passing / in detroit:
an american experience
JANdeGROOTPHOTOGRAPHY
When it fell, Detroit fell hard. Two deadly race riots within 30 years had mortally wounded the city's psyche. Overt racial intolerance exploded in the 1960’s and impelled the city's white population to flee to the suburbs by the millions. It was a xenophobic reaction by the whites toward the newly empowered (and justifiably angry) black population.
In ten years time, Detroit’s largest tax base had relocated to the suburbs, as did most white-owned businesses, leaving the city a crumbling symbol of industrial obsolescence and racial inequity.
Yet, despite Detroit's socio-economic decline, an exciting and vital cultural renaissance is taking root amid the post-industrial ruins. Now, after 30 years of crawling from the wreckage, the city is wooing back the sons and daughters of those who had abandoned her.
passing in detroit documents the heirs to this lost white population and examines their tentative reappearance into a city that still remains 90% black.
passing in detroit presents culturally charged portraits which expose the contradictions and tensions of race in America.
