Blacks were unwelcome in Dearborn's parks and other public spaces in the 1980s. They were allowed to work, shop, or drive through, but it was police policy to ask blacks for ID in other situations, and ask them to leave if they were not residents. Unfortunately, it is not shocking for me to say a city discriminated against blacks a generation ago. I have no evidence that they are currently discrimination against blacks.
I know of quite a lot of religious discrimination in Dearborn's history, but it was not against Christians. It was unfortunately common (especially in the 1950s) for cities to limit where Jews could rent or buy homes. Dearborn continued this practice until the late 1970s, and in some neighborhoods into the 1980s. Again, discrimination a generation ago says little about current conditions.
There was an incident in Dearborn in 2012 that some Christians found troubling. It happened at a huge street fair called ArabFest. There were police directing traffic and standing around in case of trouble, like you have at big events like that. A group of evangelical Christians showed up with gospel tracts and a pig's head on a stick. They screamed about how the Muslims were going to burn in hell, and waved the pig's head in their faces while explaining to the police they needed to keep those people at bay, and had to use the pig because those people were terrified of pigs. There was a lot of shoving and yelling, including "Allah Ahkbar." There was a lawsuit (later dismissed) that the police were suppressing the Christians' first amendment rights by throwing them out. I don't understand the details of the settlement that had ArabFest paying out so much money to the evangelical Christian group that they had to cancel the next year's festival.
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Date: 2015-01-23 04:28 am (UTC)I know of quite a lot of religious discrimination in Dearborn's history, but it was not against Christians. It was unfortunately common (especially in the 1950s) for cities to limit where Jews could rent or buy homes. Dearborn continued this practice until the late 1970s, and in some neighborhoods into the 1980s. Again, discrimination a generation ago says little about current conditions.
There was an incident in Dearborn in 2012 that some Christians found troubling. It happened at a huge street fair called ArabFest. There were police directing traffic and standing around in case of trouble, like you have at big events like that. A group of evangelical Christians showed up with gospel tracts and a pig's head on a stick. They screamed about how the Muslims were going to burn in hell, and waved the pig's head in their faces while explaining to the police they needed to keep those people at bay, and had to use the pig because those people were terrified of pigs. There was a lot of shoving and yelling, including "Allah Ahkbar." There was a lawsuit (later dismissed) that the police were suppressing the Christians' first amendment rights by throwing them out. I don't understand the details of the settlement that had ArabFest paying out so much money to the evangelical Christian group that they had to cancel the next year's festival.