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Diversity has been long in coming
(by Barbara Christian - July 22, 2009)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Diversity has been long in coming
I was talking to a woman from Cleveland Magazine the other day, and she congratulated Chagrin Falls on rising higher on its list of best suburbs.
Stage whisper: It's a distinction we do not strive for, because most of us who live here do not want to become just another suburb. We want to be what we were in the beginning, a stand-alone, self-sufficient small town.
Anyway, as we talked we got around to diversity and, even though the perception is that villagers and the rest of the Chagrin Valley like it they way it is (read: prejudice), need we remind them that Barack Obama won the hearts and minds of a majority of voters in valley communities.
The diversity conversation catapulted me back to the early 1960s during the civil-rights movement. Our family was involved with a local fair-housing organization. The goal was to end segregation and make the suburbs and the Chagrin Valley open to every race and religion. It's hard to believe now, but back then there were neighborhoods out this way that were closed to African-Americans, Italians, Catholics and Jews.
So when you get that Keith Morrison all-knowing "Oh" (see July 16 Window on Main Street), it may be for that reason and the fact that there was a Ku Klux Klan here in the good old bad days.
Anyway, the local fair-housing group worked hard putting together a Sunday tour of homes for sale in the village. A bus was hired to gather folks from the city who were considering a move here.
As it turned out, homeowners and real-estate people could not have been more accommodating. So with the plan in place, we gathered on the appointed Sunday afternoon and waited the arrival of the bus from the city. You could not imagine the excitement when the bus pulled in and the door opened. You could not know the disappointment when no one got out. We asked the driver where our future Chagrin Falls homeowners were.
He looked benignly at us as poor deluded souls then gently and rhetorically asked, "Why would any African-American want to live way out here away from their friends, families and way of life?"
What was pregnant in that polite question was why any person of color or particular ethnic or religious background would want to subject themselves to being strangers in a strange land. Remember, it was in the midst of the civil-rights struggle.
It was a lightning-bolt moment. But just so we didn't feel hurt by the snub, the bus driver, an African-American himself, took the home tour.
I don't recall what happened to the fair-housing group after that, but I'm sure our failed project went a long way to support the idea among some that desegregation doesn't work. Much changed since that day.
There is more diversity in the Chagrin Valley now. Not as much as some would like, but there is no denying that the old misconceptions -- on everyone's part -- are changing.
And those places out this way that once barred African-Americans, Italians, Catholics and Jews from moving into their all-white enclaves? In some of them, the African-Americans, Italians, Catholics and Jews are now the majority. And for them, it was a long time in coming.
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