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Don't assume Macomb still is the county you knew or heard about years ago.
Diversity data and newcomers' voices deliver an eye-opening reality check, Aaron Foley reports at BLAC magazine, a glossy lifestyle monthly.
Angela Roseberry, an Eastpointe clothing retailer, says: "I don't have any shutters or gates on my storefront. If you go to Eight Mile, you'll see a lot of shutters and gates." (Facebook photo)
The Wayne-Macomb boundary is "not quite the racial divider it once was," he writes in September's lead article.
Macomb County, the historically "whitest" county in southeast Michigan with a history of racial intolerance, had the most dramatic uptick in African-American population, the most recent U.S. Census data notes.
According to a U.S. Census estimate, Macomb's black population leaped a whopping 22.6 percent from 2010 to 2013. By comparison, Oakland County's black population increased 7.3 percent in the same three-year period. . . .
Eastpointe is one of several Macomb County suburbs that has seen an influx of black residents, mostly coming from Detroit.
Drive through brick bungalow-lined streets and you'll see young black boys playing ball with young White ones, or girls of all ethnicities standing in line at the walk-up Dairy Queen on Nine Mile Road. Black customers are greeted heartily at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Gratiot — another sight that would have been unheard of in the Macomb County of old.
The largest percentage gains in African American population this decade have been in Eastpointe, Warren, Roseville and St. Clair Shores, according to statistics Foley relays from researchers at Data Driven Detroit.
In his deeply sourced, 1,300-word article about "this massive migration," the freelance writer quotes two Eastpointe entrepreneurs on Gratiot Avenue -- fashion shop owner Angela Roseberry of Totally U Boutique and stylist Erica Cook of Pretty Woman Hair Salon.
Roseberry isn't among the new arrivals. She moved to Warren in 1998 as a teen when her family left Detroit.
"I don't have any shutters or gates on my storefront," she says. "If you go to Eight Mile, you'll see a lot of shutters and gates."
Totally U is in its fourth year of operation, and Roseberry has regular clients from both sides of the border.
Cook, whose beauty shop near Nine Mile is a year old, "ticks off firm 'no's' when asked if she's been hassled, intimidated or felt uncomfortable at all in Macomb." Foley writes.
Recent Macomb coverage at Deadline Detroit:
