ABSTRACT
Detroit has always been for a state of mind, a mixture of hope and lost opportunities, of dirt and despair, of shiny new automobiles and unimaginably long unemployment lines. Detroit seemed an ideal place for black opportunities. There was by the end of World War II a small but growing black entrepreneurial and professional class. By 1990, nearly 200,000 Arab-Americans lived in the greater Detroit-Dearborn area. Unfortunately, despite many common economic and political interests, working class and poor people of different ethnic communities rarely come together. The challenge of rebuilding and resurrecting Detroit, should be the cornerstone of a new, national policy of urban reconstruction for the twenty-first century. The struggle to save Detroit, and other cities like it, cannot be viewed in narrow political, economic, or educational terms. Detroit is a symbol for the vast class and racial chasm which cuts across the country.
