On a mid-week evening during the holiday season, Shatila Bakery in Dearborn buzzes with customers shopping for Middle Eastern and French pastries. People sip coffee and raw fruit drinks in a café area, surrounded by palm trees lit with tiny lights, including a prominently positioned Christmas tree. Images of Santa Claus hang on the wall, with a string of crescent moon and star lights above them. A non-Arab American finds himself mesmerized by the cultural confusion.
One wonders if this city with such an illustrious past has the potential of defining what "culturally cool" means for Southeast Michigan. Henry Ford’s $5 a day manufacturing system created a multicultural working community in Dearborn. Entrepreneurial freedom for generations of Middle Eastern people is reinventing the city in a post-racial content. With the excitement surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration this week, it seems appropriate to imagine this storied city, so intrinsically linked to the region's past, as a hotbed for a new kind of innovation: diversity.
Deputy Wayne County CEO and Dearborn resident Azzam Elder and Mayor Jack O’Reilly envision the city's Arab American culture as a destination for visitors as well as permanent residents.
"Promoting of Arab culture would be a huge benefit," says Elder. "The city has gained national and international recognition for The Henry Ford, why not the National Arab American Cultural Museum and the retail district along Warren Avenue?"
Located along a rail line between Detroit and Ann Arbor, Dearborn is at a cultural crossroad: its growing Arab American minority highly visible amid the European American majority population. Dearborn is absorbing its diversity without violence or flight, becoming the "cool city" that its State of Michigan designation proclaims. Revived main street retail districts and townhouse developments are accented by local Middle Eastern bakeries, shops, markets and restaurants, along with Indian, Thai, Mexican, Italian, Polish, and Chinese restaurants. One of the nation's largest mosques is neighbors with two Christian churches and the city has an active interfaith council.
A model for multiculturalism?
One can almost imagine Warren Avenue, already Dearborn's second main street, evolving from its Lebanese, Palestinian, Yemeni, and Iraqi restaurants, bakeries, and markets into a national destination for Mideast culture – its museum expanded to include national touring shows, new entertainment venues drawing integrated audiences. It becomes easy to envision the International Arab American Festival expanded and promoted to draw tourists from all over the United States, a cultural celebration that redefines the city's identity the way Mardis Gras is celebrated in New Orleans or SxSW consumes Austin, Texas.
Of all the cities in Metro Detroit, Michigan really, diversity in Dearborn has the potential to become a kind of eternal flame, fueling the energy of the city and drawing other ethnic groups into the mix. The inevitable outcome would be the nation’s largest Middle Eastern population.
The signs are already there. The city enjoys stable residential areas, given the current real estate market -- and even "big foot" homes pop up in neighborhoods of smaller homes as affluent residents opt to remain in the city. This is largely a reflection of professional and entrepreneurial Arab Americans defining Dearborn as their home. Give Dearborn a generation of affluence and one can project a community that draws young professionals and entrepreneurs, and the upscale retail development that follow.
With rail lines connecting the city with the airport, Ann Arbor, and Detroit, the city would become a commuter destination.
Mayor O'Reilly, a longtime Dearborn resident, says cultural inclusion attracts people. "We want to work with everybody in this community to create an environment in which people from all different social/ethnic backgrounds would want to be part of this community because it’s a good place to live." Cultural diversity and pricing diversity offers buyers a good value regardless of the type of housing they’re looking for.
The stability of Dearborn's neighborhoods occurred because of, not in spite of, the growth of its Arab American population, O'Reilly says. As the new residents purchased homes in large volumes, housing values remained stable, allowing
"transition and cultural change to happen naturally," O’Reilly explains. "It's going to happen. The goal is to have the transition occur through natural phenomenon, not artificially, like flight. There's going to be change and migration. That's part of the American framework. We are a great diverse community that sees our population swell with people from other places. You want people to come because you have good stable neighborhoods, good city services."
WelcomeHomeDearborn.com not only does its job recruiting former residents and retaining others, but it welcomes new residents looking for a vital multicultural suburban home with urban sensibility. The Latino and African American communities have become a sizable new component of that population. With twenty years, Dearborn could be a community of color that truly becomes home to the Concert of Colors.
The vitality and marketability of Dearborn "comes from blending qualities rather than everyone being the same." It’s also about understanding diversity, O'Reilly explains. "You realize that the differences aren't so great… we have the same goals and aspirations… those differences become immaterial. If we create the community that we want, then people who want to be here will embrace what we're doing. Image comes from what you do. We want to do the right thing so that people say that's where I want to be."
Diversity as an economic driver
It's not much of a reach to envision Dearborn as the engine of Wayne County. "There's a huge economic advantage in any city, such as Dearborn, that embraces (diversity)," notes Azzam Elder. A generation of Middle Eastern immigrants, culturally oriented to entrepreneurial work, defines the professional and business life of the city, but in doing so creates more vital retail districts throughout the city. Immigrant merchants don't just serve the needs of their ethnic group, but the greater market of the metropolitan area."
"When they come to the United States they have a bigger opportunity," says Elder. "You not only cater to people from your own ethnic background, you have a diverse population from all over who learn to appreciate some of the nice things that you bring." Shatila Bakery he says, which has manufacturing facility in the city, distributes most of its goods outside the Dearborn area.
So, when does an ethnic community become your community? The transformation of Dearborn not only evolves from European American to Arab American but from Arab American to Dearborn American. Your Community Voice, a local newspaper, was originally an Arab American publication but has expanded to serve the community at large. Raad Alawan, its editor, believes that diversification enhances his newspaper's marketability, but it's also an indication of how the interests of Arab Americans and other Dearborn residents are similar.
A member of the Fairlane Club, a Dearborn social and fitness club, Alawan recalls a few groups of club members presumably talking about the sale of the club to Arab Americans.
"Each group was their own ethnicity: white people, Arabs, African Americans in separate groups." Despite the segregation, he says, there hasn't been an exodus of non-Arab members from the club, as there hasn't been a mass exodus in the greater community. "We're comfortable living in our pods. We're diversely fragmented."
Mayor O’Reilly, on the other hand, promotes "one Dearborn." The dynamics of cultural integration prevents Dearborn from becoming any "one" identity, yet is for anyone. What eventually unites the city is the understanding of its diversity and the shared interest of working toward the common good of creating a solid, vibrant place.
Looking to the future, Alawan, who returned to his roots in Dearborn after a 15-year odyssey as a broadcast journalist in various Midwestern cities, realizes that "one Dearborn" may never truly be one. "What eventually will unite this community is an understanding (that) comes from people who … are educated and people who want to work toward the common good," he explains.
Like other educated young Arab Americans, Alawan eventually returned to his local roots. "I don’t know of anyone who has graduated (from college) and is working out of state or out of the area," he says of his Dearborn friends. "A lot of them are doctors, pharmacists, lawyers."
Elder concurs. His family includes a nurse, pharmacist, teacher, and lawyer – all living in Dearborn.
A plug for the 'brain drain'
With the younger adult population remaining in the city and the percentage of children in Dearborn schools increasing, the city will become younger and reflect the Arab American culture in a greater way.
This is one of the reasons why Andrea Awada is confident of the future of the city. "Many of our students, after they find their niche in professions, come back and settle in Dearborn," says Awada, principal of Greer Elementary School and chair of the ACCESS Board of Directors. "Fordson High School is an example. You wouldn't believe how many graduates of Fordson are raising their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in Dearborn."
Dearborn schools, she says, are not experiencing declining enrollment as other schools in other districts are. As a result, they're hiring teachers and real estate values in residential neighborhoods surrounding schools are stable.
It’s not unlikely that by the time Awada retires Dearborn not only needs to build more schools, but it is respected as a place where multicultural education produces the highest MEAP scores and college graduates. It is a vision that projects education. "Just as the principal sets the tone of a school (environment) – the accepting tone – it's the same with the city: your mayor, city officials set the tone of the city. Is it a city of tolerance, acceptance or a city of us versus them?"
It was a city divided at one time but it no longer is, she adds.
Change you can believe in
Dearborn, a national destination, is a place where automotive history and the Arab American migration create tourism dynamic. While the city maintains its cultural integrity, the city that promoted The Henry Ford, now generates crowds along Warren Avenue. Dearborn becomes the most vibrant city in Michigan. "People love entertainment, they love food," says Elder. "Why not encourage the entertainment?" Why not perpetuate the unique American immigrant experience
That’s O'Reilly's vision. A cultural authority along Warren Avenue promotes economic development in an area where it's already happening. It's not just the bakeries and restaurants, he says, but the "little places like roasters that roast coffee nuts and spices." Middle Eastern shops and restaurants are already a draw from well-beyond the region. "People make a point of coming to Dearborn for great Arabic food," Elder says. "Even people who travel overseas to Middle Eastern countries will come back and say that the food is not as good as in Dearborn."
Imagine a "natural phenomenon" giving birth to a new diverse community in Dearborn. The Arab American identity expands on the Henry Ford legacy, and a cool diversity resulting. Awada imagines moving to Dearborn, a city she once would not consider living in because of its climate of intolerance. However, it's different now, she says. "If you had asked me years ago, I would have said absolutely not.
"Do we have problems? Absolutely. Are they as major as they were years ago? Absolutely not. Are there people in leadership positions who are working very hard to make this a place of diversity, yet a place of unity? Absolutely there are, and that's making a world of difference.”
A world of difference is what creates a diverse environment, allowing Dearborn to once again become an agent of change in Michigan.
Dennis Archambault is a frequent contributor to Metromode and Model D. His last article was Metro Detroit's Real Radio.
Photos:
Lunch crowd at Shatila Bakery
A young couple deciding on desserts at Shatila Bakery
Small specialty stores are on many corners on Warren Avenue
Greeland grocery, a popular a destination for many in Southeast Michigan
Mayor Jack O'Reilly at his favorite roaster
Greer Elementary School students show principal Awada their art projects
Andrea Awada, principal of Greer Elementary School, with the future generation
All photographs by Detroit Photographer Marvin Shaouni
Marvin Shaouni is the Managing Photographer for Metromode & Model D.