Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America by David M. P. Freund

Abstract

Book Reviews 155 David M. P. Freund. Colored Property: State Policy andWhite Racial Politics in Suburban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. 496. Bibliography. Drawings. Index. Maps. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $35.00. Charging a title with references to the histories of race and wealth will raise the expectations of any reader. David Freund does not avoid the critical appraisal of his audience. Colored Property addresses one of the most important topics of recent American history?the political and economic facets of race relations during the past sixty years. His concern is the analysis of the political rhetoric of color blindness and how it differed from the racialist vocabulary of biological superiority that shaped the early decades of the twentieth century. Freund constructs his premise in two sections. The first offers a discussion of the ways federal policies redefined millions of local and state housing markets. The second part of the analysis moves into an examination of these forces in the metropolitan region of Detroit, Michigan. With evidence drawn from a variety of disciplines, Freund raises the standard for urban studies in the twenty-first century. His command of the secondary literature that is relevant to the reinterpretation of the relationship between white Americans' ideas about property and their changing notions about race adds depth to the range of his primary sources. When he writes, "whites' ideas about race and their preoccupation with property were relational and mutually constitutive" (p. 38), Freund refines decades of scholarship that emphasized the primacy of one set of causes over the other. This attempt to disambiguate the meanings of racial thinking within the economic policies of home ownership yields an additional reward. Colored Property closes with a cautionary note about the assumptions of a color-blind housing market powered by individual homeowners' decisions in the absence of governmental and institutional forces. The successful balance among the individual decisions, racial bias, and economic policy that Freund achieves embodies the ideals of historical analysis. Thomas Sugrue's discussion of the urban crisis focused on Detroit but also illustrated a national history. Freund offers a provocative national political history and grounds it with a detailed examination of the rhetoric of home ownership in Detroit's suburbs. A significant limitation of the work is the marginal place of African American voices in this process. However, given the foundation Freund provides, a scholar could certainly develop another study to fill this void. Colored Property is crucial reading for historians and educators studying the recent past of the metropolitan Midwest. It is 156 Michigan Historical Review also an invaluable work for researchers interested the expansion of American suburbs in the twentieth century. Walter D. Greason Department of History Ursinus College Alan D. Gaff. Bayonets in theWilderness: Anthony Wayne's Legion in the Old Northwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Pp. 419. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $39.95. Given the awesome might of the armed forces that won the Civil War and both World Wars, it is easy to forget that the United States Army was once a humble, ragtag force hindered by a great many obstacles: a lack of resources, recruiting difficulties, American hostility to standing armies, and nearly constant pressure from both unfriendly Natives and European interlopers. In an elegantly written and eminendy readable book, Alan D. Gaff successfully documents this chapter inAmerican military history. On November 4, 1791, American military power ebbed to its lowest point when a confederacy of northwestern Indians defeated General Arthur St. Clair in the Battle of Wabash River. President George Washington had to pick up the pieces from this disastrous defeat and rebuild. Gaff traces this process, from the painstaking choice of a new commander, through the recruitment and training of new troops, and finally to the ultimate victory of the U.S. Army over the northwestern confederacy. It is a compelling drama full of intrigue, political maneuvering, desperation, and chicanery. Besides serving as a tighdy constructed history of the early years of the American army, Gaffs book doubles as a biography of Anthony Wayne, best known by the moniker "Mad Anthony." The nickname was used byWayne's men as a term of affection, but over the centuries it has...