Thomas J. Sugrue: "The Damning Mark of False Prosperities: The Deindustrialization of Detroit"

In Thomas J. Sugrue’s chapter, “The Damning Mark of False Prosperities: The Deindustrialization of Detroit,” the topic of automation and the salience of obtaining and holding employment are accentuated. Highlighted are the popular automobile companies of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, known as the Big Three, and how each made decisions in expansion and hiring processes. With the growth of automation, new technologies developed took over some of the jobs provided within the companies. As Sugrue states, “The 1950s marked a decisive turning point in the development of the city-a systematic restructuring of the local economy from which the city never recovered,” (1996). With this in mind, Sugrue is intending to bring awareness to the technological determinism this generation thought as smart, fast, and simply, “a better way to do the job”. Though some Amricans were able to secure their jobs, others had difficulties competing against the new machinery invented and brought into the workshops. The chapter also touches base on the excitement of “urban life” and how many companies and industries moved to the cities to further themselves economically, engaging in more racial contact. However, with such demand for location in the city, some companies found it beneficial to move out to the suburbs, in order to mitigate higher competition.

Thomas J. Sugrue is a twentieth-century historian, currently at the University of Pennsylvania, as a professor of sociology and history. His main studies include the history of liberalism and conservatism, specifically regarding poverty and public policy, as well as affirmative action and its history. Sugrue was born in Detroit, and therefore felt the connection to the city and its historical content in the 1950s. In this time, and focused more in other chapters of his book, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Detroit was represented as, “the symbol of the American urban crisis”. The book further explains the racial challenges and inequalities faced in this time period and how much of it led to segregation laws in the 1960s. Sugrue’s aim is to inform citizens of the racial disparity and demand for employment due to automation in the 1940s-1950s, connecting to how it affects our society today.

Readers of his book find that Sugrue exudes the truth of the economic and racial trials in Detroit in the 1950s time period. Instead of bringing forth one cause for these issues, he discusses capitalism, postwar fright, and the emergence of companies and their use of technology. Honing in on Sugrue’s tone throughout the chapter, he remains calm and informative, while still suggesting that society today consider what values they place on economics, government, and racial discrimination.

            Sugrue’s chapter stresses the era of the 1950s to be thought of as a “decade of prosperity” through the eyes of citizens in that time. Yet in reality, it was a time of racial injustices, drop in employment, and reliance on technological advancements. With the idea of ‘automation’, many became out of jobs and had to search for jobs in the suburbs of Detroit, in turn increasing the number of African American inhabitants to the city. Being a postwar time, the 1950s in Detroit was nothing short of a time filled with impulsivity and selfishness of consumers. 

Jen Erickson

Works Cited:

Thomas J. Sugrue, "The damning mark of false prosperities': The deindustrialization of Detroit," in The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996). 

The Journal of Politics/Volume 60/Issue 01/February 1998, pp. 256-257. 

"The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit Thomas J. Sugrue With a New Preface by the Author." Sugrue, T.J.: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.