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From the vibrant streets of Dearborn to the tranquil shores of the Great Lakes, Michigan’s diverse communities honor many different ethnic histories and celebrate good times, c’mon!
Michiganders come from a history of migration and settlement, nestled in between the Great Lakes. People from all over the world have chosen Michigan to call home.
Contributing to our diverse culture here, Michigan’s African-American, Arab-American, Hispanic-American, and Asian-American populations are big in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Ann Arbor.
In 2021, the ethnic origins of Michiganders were white or Northern European at 64% / 7.5 million, black or African-American at 14% / 1.5 million, white or Italian at 3.9%, Mexican at 2.8%, Hispanic at 500,000, Asian at 290,000, and other ethnicities or multiple ethnicities at 1.8%, but that’s changing quickly!
In 2019, about 7% of Michiganders were immigrants from countries like Mexico (11.5%), India (11.3%), Iraq (7.5%), China (5.3%), and Canada (5.3%). Undocumented immigrants make up 16% of Michigan’s total immigrant population.
Back in the 1800s is when the Germans and Dutch arrived, and it was after the civil war when new Polish, Austrian, Hungarian, and Italian arrivals started becoming Michiganders.
In the early 1900s, Detroit’s auto industry attracted Black migrants from the South, and later in the mid-1900s the same promise of a good factory job attracted Palestinian and Chaldean arrivals from the Middle East becoming Michiganders.
Finally, in the 1960s, wars in the Middle East brought many refugees to Detroit from Arab countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, and Syria. That’s when Dearborn got its new start.
There’ve been some Greeks, Hmong, and Native Americans here in Michigan too, and not much has changed around Michigan since the 1960s.
Most places in Michigan with franchises and parking lots represent the general caucasian majority of Michigan. Michigan had more family-owned downtown Main St businesses before corporations like Walmart and McDonald’s moved into town. If your neighbor opened a restaurant or sold cottage food, they’d probably serve tasty food for the soul.
Frankenmuth, Michigan is a famous place for German culture. The area was settled back in 1845 by conservative Lutheran immigrants, and today the city still enforces Bavarian Building Code, so that even the local McDonald’s in Frankenmuth has a touch of Germania. Don’t leave Frankenmuth without a visit to Bronner’s, the world’s largest Christmas store, or a meal at Zehnders, the famous Bavarian fried chicken restaurant.
The area around the Detroit restaurant Little Italy is where Italian settlers congregated most heavily during the 1990s, but today there’s not much of a Little Italy enclave there, except for the restaurant.
Holland, Michigan is known for its Dutch ethnic roots. Holland was settled in 1847 by Calvinist separatists from The Netherlands, and Calvin College keeps its heritage today. The city is nice to visit for its Dutch architecture and best-known for its annual Tulip Time Festival, which attracts over half a million people each year for colorful petals.
Corktown, Detroit is where Irish immigrants became Michiganders during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For a touch of luck in Detroit today, take a look at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church and have a pint at McShane's Irish Pub.
Stanton Township, Michigan has the highest concentration of people with Finnish ancestry in the United States. About half of the people claim their parents were from Finland. Stanton Township may only have a small population of 1,600 Moomin people, but Finland’s population is only half Michigan’s, so it makes sense.
People in the upper peninsula’s Keekanaw come from Cornish descent. Cornwall, United Kingdom is the southwest-most point of the English island, and so that’s where a place called Land’s End is marked. By 1910, the mining areas in Keekanaw and Marquette counties had over 150 English immigrants, many of them Cornish, and you can still try Cornish food up there when you visit a Cornish mining museum.
About 70% of African-American Michiganders live in the Metro Detroit Area, including Wayne, Oakland or Macomb counties. That’s almost the same as it was 50 years ago in the 1970s following the Great White Flight when white people fled Detroit by the tens of thousands every year.
To survey the 30% of Black Michiganders who don’t live in Detroit, Flint, MI in Genesee County plus Grand Rapids in Kent County are the only two places with more than 50,000 African-Americans living there. Ann Arbor, Lansing, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Muskegon are each home to over 20,000 African Americans.
Historically, Black Bottom in Detroit was active with jazz bars and nightclubs from the 1930s to the 1950s, but the neighborhood was gone by the late 1950s. Black Bottom’s black residents included a Nobel Peace Prize winner until the mid 1950s urban renewal project that swooped most of the black people out of there in place of new buildings to establish solutions. Black people who lost their homes and community in the construction used to say with grimmace: “Urban renewal means Negro removal.” (Source: NEH, National Endowment for Humanities)
Today, Lansing, Michigan is a nice place to raise a black family. Black media outlet That Sister names Michigan’s state capital as the #4 best places for Black families to grow deep roots in America.
Dearborn, Michigan, Southwest Detroit, and the surrounding Detroit Metro Areas like Dearborn Heights is a great place for over 300,000 Arab-Michiganders from ethnic places like Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen. Dearborn itself is a majority Arab-American city of 110,000 people, and the Southwest Detroit Metro Area is known for a concentrated population of Arab-Americans.
You can broadcast the Islamic adhan from a mosque's loudspeakers in Dearborn, Michigan! Because it’s home to The Islamic Center of America, which is the largest mosque and oldest Shia mosque in North America, Dearborn is often called the "heart of Shiism" in the United States - but also Sunnis pray there, and people of all belief systems are welcome there.
Source: Ethnic Neighborhoods on YouTube "Dearborn, Michigan is the Arab Capital of the United States of America"
The average U.S. state population includes about 20% hispanic and latino people, but only 600,000 hispanics and latinos viviendo in Michigan make up just 6% of Michiganders. Since 2013, our hispanic and latino population has grown almost 30%, but todavia Michigan has fewer hispanics and latinos than most states.
¡Lo siento por la desigualdad aquí! Mexican Michiganders earn 90 cents for every dollar non-Mexican Michiganders earn. (Source: MCDA, Michigan Center for Data and Analytics.
Most hispanic and latino Michiganders live in urban Wayne County. In 2022 the Detroit Metro Area around those parts was casa to more than 111,000 hispanic and latino gente. The shared neighborhoods of Hispanic, Latino, and Asian Michiganders reflect our multicultural urban communities here. (Source: DTMB, Michigan Department of Technology, Management, and Budget)
You can visit Mexicantown, Detroit - a place with a 6% to 30% Mexican population - for Michigan’s most authentic Mexican food. Or look to rural locations with rising Hispanic residency around Michigan in places like Livingston, St. Joseph, Gratiot, Grand Traverse, and Lake County.
Detroit, Michigan is early North American history’s "Third Stopping Place" of the Anishinaabeg who moved to Michigan and the Great lakes areas from Northeastern parts of the current U.S. and Canada.
Michigan had a majority Native American population up until the turn of European technology in the 1800s. The Anishinaabeg eventually divided into three main tribes: the Chippewa, the Ottawa, and Patawatomi.
The Treaty of Greenville signed in 1795 was an agreement to end fighting between the United States and Native American tribes in the Great Lakes region, but it didn’t last long. Today, after a couple hundred years of development, only 240,000 Native American Michiganders remain.
In 2023, Michigan’s government designated November as Native American Heritage Month to show respect to local tribes and remember past traumas during the formation of the United States. (Source: Michigan.gov)
Greek Michiganders began to arrive in Detroit in the 1910s fleeing persecution in their homeland. Detroit’s general Greektown neighborhoods of Lincoln Park and St. Clair Shores had almost 15,000 Greeks living there by 1930. Today, around 120,000 Detroiters call themselves Greek.
Take a sheepish stroll down Monroe St in Greektown, Detroit to sample the finest Greek food and flaming cheese the city has to offer. Opa! Win big at the Hollywood Casino in Greektown, Motor City Casino, or the MGM Grand Casino, three of Detroit’s best casinos.
About 7.5% of Michigan’s population - that’s 785,000 Michiganders identify as Polish. Pulawski Township, MI and Posen Township, MI are the United States top two places with a majority Polish American population.
The first Polish Michiganders arrived in Hamtramck inside Detroit and the Poletown East within Detroit, during a time when it flourished as the center of Polish immigration in the 1910s and 1920s with the beginning of Detroit’s automotive boom.
Today, you can eat Polish dogs at the Polish Village Cafe and the Polonia Restaurant in Hamtramck. But in the 2000s, it has become a majority Muslim enclave inside Detroit, particularly for Yemeni and Bangladeshi Michiganders.
Ah Chee, the famous first Chinese Michigander, arrived in the 1870s to open a laundry business on Gratiot Avenue by the Detroit River. Several other entrepreneurs from Taishan in Guangdong, China followed in Ah Chee’s 8,000 mile path, with several Chinese restaurants in Detroit’s First Chinatown there. Detroit’s First China Town was home to 2,000 Chinese Michiganders by the 1920s and the food was delicious.
Later in the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit was having some “Urban Renewal” a.k.a. “Slum Clearing” activities which mainly broke up Black communities, but also shut down Chinatown. Those Taishan Michigander restaurateurs near the river, packed their bags and relocated to Detroit’s Second Chinatown near Cass and Petersboro. Unfortunately, the area became a slum and closed down by the 1960s, because the Second Detroit Chinatown wasn’t as good as the First Detroit Chinatown. (Source: Detroit Historical Society)
Today, there are an estimated 70,000 Chinese Michiganders wondering when and where the Third Detroit Chinatown is going to get its start.
The first Albanian Michiganders came to Metro Detroit during the 1910s to earn a good living and avoid serving in the Turkish army. Albania is a nation with a rich history in southeastern Europe. They’re an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula.
Today, 30,000 to 40,000 Michiganders identify as Albanian American. Most Albanians are Muslim, and many Albanians are Christian, like the inverse of Michigan, where most people are Christian, and many people are Muslim. Certain Albanian Michiganders’ Ottoman Empire has nothing to do with certain Native Michiganders’ Ottowa Tribe.
Historically, Chaldeans are Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian, or Turkish Catholics who speak Aramaic. The Chaldeans have mingled with Assyria, Mesopotamia and Rome as things have changed over time.
The Chaldean Town enclave got its start in Detroit the 1920s by Chaldean-Assyrian immigrants looking for automotive factory jobs and running from a long history of assimilation into different powerful empires.
Today, about 185,000 Chaldeans Michiganders call southeast Michigan reside in Southeast Michigan, mostly in the northern Detroit Metro Area’s Macomb and Oakland Counties.
Michigan’s small and mighty Hmong population first arrived here in the 1970s following events surrounding the Vietnam War, and continued from the 1980s until the 1990s.
They settled mostly in the Osborn neighborhood in Detroit, but since then have settled into Detroit’s suburbs and places like Lansing seeking lower taxes while working blue collar jobs.
Today only about 4,000 Hmong Michiganders live in Detroit, and just 1,000 in Lansing. Known for values including resilience, adaptability, and loyalty, Hmong Michiganders are famous for living three generations living in one household.
