Suburbs grow as diversity grows; tolerance?

As a half-black, half-white kid growing up in Elgin, Taylor Lantz felt that people viewed minorities as societal outcasts.

“We were kind of stereotyped, as if, ‘You’re not going to make it to college,’” Taylor said.

Now a 20-year-old student at Elgin Community College — where minorities account for nearly half the student body — Taylor says people’s attitudes have changed. Now, he said, people like him are more likely to hear, “It doesn’t matter what color your skin is or where you’re from; it’s up to you to determine your future.”

Shifting attitudes have come along with the increasingly diverse ethnic makeup of the suburbs. New residents who are Hispanic, Asian, African-American, American Indian, other minorities or of mixed race fueled much of the growth of the suburbs between 2000 and 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics released Tuesday.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Hispanic population of Kane County grew by more than 64,000 people, or 65 percent, and the African-American population in McHenry and DuPage counties more than doubled. Lake County’s Asian population grew by nearly 20,000 people, or 77 percent, and Cook County’s grew by more than 62,000 people, or 24 percent.

Tens of thousands of people who moved to the suburbs in the past decade identified themselves in the census as being “some other race.”

Like Lantz, others of racial minority or mixed races say tolerance has increased. But local sociologists say we’re still a long way from complete harmony.

Joy Inouye, who teachers “Racial and Ethnic Relations” at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, surveyed her students a few weeks ago about their thoughts on race. In the anonymous survey, where they were encouraged to be honest, students were asked if they would feel comfortable having people of various ethnicities as their neighbor, co-worker, boss or spouse.

Some students checked yes for each ethnicity, but the majority of them did not.

“The white races were accepted in all of the social situations. Indians and Arabs had the most social distance. There’s still a lot of prejudice out there,” Inouye said. “We can be very optimistic and positive about this ... . It’s a huge step forward. But we can also see that our biases have just become more closeted. They haven’t gone away. We just don’t express them openly, because it’s not politically correct to do so.”

Confronting their true feelings toward race is what Gabe Lara encourages people to do in his popular Elgin Community College class, Embrace 2.0. Group members, in closed-door sessions, vent their biases about different races and religions and then learn about the different cultures.

Last semester’s class turned up some prejudice against people of Middle Eastern descent, Lara said — even those raising money for Pakistani earthquake relief.

Some of the journals “were a little rough. I read them and went, ‘Wow, what am I going to do about this?’” Lara recalled.

He assigned those students to befriend the Middle Eastern students and help with fundraising. Their opinions changed almost instantly.

“They really get along now, and sometimes I’ll see them hanging out or studying together,” Lara said. “They just never got the opportunity to know each other before.”

Schools were among the first to see the suburban population shift. At Maine East High School in Park Ridge, 75 percent of the students speak one of 50 different languages at home. At John Muir Learning Academy in Hoffman Estates, the 650 students speak 37 different languages at home, earning it the nickname “The United Nations of schools.”

Suburban schools make an effort to embrace diversity and push the message that everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, is part of the community.

“Our students are so adept at accepting other cultures, and that’s what we want,” said Muir Principal Brad Carter, who grew up in the South suburbs. “It’s definitely different than when my grandparents were growing up and when my parents were growing up.”

Carter says it can be an administrative challenge to provide language support for all of the children and to stay in communication with their parents, who often don’t speak English.

The richness of varying cultures has been an education for him, too. Carter learned that men and women don’t shake hands in certain cultures, or that some students are brought up to look down as a sign of respect to their teachers, rather than look them in the eyes.

When you have a school like Muir that embraces its diversity, minorities are more likely to feel like part of the community and become involved, said Yesenia Sanchez, lead community organizer of the P.A.S.O West Suburban Action Project in Melrose Park.

“When you look at the immigrant community as an asset, you actually strengthen your community,” she said, pointing to increases in the number of suburban immigrants becoming homeowners and U.S. citizens.

Some communities are better than others about this, which explains why sociologists say we are really more of a salad bowl than a melting pot — we don’t always mix together, but we’re all in the same bowl.

Living among mixed ethnic groups is now a big part of suburban life and big city life. Like it or not, some experts predict we will eventually become a country where minorities are the majority.

“It’s important to be accepting,” Carter said, “because this is who we are.”