Where I grew up in Flint we all knew about the north side, but we never went to the north side. We had created a self-sustaining world in southern Flint, so that we didn’t need to trek through the hood. I never knew how far this problem extended.
This berm and moat separates Grosse Pointe Park from Detroit proper. Photo by Paula Priebe
Outsiders to the city have everything they need within their Ann Arbor or their Birmingham or their Grand Rapids. We don’t need Detroit. What we need we come in to get (Tigers, Fox Theater, etc.), and we quickly leave. Detroit to most people is sports, concerts, a restaurant or two, and anxious walks from parking lots to destinations. What surprises me is that outsiders, myself included, are not wanted in the city.
Detroiters get emotional safety. To understand why, you have to go back to the 1930s at least. Waves of southern black workers applied to auto plants and got only the lowest paying, most physically exerting jobs, and could buy only the oldest, most run-down homes in the city. Separation provided a comfortable callous against the immensity of these problems that even time has not solved. After World War II, the expressway system allowed the wealthier families to move outside the city limits. The callous thickened. Then in the 1967, the most infamous of Detroit’s riots excused the wealthy, mainly white, city folk to further distance themselves from a “dangerous, black city.” Even from an outsider’s perspective, the physical and economic rejection, the crippling labels, the clear racial divisions: the suburbanites are the dangerous ones for Detroiters. The separation protects outsiders, it protects insiders, and it destroys each in unique ways.
As outsiders (aka Ann Arborites), our risk is that we grow to love comfort. Detroit is a city that looks like a disaster zone, with a 50% high school graduation rate and the poorest zip code in America. Yet, the problem we face in Ann Arbor can be similarly devastating to our souls, namely that our comfortable callous will become normal. Jesus doesn’t give the gospel, He is the gospel. Our hope is not in a program, it is ultimately in a relationship. Missions then must not be only projects or events, it must be rooted in relationship. The separation that “protects” both Detroit and Ann Arbor residents is at odds with the Gospel of Christ. Missions in Detroit means physical presence, emotional connection, and spiritual truth.
