Languaging Detroit: Neoliberalism and Black Politics

The appointment of an Emergency Manager in Detroit in 2013 signaled an important development for urban politics in the United States, with particular consequences for Black urban politics. Once dubbed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “the Arsenal of Democracy,” Detroit’s long economic decline as evidenced by the city’s falling tax revenue, population loss, and increasing debt resulted in the city council and mayor being supplanted by a “benevolent dictator,” with officials retaining their titles, but losing governing power (Finley 2013). Despite opposition from local civic and political leaders (Helms 2013), the appointment of an Emergency Manager (EM) has been characterized as necessary because of city leaders’ inability to work together, and the conclusion that they are ‘unlikely,’ or ‘unable” to take the appropriate measures to improve Detroit’s budgetary challenges (Detroit Free Press 2013). Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Stephen Henderson observed, “Detroit's elected leaders have been unable, and in many cases unwilling, to confront the horrible fiscal imbalances that leave insufficient money” for public services, including fire trucks, ambulances, police officers, and public lighting. Supporting Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s decision to appoint an EM to Detroit, Henderson urgently concludes that “it’s Detroiters, the victims of the spectacular failure of local governance in this city, who can’t afford any more delay” (Henderson 2013). Linguistically constructing Detroit’s political leadership as “unable,” “unwilling,” and “failures,” Henderson and other elites mobilized a discourse that opened space for, and justified, Orr’s appointment, with consequences for Black politics in the city. Given that “language plays a dominant role in the formation of ideology, consciousness, behavior and social relations” what would a political analysis look like that addressed the “role of language in social change” (Smitherman 2000, 94) in contemporary Detroit? This paper will analyze how a discourse discrediting elected officials in Detroit was constructed and for what purpose? By approaching Detroit’s political restructuring through the lens of language, it allows us the “possibility of ‘stand[ing] detached from’” the ‘poor governance’ discourse mobilized in Detroit, “bracketing its familiarity, in order to analyze the theoretical and practical context with which it has been associated’” (Escobar 2011, 6). The paper will begin by explaining the rise of neoliberalism as a set of beliefs and related practices that advance particular class interests, and theorize about the role of language in the contemporary process of social change within cities. This paper argues that language is a central part of the process of creative destruction, or the institutional restructuring of political and economic relations. Through an analysis of the discourse of poor governance, I will focus on the role language has played in the political restructuring of Detroit, principally the Governor’s appointment of an EM to replace the democratically elected officials of the city. I will conclude this paper by reflecting on the consequences of this discourse for Black politics in the city.