The Metro Detroit area is multiculturally diverse, a melting pot of sorts. More specifically, Detroit is the embodiment of the American dream, where one can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Being home to the auto industry, Detroit's job market lured many people from both abroad and other parts of the nation who were in search of better opportunities. In 1916 roughly one-third of Detroit's residents were foreign born, with two-thirds of Ford's employees having been born in a different nation. [1] Within a decade, Detroit's foreign-born population would be roughly half of the city's population, which was the largest for any city within the U.S. [2] Today, Detroit's demographics are starkly different from the days of Henry Ford's $5/day. In 2013, Detroit had an immigrant population of approximately four percent. [3] Detroit has consistently been losing population since the 1950s, 62 percent in fact. [4] The city's dwindling population is a reflection of its lack of opportunities. 

Detroit has a large African American population, many of whose ancestors migrated to the north during the Great Migration. Racist policies in the south pushed these Americans north in hopes of a more equal society, but they were met with racism of a different kind when they arrived. While the north did not live by Jim Crow per se, their neighborhoods were still fairly segregated. The New Deal’s Home Owners’ Loan Corp (HOLC) redlined maps, which essentially kept many minorities, African Americans and immigrants of Eastern European or Jewish descent in particular, from being able to receive government-backed home loans during the Great Depression. This impacted these communities' abilities to accumulate wealth and hindered social mobility. Restrictive covenants, zoning power, and racism kept neighborhoods in Detroit and its suburbs segregated. Eventually as immigrant groups assimilated into the larger American society, they would be excluded from such restrictions. Thus, where people settled demographically and geographically, is a result of government policy, business policy, and racism that was inherent with such conditions. 

[2] Bak, Richard, Images of America: Detroit: 1900-1930 (Charleston, Arcadia Publishing, 1999), 47.

[3] Fox, Justin, "There's No Formula for Fixing Detroit, and That's a Good Thing." Harvard Business Review, July 24, 2013. <hbr.org/2013/07/theres-no-formula-for-fixing-detroit.html> (accessed on May 1, 2023)

[4] Warikoo, Niraj, "Biggest metro Detroit immigrant group is from India, report shows." Detroit Free Press, July 20, 2013. 

Division of Research and Statistics: Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Hearne Brothers Present Polyconic Projection Map of Greater Detroit. Scale unknown. In: Mapping Inequity: Redlining in the New Deal. <https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=13/42.335/-82.958&city=detroit-mi> (accessed on March 2, 2023)

Flag of Detroit (Detroit, Detroit Historical Society, 2023). <https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/flag-detroit> (accessed on April 16, 2023)