Apartheid. USA 1988

April 28, 1987:

According to city officials, there are more guns than people in the City of Detroit, Michigan. Therefore, crime influences almost every decision. It determines when people leave home, what routes they drive, where they walk. Crime is a conversational ice-breaker in Detroit, like the weather or the Tigers. Shootings are so commonplace that they are the subject of local songs and school essay contests. On average, a child was shot every day in 1986. But if residents were becoming anesthetized to such violence, a killing at a High School in the middle of Holy week has once again awakened them. Just before spring break on April 16, a 14-year-old student firing a. 357 magnum pistol chased a black, star football player through the halls of the building past the gymnasium and the physics laboratory, as others looked on, helpless and in horror. The football player, Chester Jackson Jr (17) was killed by a bullet in the head. Two other students were wounded.

Why this seemingly motiveless shooting has infuriated Detroiters who live with a nation-leading homicide rate of 58 for every 100.000 residents, triple that of New York, is not entirely clear. But parents are now demanding metal detectors and searches for weapons in the schools. Detroit stands apart in the frequency of shootings involving youths - over-

[p. 66]

whelmingly, poor inner-city black males - in apparently unprovoked attacks.^89.

A group of poor blacks, together with the City of Dallas, Texas and the Reagan Administration have agreed, even with the approval of the Federal district judge, that 2.600 public housing units in the most infamous slum should be destroyed and that many of the tenants should be dispersed throughout the Dallas Metropolitan area. The plan for units in West Dallas may be the most ambitious attempt in any major American city to break up a large concentration of poor blacks and move them to integrated or predominantly white neighborhoods where there are jobs, better education and other public services. The idea, which began when residents demanded repairs, is expected to end with the demolition of a complex containing one-third of the city's public housing. It comes at a time of growing concern that the nation may be developing a permanent class of dependent poor people, largely members of racial minorities concentrated in central cities and plagued by unemployment, crime, drugs, and teen-age pregnancy.^90.

89. The New York Times, from a report Isbel Wilkerson

90. The New York Times.