For 43 years I lived in two communities adjacent to one
another. In that time I knew a little how they felt toward one another. One
felt superior to the other. The lower ranked community knew this reality and
scoffed at it. They laughed about the perceived differences and how wrong they
were.
Because I lived in both communities – one for 23 years, and
the other for 20 years – I knew the reality of both towns. The first one was
often cited in regional and national press as a community of high value and
distinguished features. But I also knew the community to raise up the
Protestant churches, the Evangelicals even higher, and to cast Catholics to
lower rungs of the social ladder. I knew that household incomes and fanciness
of homes were also used as distinguishing features among the ‘classes’ of
citizens in town.
The second town I came to know as one community. Oh, there
were historical factors that separated some towns folk from one another, but
they were few, and the population had swelled with later arrivals that so
diluted the natives that the historical segregation no longer truly counted.
No, by and large the citizens of town saw themselves as pretty much the same.
Were they nice or not? That was more to the point, as well as were they
financially viable? Poor people always seem to be placed on the lower rung, but
there weren’t many of them and so we accepted pretty much everyone.
And we worked together to govern our town, build stronger
institutions, help one another, and support a healthy community overall.
The former town did the same only differently. There only
the elite were expected to do the work of the town and to get the credit for
the work. There was a hierarchy of personality and class in town that expected
and accepted such differences. If you were not in this group you didn’t have
the opportunity to be heard let alone lead. No, you were relegated to the
laboring volunteers of the group and of the civic project.
Now, shift your attention please to another town adjacent to
the other two. This town has a history far different from the other two. It was
a railroad town that acquired and attracted laborers on the railroad, and of
the agricultural realities of the towns served by those railroads. Mexicans in
the main traveled the nation from 1850 to 1950 working both on farms and
orchards as well as railroads. As a result their families began to settle along
the railroad routes. West Chicago is such a
community. And I live there now, have done so for 2.5 years.
The first community I spoke of is Wheaton , Illinois Warrenville ,
Illinois
Now I am a retired apartment dweller partnered with Rocky
and living in West Chicago .
My perspective is much different today than it was in 1971
when I first moved into Wheaton .
Today I am well aware of what it means to live in community. I learned this in
Warrenville. I struggled with many friends to enrich the town’s life and build
on its already rich life. It was a thrill to be a part of.
In Wheaton
I was related by birth to the town’s founding family – the Wheatons. That
allowed me to feel accepted and part of the community. The rest of the
community, however, didn’t share that sense of acceptance. I was not of the
ruling class or moneyed. I therefore was not in the higher echelons of society.
And that distinction was felt as it was meant to be felt.
In Warrenville living was different. If the town needed a
problem attended to, people aware of the situation sat down together, talked
about it, and invented a solution. They implemented it and all was fine and
dandy. Then on to another issue to attend to. Churches leapt to help. So did
institutions like the Park District, Library and City. People got involved and
suggested solutions and helped make them happen.
We needed an Arts and Tourism Commission, and so the city
created it. The commission needed policy and procedures and they were created
by the community. The commission needed arts groups to invent exhibits and
programs. The community invented art co-ops and an Arts Council. The Hospitality
Association was formed by the Chamber of Commerce to help all of the new hotels
and restaurants flourish in town, and to get the backing of townspeople to
patronize the new establishments. For a small town, 6 hotels and 24 restaurants
was a rich new environment to be experienced and supported. But with an
industrial zone with upwards of 20,000 new jobs functioning there daily, the
hotels and restaurants were needed and supported.
The town also needed a newspaper. And a few good souls
gathered to form one and run it for 7 years. It did its job well and fairly.
But in the end the town did not support a free, non-profit newspaper and it
folded. The founders each went bankrupt in turn, not just because of their
efforts and financial support of the paper, but in the main it was a heavy
contributing factor. The lesson, however, is still clear: Warrenville is a
community of many different sorts of people and backgrounds but still lives in
harmony and healthy relationship to each other. The community is thriving. Is
that a result or a cause? I think a result and one worthy of replication
elsewhere.
Meanwhile Wheaton
suffers from a near bankrupt municipal government, high taxes, social strains
among economic classes and elitism and poor economic development.
But my main focus really is West
Chicago . I don’t know the whole history of this town. It is of
similar age as Wheaton
and Warrenville. But West Chicago currently
has these distinguishing features:
- It contains a burgeoning manufacturing and industrial base providing broad employment opportunities
- It
contains 26,000 citizens; (
- Property taxes are moderate; city services are strong and stable
- Schools are well received and turn out well educated students preparing them for a multitude of careers, trades and higher education
- The native class of citizens are of European stock and white; they are dying off and declining in number
- The Hispanic immigrant citizens have been here for many generations and now own fully half of all businesses and property in town; they are stable and growing in number. Hispanics represent 50% of the population
- The old guard and the new guard (white versus Hispanic) do not talk or mingle with one another. They do not share cultural interests well: library, chamber of commerce, museums, city governance and commissions, etc. Both guards live separate but equal lives, or at least it seems so
- Old line institutions find it increasingly difficult to attract volunteers to serve on their boards, commissions and governing structures
- Downtown commercial section of town is present but somewhat shabby and underused
- Reputation of the town is held in low esteem external to the community; not deserved but it is a fact of life
I call this the cultural divide. And it is of current
importance, I think, because today we have a burgeoning Hispanic population in America that is
creative, inventive, well educated, well-intentioned and very capable of
enriching our business, economic and cultural life together. Not to include
this dynamic community within the whole of the rest of our community is a
terrible waste. It is also harmful to our healthy development as full human
beings.
Times are changing. But that is a given. America is a
nation of change. It always has been. It is a nation of immigrants. It is what
has made our nation great in the past, in the present and in the future. It
defines America .
It is no different today in this instant of time.
Ours is a culture of diversity. It is a culture that has
difficulty with inclusion, however.
And that is the task ahead of us. We must be inclusive. We must.
Future blog posts will speak to this ‘must’. Stay tuned.
September 16, 2016
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