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CHAPTER 16 The Polarized Community Whites and blacks in Detroit just after the riot viewed what had happened and its consequences in very different ways. As two University of Michigan political scientists put it, "for the most part it was as if two different events had taken place in the same city, one a calculated act of criminal anarchy, the other a spontaneous protest against mistreatment and injustice."l When asked in the Luby community survey which of three possible interpretations came closest to explaining why the riot had occurred, 69 percent of the blacks but only 28 percent of the whites thought it was because people were "being treated badly." On the other hand, 31 percent of the whites thought that "criminals did it," and 37 percent that the riot had occurred because "people wanted to take things," whereas only 11 percent of the blacks subscribed to the former view, and 18 percent to the latter. In the Campbell-Schuman survey, more than twice as many whites (38 percent) as blacks (18 percent) thought that the riot was "mainly 100ting."2 Thirty-one percent of the blacks in the Luby community sample believed the riot would "help" black-white relations, but only 4 percent of the whites agreed. Three-quarters of the whites, as compared to 38 percent of the blacks, expected that race relations in Detroit would be impaired. Those who believed race relations had been helped thought that the riot had made whites understand that blacks had to be "taken seriously" and had also led to a quest for solutions to the city's racial problems. Those who thought race relations had suffered stressed "white fear, distrust, dislike, anger toward blacks." In the Campbell-Schuman survey conducted about four months after the Luby survey, a smaller percentage of blacks (27 percent) and a larger percentage of whites (13 percent) believed that the riot had helped black-white relations. Almost 70 percent of the white respondents now thought that blacks were pushing "too fast" for what they wanted, and just over 67 percent believed that blacks in the central city had only themselves to blame for the fact that they had "worse jobs, education, and housing than white people."3 369 370 Violence in the Model City Although there was much talk of black separatism following the riot and some scholars asserted that riots like Detroit's had caused blacks to question the goal of integration, support for racial integration was stronger in Detroit's black than in its white community. Whereas only 1 percent of Detroit's blacks in the Luby black community sample favored "total separation" of the races, 17 percent of the whites placed themselves in this camp. More than three times as many blacks as whites (88 percent as compared to 24 percent) favored "integration." The majority of whites (59 percent) preferred a racial relationship somewhere "in between" integration and total separation. Among black respondents in the CampbellSchuman survey, only 5 percent believed blacks should "shun" whites, as compared to 91 percent who rejected that view. Whereas only 10.5 percent of the black respondents indicated that they preferred to live in an all-black or mostly black neighborhood and 57 percent preferred to live in an integrated neighborhood, 53 percent of the whites conceded that they would mind it "a lot" (21 percent) or at least "a little" (32 percent) even if a black of the same income and education as themselves moved next door to them, and 37 percent believed whites had the right to keep blacks out of their neighborhood entirely. There was a much greater degree of sympathy for separation among blacks in the Twelfth Street area than among blacks in the city as a whole. As compared to the 1 percent in the Luby community sample who favored total separation, 22 percent of the Twelfth Street adult blacks believed blacks should "try to get along without whites." Blacks favoring separation were more likely than those who did not to have participated in the riot, were more violence-oriented, and more disposed to view the riot as "a direct means of achieving social change."4 Blacks and whites following the riot had widely different understandings of the meaning of the words "black power," a slogan that had come into use in 1966 and that had been heard in the streets during the riot. Blacks favorable to the concept in the Luby sample were inclined to interpret it as meaning a...

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