In the hit movie “8 Mile,” rap star Eminem plays Jimmy “Rabbit” Smith, an aspiring white rapper who lives in a black neighborhood. 8 Mile is the name of the road separating that neighborhood — in Detroit — from its white suburbs. This road also separates Rabbit from the success he wants to be. But his inner-city experiences lend his music power and credibility that will lead him beyond 8 Mile. This is really the story of Marshall Mathers III, before he was Eminem, and the oft-maligned city that created him.
Detroit has never been a glamorous city. Instead, it was a proud working-class town with the biggest and best factories that attracted people of many ethnicities: Poles, Greeks, Albanians, Arabs, Mexicans. In the first half of the 20th century, several million African Americans had migrated north to escape poverty and oppression in the South.
Many found work and hope in the factories and neighborhoods of Detroit. Former autoworker Berry Gordy founded Motown Records — and produced hits like cars off an assembly line. Just think of some of the famous names: the Temptations, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Even when the hitmakers went Hollywood, the Motor City kept creating innovative sounds. It gave birth to techno music, fostered rap-rock hybrids such as Kid Rock and nurtured the garage rock of the White Stripes.The motor of Detroit’s success also proved to be its undoing. Millions of people left the big industrial cities for greener pastures in big American cars. Some of them commuted to Detroit. Others simply never came back. The prospect of having their children attend school with kids of the recent migrants also caused many whites to flee city limits.
Courts tried to fashion a school desegregation plan for the whole metropolitan area. But in 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Milliken v. Bradley that courts could not order desegregation between Detroit and suburban school districts as a remedy, because the school districts did not cause the segregation. The decision preserved suburbs as segregated havens for whites, who had more incentive to move. In five decades, Detroit’s population fell from two million to below one million, a sad first for an American city.
“8 Mile” is hardly a visual advertisement for the city. Its opening scenes of burned-out desolate buildings and abandoned cars all but proclaim, “Welcome to Sarajevo.” But in this urban crucible, streetwise kids forged authentic rap music. Out of this gritty landscape emerged the Real Slim Shady. Why did it take so long?
From Pat Boone to Michael Bolton and Vanilla Ice, white “interpreters” of R&B and rap have long created processed cheese — artificial, bland and imitative. And why should it be otherwise? The typical white kid grows up in a community with few black neighbors and friends.
According to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, white students attend schools where less than 9 percent of the kids are black. Where would such kids learn to create music derived from the African American experience?
Eminem’s unique talent is the product of his unique experience growing up in a black neighborhood. As with the film’s Rabbit, they were his friends, peers and rivals. He matched his musical skill against theirs. Not only did he have to compete against them, he had to win them over. Not only did they cheer him, they cared for him as their own.
Eminem is a poster child for urban, multiracial America — another reason for cultural conservatives not to like him.
Detroit still faces an uphill battle to change outside perceptions. Universal, which distributed “8 Mile,” apparently did not want to film there at first. And the Los Angeles Times reported that the folks who put Eminem’s childhood home on eBay failed to receive the minimum $120,000 bid — while a baseball player’s chewed gum fetches $3,000. It will take more than one rags-to-riches story to help the Motor City roar back to life.