Statement of Problem
Many of Black America’s urban neighborhoods are trouble spots marked by crime, poverty, and property abandonment throughout the city of Detroit. Most of the blame lies elsewhere. Many of these neighborhoods once thrived before the city and state governments, using federal money, destroyed them. (How the U.S. Government Destroyed Black Neighborhoods; Scott Beyer 2020)
In the decades before and after World War II, government bureaucracies across the U.S. imposed “urban renewal.” Also known as “slum clearance,” these policies worked from the modernist notion that urban neighborhoods were dangerous and antiquated. (How the U.S. Government Destroyed Black Neighborhoods; Scott Beyer 2020)
Unsurprisingly, the condemned neighborhoods were overwhelmingly African-American population. The problem, though, is that these neighborhoods weren’t slums. They were areas where black citizens were contained through private covenants and government zoning. While the housing was run down due to overcrowding and poverty, the neighborhoods at large were still functional, full of churches, groceries, restaurants, and shops. “Known as Paradise Valley and Black Bottom neighborhoods.”
(https://detroit.curbed.com/2018/12/28/18158256/black-bottom-neighborhood-street-view-exhibition)
The “urban renewal” assault on black neighborhoods undermined liberty, free markets, and human dignity and was one of America’s great and unrecognized twenty-century tragedies.
(How the U.S. Government Destroyed Black Neighborhoods Scott Beyer 2020)
Now the government has put more stumbling blocks upon its citizens with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA was sold to the U.S. public in 1993 with grand promises that the deal would create jobs. (www.tradewatch.org date unknown.)
The resulting demand for goods produced in every region has definable pressure on wages and has fueled recent growth in income inequality.
Moreover, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that nearly 4.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost since NAFTA took effect.
Increasing numbers of workers displaced from manufacturing jobs joined the excessively abundant supply of workers competing for non-offshorable, low-skill jobs in the hospitality and food service sectors. ( www.huffpost.com date unknown) The higher-paying wages have also fallen since NAFTA.
The United States entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, and China joined the WTO in 2000; growing U.S. trade deficits with China have reduced demand for goods produced in every region of the United States and have led to job displacement in all 50 states, and the District of Columbia, according to the report. (Economic Policy Institute) 3.7 million U.S. jobs were displaced due to the growing trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2018. (U.S. News, Andrew Soergel Jan 30, 2020)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often highlighted the plight of African Americans in his crusade for civil rights. In 1967, during a speech in Harlem (MLK’s speech in 1967), “If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”