Dearborn, Michigan, Is a Lesson — and a Warning

How America risks repeating Europe's deadly mistakes

Dearborn. It sounds pleasant enough, doesn’t it? A name that conjures up images of sun-dappled meadows, perhaps a bouncing fawn nibbling at wildflowers under a cottonwood tree. Bucolic, serene — a place for gingham picnic blankets and afternoon strolls.

Of course, it’s never wise to judge a city by its name. Belle Glade, Florida — “beautiful glade” — boasts the charming statistic that nearly 50% of young men there have a felony conviction. Names deceive. But Dearborn is not merely misnamed. It is something else entirely.

Once, this Michigan city was an industrial titan — home to the Ford Rouge Complex, then the largest integrated factory in the world. Dearborn offered the kind of sturdy, working-class prosperity that gave rise to the American Dream. But that dream has long since been outsourced.

Today, Dearborn feels less dreamlike and more nightmarish. Even The Guardian — not exactly known for its hawkish editorial stance — described the city nearly a decade ago as “divided by religion, race and class.” Back then, the paper could bring itself to mention only “rumours” of ISIS cells and sharia law, as though such things were the paranoid hallucinations of racist Republicans.