Missed Opportunity

As I was reading Sugrue’s work, I kept thinking about something that was brought up in our discussion of Cohen last week. If I am not mistaken, it was Dan who suggested that the reinforcement of the racial systems in the post-war years was a missed opportunity to change the situation that African Americans were in. In reading specifically about Detroit, it would seem that the same idea of a missed opportunity could be applied. One might think that it would be easier to implement substantial policy change on the city rather than the national level, but as Sugrue shows it is as impossible. It was not feasible because of the discriminatory laws and the actions of certain people in government and the community, much like we learned last week from Cohen. Everything from the discriminatory bank policies that were implemented (34) to government red-lining (38) and job discrimination kept the circumstances of African Americans as they were. Overall, it really does seem like a missed opportunity, but that is being too ideal. These factors like housing and labor discrimination were too full of vitality in the War and immediate post-war years when something could have been done.