Chapter 9: Ethnicity, Immigration, Discrimination, and Social Dynamics
Chapter 9: Ethnicity, Immigration, Discrimination, and Social Dynamics
Several of our state’s Crossroads: Change in Rural America host organizations addressed yet another significant contributor to rural Illinois’s ongoing evolution: interactions among people of various ethnicities and places of origin. Many of those interactions have intersected with tensions related to economic mobility and access to resources. Often, they have been characterized by discrimination, discord, and even violence, but as some of the hosts’ companion exhibitions and programs indicated, peaceful coexistence and fellowship are achievable and worth pursuing.
Some rural Americans, however, have been slow to acknowledge the distinctive strengths or even the basic humanity of others who have resided alongside them. Discrimination is all too common a theme in the histories of many rural places, as the DeKalb County History Center’s companion exhibition (also available as an online exhibit) indicates.
“When people hear about Native American history, many think only of history before permanent settlers [of European ancestry] arrived. Yet the story of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation is a current issue in DeKalb County, and more specifically, in Shabbona,” said the exhibition text. “The Department [Bureau] of Indian Affairs is conducting an Environmental Impact Study based on the Potawatomi Nation’s desire to build a 24-hour bingo hall in Shabbona. The decision to build a casino has led to a complicated legal battle.
“The Nation bought 128 acres in 2006, in addition to filing a lawsuit reclaiming 1,280 acres of land that was given to Chief Shabbona in the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien. The land was sold at public auction when local settlers claimed the property was forfeited because no one had lived there for decades.
“Some residents believe the bingo hall will be good for the local economy. The Potawatomi Nation estimates that it will bring in 930,000 visitors and add $40 million to the local payroll. The group is willing to pay DeKalb County 2.5 percent of its revenue (a projected $800,000), plus $250,000 to the village of Shabbona.
“Those in opposition worry about the casino’s proximity to a state park, an increase in traffic, negative environmental impact, and higher crime.”[1]
Various other ethnic communities represented in DeKalb County were also discussed in the History Center’s companion exhibition and programs.
“North Grove School, three miles northwest of Sycamore, was built in 1878 by the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church as a parochial and Sunday school. Pupils of diverse ethnic backgrounds learned their lessons in Swedish, even several years after the DeKalb County public school system purchased the school in 1880,” the exhibition text noted.[2]
In the 1960s, the number of Latino and Latina migrant workers, mostly from southern Texas and Mexico, who arrived in DeKalb County each spring for employment began increasing significantly. The exhibition explained,