Deindustrialization in the Midwest (Post-WWII to Now)
The fall of the manufacturing industry within the Midwest largely explains the decreases in population in the last 100 years, as well as the conditions leading to poverty, high unemployment, and crime in the region. This fall largely resulted from a regional resistance to modern innovation in production technology, disrupting the initial monopolies the Midwest held in manufacturing auto, steel, and tire.
As these jobs began to become less and less, efforts to secure fair wages in this industry in the face of decline inadvertently hurt the livelihood of labor organizers, specifically Black workers and women. The centralized union-busting happening in the Midwest is reflected in a wage premium that was 26.5% lower in 2020 than in 2000, because US labor policies avoided the traditional bargaining process with unions and instead passed a corporate tax cut bill in 2017, ignoring working class demands for livable wages.
In looking at the presence of racism within our region, as manufacturing jobs first began to decline, so did the white populations in industrial Midwestern cities. This is called white flight, wherein whites outwardly migrate from more racially diverse areas, in response to racist notions of largely Black populations reflecting poverty and violence. In conversation with the deindustrial moment of the Midwest, white flight occurred at two significant points in the region’s racial and economic history. The Civil Rights era produced urban Black-led protests against racial injustice and segregation during the 1960s, scaring off whites who were resistant to racial integration and civil rights. This happened again in the late 1970s, as the US government sought to fix the national economy by resorting to cheap labor outside the county, effectively wiping out both jobs and the white populations of industrial cities – 26.6% of the white population in Cleveland, and 15.5% in Cook County during this time.
Race and Gender
“The American racial order—the beliefs and practices that organize relationships among the nation’s many races and ethnicities.”
V. Weaver + J.L. Hochschild
To begin describing the way racial and gender disparity is defined in Champaign-Urbana, it is necessary to look at the historical context that led to the current Midwestern racial order. Although the Midwest is generally listed amongst the best places to live in the United States, the region is home to some of the greatest White and Black racial inequities in the nation. The Midwest is often seen as homogeneously white, however over 7 million Black Americans live in the region and this will only continue to grow.
African Americans have been migrating to the Midwest since the early 1900s, driven from their homes in the South due to harsh segregationist laws. The Great Migration was the result of more than 6 million Black Americans settling in cities in the North, Midwest, and West from about 1916 all the way until 1970, taking advantage of the necessity for laborers that came out of WWI. This Great Migration offered Black folks in the North the promise of greater economic upward mobility than in the South, but racial gaps still permeated the North and this was due to two key factors: segregation and changes in public spending, both of which will be expounded upon in later sections. Additionally, migration was linked to higher spending on the policing of predominantly Black neighborhoods.
To maintain a racial and gender based hierarchy, lawmakers in the Midwest adopted the concept of preemption; a tactic where a higher governmental authority limits or eliminates the power of a lower-level government to regulate an issue. This reduces the policy tools and power available to local lawmakers. The Midwest is second only to the South in its abuse of preemption. It works like this: when local governments enact policies that will advance labor justice or benefit people of color, state legislatures that are majority white and male will pass laws to overturn such local decisions or preemptively act to take away their future rights to do so. Furthermore, women are far more likely to be employed in low-paying jobs, and would benefit disproportionately from wage increases prevented by preemption. Additionally, stereotyping of women and minorities (e.g. “welfare queen“) has been weaponized against the creation of increased public resources.
The above reasons have contributed to not only the way Champaign-Urbana is laid out as a city, but perpetrates harmful inequalities that prevent progress in Central Illinois. By failing to undo their predecessors’ actions, current Midwestern lawmakers are stopping the ability of justice to prevail.
Segregation and Economic Opportunity
Segregation was outlawed in 1964 with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, yet we still see segregation today through housing, education, economic opportunities, and individual actions that have harmed Black communities for decades. The notion of the South as being one of the worst places to live for Black Americans is far from the truth, with the Midwest being home to the most sundown towns, racially segregated areas, and unequal access to economic and education opportunities. These historical effects of racism have long-standing impacts today and continue to harm Black communities, especially in the Midwest.
The trope of “Midwest nice” where friendly faces and sentiments can exclude White communities from forms of racism and discrimination has been a way to cover up the significant harm to the Black community. The Midwest is “home to some of the worst White-Black racial inequalities in the nation”. Since the Midwest is predominantly White with many areas being segregated by race, the issue of racism is not discussed. “When a town is nearly all White, it can appear to its residents as natural, rather than an outcome that has been engineered and enforced over time.” This idea of all white suburbs and towns being “natural” allows for White Midwesterners to ignore the role that they have played in shaping these institutions and disparities. These all white suburbs are created through the process of segregation and White Americans wanting to ensure White spaces for themselves and their families. The Midwest continues to ignore the histories of racism and inequalities that are affecting Black Americans today.
One major reason for segregation was the creation of the Fair Housing Act. The FHA was intended to create more opportunities for equal housing opportunities yet, “deepened racial segregation”. The role of FHA to create subsidized housing did little to provide equal homes to Black families and instead created subsidized houses far from White areas and did not care about the quality of the homes either. Subsidized housing was a way to control areas that were meant to be predominantly Black or predominantly for people of color to ensure that White spaces could remain through zoning laws. This also was done by creating higher interest rates for Black families so they could not take out a loan and realtors not allowing Black families to look at predominantly White areas no matter what income level they had. Although the Fair Housing Act was intended to help Black Americans, it ended up hurting them even more and allowing for other acts of segregation to take place in housing.
Champaign-Urbana is not excluded from these racist practices either, especially when housing Black students. “Champaign-Urbana’s housing history is a history of racially restrictive covenants, segregated separate and unequal housing stock and access, plus different institutional and individual local gatekeepers”. The University was unable to work with realtors and property managers to house Black students near campus and ended up creating the North End. The North End is conveniently located far from campus and far from the resources provided by the University. While the University has historically excluded Black Americans from receiving support and ensuring integration, the local public schools are still struggling with integrating classrooms and continue to exhibit racist tendencies towards students of color. The local schools today “within classroom segregation was extreme” and there were significant “disparities in discipline and academic proficiency for black pupils, as compared to their white peers.” Segregation today in the classroom affects the emotional well being of Black students and the resources that they can access. When they are not being uplifted by students and faculty, they cannot succeed in a world that constantly is working against them.
Segregation has also occurred in economic spaces as well, determining certain jobs and skills that the Black community can access and the economic opportunities that are available to them as well. This includes benefits, wages, time off, and other aspects that allow for a sense of financial security and well-being. The United States continues to “[deny] Black Americans the jobs, salaries, and other opportunities that are key to upward mobility” with some Black Americans stating that “if you live in a segregated area, every single bad thing in the world happens to you: you don’t get a loan for housing, and the schools lead to jail”. Lack of access to economic opportunity through racist policies and institutions fails to allow Black Americans to succeed and prosper. These institutional factors have long-standing effects on the well being of Black Americans as well.
All of this is to say that the unequal access to housing, education, and economic opportunities for Black Americans has been allowed and encouraged through the process of segregation.
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism refers to a set of economic policies, as well as an ideological, political, and global movement. Essentially, the plan for neoliberalism can be described simply as follows: redistribute income upwards and downsize, or shrink, the state. Generally, neoliberalism can be characterized by the idea of a “free” market and free trade with little to no government intervention in the economy (though this hasn’t been the reality, as the government regularly intervenes in the service of business owners and corporations, for example), tax cuts (especially for the richest people), budget cuts (especially to social services), and privatization. Neoliberalism is bipartisan; conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, every U.S. president in the past several decades have supported and put forth neoliberal policies, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to Joe Biden today.
Neoliberalism has resulted in greater economic insecurity and poverty, increased social problems, the privatization of public services such as education, and increased regulation of the poor and other vulnerable populations through policing. Rewarding the richest with tax cuts while eliminating important social safety nets for the poorest under neoliberalism has created a situation of even greater unequal wealth distribution, far greater than prior to the implementation of these policies. Wealth inequality has vastly increased since the 1970s; popular political messaging around the “top 1%” refers to how the richest people have seen their wealth expand and grow, while the middle class has shrunk and the poorest have seen little, if any, growth in income and wealth since the 1970s. Wage stagnation also contributes to this, with wage growth notably slowing in the 1970s to the point that wages are around the same now, even with inflation adjustment, despite increasing economic productivity and an ever-increasing cost of living. Further, the average hourly wage of today has about the same purchasing power as it did 1978, which additionally shows the stagnation of wage growth. Most wage gains have also gone to the highest earners. The vast decline of union membership for American workers, partially resulting from neoliberal policies that discourage and prevent labor union membership such as Right-to-Work laws, correlates with the increasing wealth disparities between the top 10% in society and the bottom 90%. The share of workers that belong to unions has decreased by more than half since 1979, while the top 10% now collect nearly half of all income. This decline in labor union membership directly impacts the collective power of workers to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Critical welfare services were cut or even eliminated throughout the 1980s and 1990s, notably with the “Welfare to Work” Bill in 1996 that ended welfare as an entitlement program and effectively eliminated cash assistance for Americans. With greater poverty and increasingly less social safety nets comes greater need for alternate forms of income, perhaps outside the main economy like with the drug trade and sex work, which both expose people to violence and the criminal legal system. Ultimately, neoliberal policies continue to expose greater and greater numbers of people in the United States and across the world to precarious living – poverty, crime, hunger, homelessness, premature death.
At the same time that education, mental healthcare, welfare, and other important resources are defunded, police budgets have skyrocketed since the 1970s. For example, the city of Chicago allocated $750 million to CPD in 1964, adjusted to inflation. In 2020, the budget was $1.6 billion, which takes up about 40% of the city’s operating budget. To some, mass incarceration and criminalization increasing at the same time that a neoliberal economy develops is not coincidental – they are connected. In fact, the police help support neoliberalism by policing the populations that often are the ones who have been most negatively impacted by these policies. Neoliberalism validates practices that regulate and control the lives of the poor, seen through stricter sentencing laws, zero tolerance policies, increased policing of public schools and other public spaces, and more. Neoliberalism, then, is critical for understanding the current context of mass incarceration, mass criminalization, and policing in the United States. In the end, neoliberal political economy is connected with increased policing, criminalization, and incarceration.