One Man's View of Detroit

Anyone over 30 years of age who has grown up in Detroit, or who in some way has become attached to the city, should be captivated by the story told by Paul Clemens in "Made in Detroit:A South of 8 Mile Memoir."

With a crisp, lean style and a dash of humor, Clemens writes a book-length autobiography of a Roman Catholic white kid born in Detroit in 1973 -- the same year Coleman A. Young was elected Mayor -- and who grows up in a blue-collar neighborhood on the city's northeast side. But his story is not just about the author, it's about the city and its economic decline and physical deterioration during his lifetime. And it's about race.

When Clemens was born, the city was 60 percent white, a percentage that had been dropping steadily after the 1967 riots. White flight accelerated with the election of Young until over time the city's population dropped from 1.2 million in 1973 to 875,000 today. It has also become 90 percent black.

Clemens' story is both personal -- what it was like to be a white kid growing up in a black city -- and observational -- his view of deteriorating race relations and heightening animosity between the blacks and whites during this period.

I too am a white guy who is the same age as Clemens' father, and was also raised a Roman Catholic on the city's northeast side. Much of what Clemens says in his book went down easy for me and he certainly stirred my memories of growing up on Detroit's east side.

As a devout Catholic, Clemens laments the rapid closing of Catholic churches and schools in the city caused by the dwindling Catholic population (at one time in the fiftties the city was 60 percent Catholic). But his pain over this loss seems to stem from the loss suffered by the churches and their white parishoners, rather than to what it has meant to the city's captive black population. It has indeed been sad for all us to watch these beautiful little European-inspired churches and their schools close. No more midnight Masses on Christmas Eve, no more school basketball and football teams playing each other.

Clemens misses an important point about the church and school closings. The Catholic Church had a golden opportunity in the sixties and seventies to live up to its mission by keeping those schools open and providing a solid education for at least some of the city's black youth. Instead it pulled up stakes and followed its white constituency to the suburbs. Whatever lingering attachment I had to the Church was severed when my Catholic high school, De La Salle Collegiate near the city airport, closed its doors and moved to the northern suburb of Warren. After that, the Catholic Church to me was just a business.

I enjoyed Clemens' story immensely because it enabled me to relive so many moments of the rich life I lived on the city's east side during the latter half of the 20th century. He does a magnificent job of capturing that life of working class white families and their ethnic neighborhoods. The story ultimately is a sad one because the portrayal of Detroit both physically and socially is so deservedly grim. Although at its conclusion I was unsure of Clemens' exact feelings about the city, its people, and their future, it's an engaging story and one that I'm glad I read.

For a radically different take on Clemens' writing see this review.