Customer Reviews

The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I just finished reading "The Slaughter of Cities", and I found it a useful complement to such books as "Suburban Nation" and "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" - each give some treatment of how a rather small number of people with a somewhat sincere vision gutted the moderate-sized to large cities of the US, but whereas in the latter two books Plater-Zyberk and Jacobs, respectively, argue that planners had a wrong-headed planning vision that did not create livable environments, Jones shows that, in the case of ethnic enclaves, there is reason to believe that, in practice, the driving forces behind these communities' demise were

1. Unfavorable tax and zoning treatments of the row-house, the staple of these communities,

2. An almost blind faith in an integrationist ideology that lead the Ford Foundation and the American Friends Service Committee, inter alia, to "integrate" neighborhoods by any means necessary (and "integration" typically meant white flight), and

3. the ethnic prejudices of the "WASP" establishment, which lead the ethnically homogenous municipal and federal housing agencies to be predisposed to break up enclaves filled with people from poor Catholic neighborhoods.

One can be found in most treatments of twentieth century urban renewal, two I've seen discussed only partly, but three I have never heard discussed - and Jones presents a variety of evidence from primary sources to show that this was, at very least, a contributing factor to the demise of ethnic enclaves in Boston, Philidelphia, Chicago and Detroit.

But, in order for those points to stand out, you almost need to be taking notes. Jones' book is written basically as a series of journal entries that treat a variety of topics without a real unifying theme, except for an often tangental "WASP establishment" plug - but that doesn't really lead to a universal "ethnically motivated prejudice" theme because the "WASPs" made up the overwhelming majority of the professional class from the 1940s to 60s, so of course the people whose actions destroyed the ethnic enclaves were overwhelmingly "WASPs."

Overall, I this book introduces the reader to a range of underutilized primary sources and brings together books from sociology literature in ways that I had never seen before. It isn't your standard planning text.

The destruction of Detroit, Philadelphia, the south side of Chicago, and all the major cities of the Northeast was all planned. In the early part of the 20th century the WASP plutocrats saw that the Catholic urban ethnics would soon take over the major cities because they were having large families, so they used urban planning funded with government and foundation money to drive the Catholics out of the cities after World War II. E. Michael Jones has put the whole sorry tale together in his new book, and the words of the elite urban planners, themselves, are used to convict them. If you thought that the rapid suburbanization of this country after World War II was a natural occurrence, then read this book. You will also learn how the "car culture" and the interstate highway system fits into the scheme. My Great-Grandfather rode the streetcar to work in Detroit. He spent pennies a day on transportation. Now we are all spread out and dependent on cars costing thousands a year to get us to work on long commutes via the clogged freeways.

If you did, this is the book for you. I returned to this book after reading Michael Patrick MacDonalds' memoirs, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion , two very good works on their own terms (they are memoirs not autobiography so they lack the vigor associated with the more formal form), but not without serious shortcomings. MacDonald in his writings seems to lack a context in which to understand the forces that shaped his childhood, that killed his brothers and crippled his sister.

This book supplies the context.

In short, the Brahmans of Boston, who made their money making drug addicts out of the Chinese via the opium trade, used the same tactics/techniques (coupled with divide and conquer strategy via busing) on the poor Irish of South Boston whom they have long despised. The reasons are the same...the unconstrained desire for money enabled by a disdain for the exploited peoples. The story is the same in Philadephia, Detroit and Chicago, urban renewal as ethnic cleansing, in short culture war against ethnic Catholics (who were getting too powerful for the ruling class), that those that lived beside the ethnic Catholics (Protestants of all denominations, Jews) would also have to suffer was of course of no consequence. Slaughter of the Cities should be read by not only every writer trying to make sense of the demise of working class neighborhood in America, but by every working person in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago. It's your history be you Catholic or not.

Slaughter is important for another reason, most writings on the ethnic Catholic, even commentaries in the local newspaper, are written by approved agents of the ruling class. For example, Maureen Dowd is the house croppie at the New York Times, a example of what an "Acceptable Irish Catholic" look likes (that is no longer ethnic and no longer Catholic). Jones is unapologetically Catholic, he is not the "Good Catholic" like Dowd and others of her ilk. I can only hope that Jones returns to this topic or MacDonald or other serious researchers picks up on Jones material because there is much more to be told, not propaganda, not PC history, The Truth must be told. Too many people have suffered to do otherwise.

In order to balance the review of "interested party" C. Clark I give 5 stars to this tome. Clark's review contains no evidence whatsoever to back up his allegations. How this review can be called "useful" is thus difficult to comprehend.

Memo to future reviewers: Try and give text-based evidence rather than worthless opinion.

"Slaughter of the Cities" tells the tale of woe for Philadelphia's urban decay. The writer examines and explains the constituent factors that are rarely discussed, in particular, the social-ethnic-religious power groups and perceived group interests that motivated particular public policy decisions that had adverse impacts on certain groups.

This book should be required reading for advocates of the "New Urbanism" who too often shy away from discussion of ethnic, racial, and religious factors in land use and urban development. "Slaughter of the Cities" covers these questions in a frank manner that should be emulated by others.

E. Michael Jones does excellent work. This book is not for the weak or the meek or for those who do not want truth to shake up their world. We don't want to hear that we have been pawns in someone's political game or that we were too ignorant and naive to see what was happening in our cities. This book is a MUST READ for those who want to hear the truth and are not afraid to be shaken by it.

Another excellent book by an excellent writer! If you liked his other works then you'll probably like this book also.

Hmm could CPClark be the same as C Clark???? what a weirdo!!!

It's a thick book.
The details are very impressinve.
The book is 80-90% factual accounts of history, detailed local history, with the remainder as commentary on the motivation for the actions taken. Very meticulously researched, I can only wonder how the author had time to do all this!
For those who want to know what forces worked to make them who they are today, this book fills in many gaps that I was never taught in government school, either secondary or university level.
As a Catholic who bemoans the fact that there is no truly Catholic Voting block in our country, this book helps to explain the why.

I've read 50 pages, less than 10% of the book. Based on that, I highly recommend it to those who are interested in US History, and in particular, those who want to understand Catholic US History, what role of Catholics played in our country, or perhaps better phrased, what role have they been allowed.

E. Michael Jones, long known as an extremely conservative Catholic commentator on a variety of cultural issue from the motives of modern philosophers to music and architecture, turns in "The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing" to the destruction of American cities by urban planners during the twentieth century.

Jones argues throughout "The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing" that the purpose of the "urban renewal" plans of twentieth-century America was to discriminate against the migrant, originally non-English speaking Roman Catholic working class populations of the inner cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Boston. He argues that this was done through co-operation between a black underclass of migrants from the South and a white, classically Protestant ruling class that viewed the high Catholic birthrate as a threat to its dominance in the long term. Jones thinks that the plans of these two groups combined to remove the separation between these Catholic communities and a hostile outside world, with the result that Catholic culture lost its distinctive character and it became much tougher to maintain adherence to official Church teachings as they moved into the suburbs.

Because, today, suburbs (and even more exurbs) are as Phillip Longman has said the most conservative sections of global society today - the ones where living a life in accordance with the strict regime of the Vatican are easiest owing to their low living costs allowing affordable families - it is impossible for me to see Jones' criticism of suburbs as well-argued. This is especially true when one sees that today people without motor-cars have far fewer children than those most reliant upon them. They are also far more amenable to stable marriages than European or East Asian cities. He does not explain how population growth among Catholic migrant groups would have been accommodated in any other manner in the post-Depression period: there is obviously only a finite amount of space in old "cities". Even the fabled "baby boom" and growth of faith and family in the very period urban renewal occurred is now known to be a phenomenon of suburban Catholics - with the emphasis on suburban.

Also, the way in which Jones treats what he admits to be the black underclass borders on racism. He seems to assume much of the time that the black underclass had no needs of its own and that no reason for its migration away from the rural South existed. In reality, there were many problems in the Southern rural economy contributing to the migration of blacks to northern cities. Jones nonetheless steadfastly refuses to discuss these problems or how they could otherwise have been solved. Given the radicalism of the emerging black culture, it is not easy to see an option that would satisfy him: if blacks had been simply moved into new and distant suburbs, they would have had an advantage as noted above over the older non-English speaking Catholic migrants. Jones also does seriously discuss the problem of affordable housing and why it has been so completely lost today in the cities he discusses.

All in all, what Jones wants to say here sounds like a promising thesis, but is completely distorted by near-racist dislike of blacks and a lack of understanding about the character of suburbs. I really cannot recommend the book.

This is, frankly, one of the WORST books I have ever read on any topic, let alone urban problems. After the first chapter, it is apparent that E. Michael Smith has an agenda at least as pervasive as that of the WASP's he constantly derides in the book for things going far beyond "ethnic cleansing," such as having liberated sexual mores that caused them to "lack the inhibitions necessary to govern properly." His goal is to put ALL of the blame for urban problems today solely on the shoulders of the WASP elites--which, by extension, applies to anyone of Protestant beliefs, as he connects the supposedly "morally decadent" Protestants and Quakers (whom he derides for lacking structure in their religion), in addition to the blacks who migrated from the South in search of employment during WWII (and who also happened to be overwhelmingly Protestant) with the "moral decay" that resulted in the cities as a result of "anti-Catholic" policies. Smith also blames the racial violence--including lynching of blacks--caused by attempts at blacks to integrate into the monolithically ethnic and Catholic neighborhoods on the "violent criminal culture" of the South, which blacks supposedly transplanted with themselves to the cities; he adds that blacks were purposefull "corrupted" by the factory managers who paid them much better wages than they had ever received in the Jim Crow South, which had presented the "structure to keep their urges in check." He does not acknowledge that the Catholic ethnics in fact had driven out other groups themselves when they first moved into the neighborhoods. and that the neighborhoods already had many of problems that blacks purportedly introduced. Gangs, for example, were prevalent in the Irish neighborhoods, in particular, and partook in blatantly illegal activity, such as drag-racing. The impression one receives is that, beyond poverty, the Catholic ethnic neighborhoods were some sort of morally upright utopia that was irreparably corrupted by Protestant and black influences, when in fact the neighborhoods were at least as much to blame due to their unwillingness to accept blacks, or even other Catholic ethnics of different nationalities, as equals. Many upwardly mobile blacks were forced to remain in true slum conditions in central city ghettos that, ironically, had once been occupied by the ethnics before they moved on to somewhat more affluent neighborhoods.
Also discrediting his work--which starkly contrasts with his previous work, which has nothing to do with urban problems and everything to do with his interpretation of "morality" and "decadence," which he arbitrarily applies to urban problems--is his labeling FDR and his "WASP allies" (never mind that FDR was Dutch) as "social enginners" who were "trying to root out Fascism"--implicitly making them socialists, in Smith's eyes. Even worse, he does not acknowledge the problems facing not just Catholics, but also Protestants and Lutherans of non-British descent--making this much more of a religious division than an ethnic division, when in fact the opposite was true.
A much better analysis of urban problems--acknowledging the grievances and ideals and hopes of all groups invovled--is "Common Ground."