User:Jonesmal/sandbox

Outline

• There's not ample information detailing the aftermath of the riot and the way that the city, state, and its people have evolved since
  • I'm going to focus on the polling data of black vs white Michiganders/Detroiters
    • Featuring some polls on the progress that has been made, preferably large ones because those tend to be less impartial and more statistically significant
      • Aims for sources: US census, department of Labor, Local government agencies
  • Also going to attempt to detail the efforts that are currently being made to improve upon the problems Detroiters are facing
    • As well as the systemic problems that the city is facing as a whole due to the white exodus from Detroit
      • Add in some info on some recent or significant unmentioned attempts at resolving the problems
  • The rest of the areas of the article seem relatively comprehensively covered so I'm going to attempt to fill out a full section on recent public relations
    • This seems to me to be the biggest piece that the article is missing as it highlights the real current effects of the historic event

Aftermath

Public Opinion

A recent poll conducted by ERIC-MRA, an experienced survey research firm, in July 2016 focused on the evolution of black - white relations since the riots. The poll surveyed 600 residents of Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties. It should be noted that the poll took place from July 14-19th, a time period the Detroit Free Press acknowledged was "during the ongoing national furor over police shooting of African-American civilians, and retaliatory attacks on officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge."

Interestingly the respondents of the Detroit poll were notably more optimistic about race relations compared to the national averages. A national Washington Post/ABC News poll found that only 32% of the people they polled believed race relations were good, as opposed to the 56% and 47% of the white and black Detroiters surveyed, respectively. This was unsurprising to Reynold Farley, a retired University of Michigan sociology professor and expert on Detroit racial demographics, “I think it’s easier for people in the Detroit area to have some familiarity with race relations than people in a state like Maine, where there’s virtually no black population at all and the information comes from seeing violent incidents on television,” he explained. In the following question, Farley's claim was validated as the stark contrast in national vs. Detroiter perception of what the future would be like was apparent. As just 10% of those polled by the Washington Post/ABC News believed that race relations are getting better, whereas 33% of white and 22% of black Detroiters thought they had improved over the past 10 years and 50% of white and 41% of blacks believed they'd improve over the next five.

Although these responses were encouraging signs of a diminishing racial gap in Detroit, and a heightened attunement to race relations in the city compared to the rest of the nation. Other questions concerning Detroiters perception of the riots and how the improvement of race relations are actualized in their everyday life show there's still much mending to be done. When asked which word they would use to describe the 1967 riots: riot, rebellion or uprising. The white response was 61%, 12%, 12% and blacks, 34%, 27%, 24%, respectively. The majority of respondents did agree, however, that since the riots they believed there had been significant progress made vs little/no progress at all. Unfortunately, many black Detroiters still feel as if they're facing the type of discrimination that led to the riots in the first place. With the polled black Detroiters reporting that in the past 12 months 28% felt they had been unfairly treated in hiring, pay, or promotion, double the rate of their white counterparts. 73% also believed that they were treated less fairly than whites when attempting to find a "good job".

An interesting highlight of the way the events are viewed, and giving insight into how they would be talked about for generations to come.