Remberts' article sent me a sort of mixed message. He leads of his article by kind of misleading the reader into thinking that Detroit is really this awful place but then changes the readers mind by revealing his misconceptions and biases. This leaves me thinking, Detroit can probably be saved, it has lots of potential to be a great city, however he ends on a bad note and shares his experience of finding this horrific area that read "this is a whore house, no fags allowed" and then he just cuts off. Though he does end saying he wants to come back and help. To me it seemed like it didn't necessarily fit in properly. I think his conclusion should have been a little bit larger so the ending wouldn't be so abrupt.
This being said he does use very good examples of the key features of the city and ties in the emptiness of the park to the lack of faith in the town. He does a good job of relating his experiences with Detroit to his overall view and shows the growth of his attitude towards the city. This I feel was the most powerful aspect to the article, showing that he grew from his prejudice and that we should also take a second glance at something before we label it and store it in the back of our brains.
Rembert touches on how you shouldn't prejudge but he also shows through Detroit that some parts of prejudice may be wrong, however some of them can be right. Even though Detroit isn't this horrible wasteland that people think it is, there are dangerous and despicable parts too it.
This article reminded me of a previous article that I have read about detroit and that is Rebecca Solnits' Detroit Arcadia http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/detroit-arcadia/. Solnit describes the ruined areas of Detroit not to necessarily be a bad thing, but a thing of the past and she goes very in-depth into the history of the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment