Fearing Detroit From Afar

Freelance journalist Kristin Palm probes American (and Canadian) fear of cities, and fear of Detroit in particular, in her March Metropolis magazine article, "Public Enemy No. 1: Why America loves to fear Detroit." The former Detroit resident puts it this way: "You need Detroit. Detroit is your punching bag, your kicking post, your whipping boy - with all the attendant hideous implications the phrase engenders in post-Civil War America." Palm concludes it's about race: "'People in Windsor are afraid of Detroit. They don't believe people live there,' my Canadian boyfriend ... told me when we first met. I mulled this observation over for days, baffled at how Windsorites could look across the river at Detroit, see the buildings and the buses and the streetlights and the cars, and think it was empty. Eventually I grasped its insidious implications: people in Windsor, like people throughout North America, don't believe white people live in Detroit."

Thanks to Dateline APA