Out of the Ghetto and into Suburbia
Yesterday I attended a session entitled “The Challenge of the Black Ghetto” where Alexander Polikoff, author of “Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing and the Black Ghetto”, spoke at the Richard C. Van Dusen Forum on Urban Issues at Wayne State University’s McGregor Memorial Conference Center. The session was well attended and began with an overview of Detroit’s racial, socioeconomic, and historical context. Polikoff spoke of the Gautreaux project in Chicago where approximately 8000 families over 20 years were taken out of the Ghetto and given the chance to prosper in more affluent suburbs. Polikoff calls for the Universities in Detroit to begin a dialogue and research into whether or not such a system would be feasible here in Detroit. Polikoff made a point that society accepts Ghettos as a permanent fixture in our cityscape. It can and has to change.
Mollika, how do you hear about these events/speakers at WSU? I would love to go to more speakers and such at WSU, but since I’m not facutly or student I’m out of the loop.
Back when I lived in East Lansing I used to go to speakers and such all the time but they always published things in the school paper which I read frequently.