Heather Ann Thompson: Whose Detroit? [Audio interview]

When you hear the word “Detroit”, it’s a little like watching a pebble thrown into a pond. First you see the pebble hit the water and then you see the waves echoing from a rapidly disappearing center. Detroit serves as a euphemism for race relations gone bad, or the failure of liberalism, or the wreckage of surburbanization and globalization, or the mismanagement of the auto industry, or the problems of urban America, or the decline of unions. Take your pick. Though always freighted by heavy symbolism, the exact meaning of Detroit depends on your political persuasion. When Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013, the news reporting of this weighty event was very superficial, lacking in historical context and social and racial complexity. In order to correct some of this reporting, Fred Rowland interviewed African American Studies Professor Heather Ann Thompson, author of Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Cornell University Press, 2001), on February 25, 2014 to discuss the history of Detroit.