilty’ to the charge of being an accessory to the postwar meltdown of many older cities. ‘We just wanted a better life,’ they say, ‘and this was the only way to get it.'” We don’t need any more than this; we all know what he means. He saves his venom for more worthy targets.
“White flight” gets tossed about a lot in the media, but what is fleeing the cities is money, no matter what color. While block-busting is illegal, a single sale to a black family still prompts calls from realtors to the other residents asking if they want to sell. It doesn’t end in the inner city, either; the black middle class (and Latino as well) is getting out of the decayed urban core and into the inner ring of suburbs. Even if these minority families are professionals who are paying more than market value for their homes and have higher standards of living than the current residents, the moment a neighborhood is “marked” as turning over, the impetus is to sell before property values drop. White residents do the math: Lower property values equals lower taxes equals underfunded schools equals “We’re moving because of the kids.” Sometimes the “old neighborhood” is gone within 10 years, sometimes replaced by a secure and stable one, sometimes not.
Integration is that in-between stage that may last five to 50 years, but only if the neighbors work at it. Suarez found those integrated neighborhoods, or what’s left of them. South of Chicago, he spoke with Auguretto Batiste, who moved into all-white Dolton in 1971 and stuck it out despite attacks and threats, filing complaints, shooting back when shot at. He organized the other, newer minority inhabitants whenever they were harassed, until the racists got tired and moved away and the town settled into equilibrium. Now roughly 65 percent black, Dolton is holding steady with government support and services.
Dolton is the exception that proves the rule, however. In Roseland, Illinois, and East Flatbush in Brooklyn there are neighbors who try to fight it out, to keep the developers and absentee landlords at bay and the local businesses interested, but end up failing. East Flatbush turned into a safe, middle-class and almost entirely West Indian neighborhood. Roseland also became all black, but the creeping encroachment of the drug trade threatens its residents’ security. In many more places the neighbors give up without a fight, selling to the first buyer, their businesses driven out by insurance companies who won’t insure on the other side of an invisible line.
There are just too many bad guys, though, and not just the realtors and bankers: The media misrepresents cities, inflating bizarre crimes to the level of normalcy and repeating conventional images of minorities over the backs of police cars. Politicians are responsible for not overseeing the financial and real estate industries, then abdicating responsibility for the poor in favor of new stadiums and freeways. Suburbanites are to blame for moving out of the city to escape bad schools and perceived threats, while the middle classes who remain enroll their kids in private schools and refuse to back school levies for fear of higher taxes. And Marion Barry gets slammed for squandering his opportunity when he of all people should have known better. No one, it seems, is willing to take responsibility for their own neighborhood.
Suarez has produced an impressive report on how our cities got to this point. He isn’t as optimistic as former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, who says the cities are coming back, but rather compares the American city to a prizefighter who has taken an incredible beating but knows the fight isn’t over yet.
Ray Suarez appears at Third Place Books. Free. May 12 at 1; then at Town Hall Seattle, 682-7395. $8. May 12 at 7:30.
