The Changing Face of the Midwest

From today’s New York Times:

For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains, including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one of exodus — of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another demographic trend has breathed new life into the region

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.

For the most part the article is positive, with a nod to the idea that without this type of change, entire communities will simply wither away and die. And that the only way for some rural towns to survive, is to lend a hand to the newcomers. The pattern of growth is familiar – Hispanics have long lived in some of the population hubs housing meatpacking plants in the Midwest. But now, they are pushing out into more rural areas. Areas reminiscent of the places they grew up and would like to raise their families.

Not all is cheery, of course.

Ginger Anthony, director of the Historic Adobe Museum, which chronicles the history of the onetime frontier town, discussed the changes with dismay, pausing repeatedly to reiterate that she did not want her criticism to seem “politically incorrect.” She is so unnerved, particularly by illegal immigrants, that she recently started locking her door — saying that the police-beat column in the local paper disproportionately features Spanish surnames.

“This wave of new people coming into the Midwest, it’s not always a good thing,” she said, as a co-worker nodded in agreement. “If you talk to the average working person, a lot of them are sort of fed up. Our town isn’t what it was.”

But all in all, a positive take on what can only be the wave of the future.