Growing pains in racially changing rural, small towns 
BY JOE DUGGAN Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star 

LEXINGTON - Cindy Walker didn't like what she saw in the classrooms of her hometown, but her concerns had little to do with teachers or curriculum. 
What she didn't like were all the brown faces in Lexington Public Schools. She said she felt the teachers would devote too much time to children who spoke mostly Spanish. 

"My kids aren't going to be held back because of the Hispanics," she said. "It seems like they work more with the Hispanics, the white kids are just pushed aside." 

So the day-care operator and part-time convenience-store clerk removed her children from their hometown schools. Her 17-year-old goes to high school in Overton and her 7-year-old attends a country school, where almost all the faces are white. 

If she could afford to move, Walker said, she would leave Lexington altogether. She said she knows plenty of white longtime residents who have done so in the past decade. 

Could she be right? Is Lexington experiencing white flight in response to a surge in Hispanic immigration? 

In some ways, asking the question is like striking sparks near a powder keg. 

The meatpacking-dominated community of 10,011 experienced tremendous growth in its Hispanic population during the 1990s, a fact well documented by the 2000 Census. The city's 5,121 Hispanics represent a staggering 1,457 percent growth rate. 

But the once-a-decade count also documented another trend: The white, nonHispanic population declined by nearly 1,600. That's a 26 percent decline. Overall, the city's population changed from 95 percent white in 1990 to 49 percent white in 2000. 

Those who resent the changes say white flight is real. 

Conversely, the mayor, city manager and others say that the numbers, when put in context, don't represent a racially motivated exodus. 

Closer to the middle, census experts and sociologists said the situation is far too complex to link entirely to so-called white flight. 

But something's going on in Lexington and other rural communities that have experienced similar ethnic shifts. One academic who has devoted much of her career to studying meatpacking towns says local and state leaders need to find out what. "This is a worrisome trend because what we may be creating are enclaves of poverty," said Dr. Lourdes Gouveia, associate professor of sociology and director of Chicano-Latino Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "The situation definitely deserves study." 

Any study would need to start with Lexington's history, dominated by a boom-and-bust cycle during the past 25 years. The first boom ignited in the 1970s with the arrival of the Sperry-New Holland combine plant. While considered blue-collar, the jobs required skill and paid solidly middle-class wages. 

The combine plant closed in 1986, and with no major employer to take its place, Lexington's population dropped to 6,600 residents, of whom about 93 percent were white. In 1990, despite opposition from many townspeople, IBP opened a cattle slaughtering and packing plant on the site of the former Sperry-New Holland factory. 

Almost overnight, Lexington boomed again. But this time, things were different. 

While the packing plant hired locally, it needed many more workers than Lexington could supply. Word-of-mouth and the company's recruiting efforts in Mexico and other Latin American countries brought in the work force - by the thousands. 

And about the same time, whites started to leave, said David Selk, a 46-year-old lifelong Lexington resident who works at a shock absorber manufacturer in a neighboring town. 

He singled out two reasons for white flight: the putrid smell from IBP's wastewater lagoons and the growth of the Hispanic population. 

Selk directed much of his anger at IBP and the city officials who recruited the plant, as did others who share similar views. But his resentment also spread to immigrants, who he said have brought a different language, loud music and more crime to what once was a safe, quiet community. 

"Sometimes I feel like a foreigner in my own town," said Selk, who has lost all three of his campaigns for City Council. 

Sitting at the kitchen counter in his parents' Lexington home, Selk shuffled through his IBP file - a disheveled collection of air quality studies, sociological reports, business articles and crime stories from the local newspaper. All evidence, he said, that the company has added to its bottom line at the expense of towns such as Lexington. 

Sitting next to him was Fay Maloley, a 69-year-old farmer who has worked land east of Lexington nearly his entire life. Maloley, who often used a disparaging term for undocumented border-crossers, said fear was a major factor behind the city's Anglo population decline. 

"Us white people are the minority at this point," Maloley said. 

Language presents another source of frustration, said Sharon Caraballo, a retired nurse who now works in a Lexington convenience store. Caraballo professed to harbor no prejudiced attitudes toward Hispanics. After all, she's married to a man of Puerto Rican descent. But many recent arrivals keep to themselves and don't bother to learn American customs, culture or English, she said. 

"I'm offended by it," she said. "They're in our country, but they don't want to have anything to do with us." 

All three said they know white residents who moved to Johnson Lake, nine miles south of the Lexington city limits. The 2,800-acre irrigation reservoir has long been circled by vacation cabins, but during the 1990s, hundreds moved to live there year round. Many built new homes or upgraded their seasonal dwellings. 

Census 2000 data shows that the Village of Johnson Lake, as it is called, grew 55 percent, from 531 in 1990 to 825 in 2000. All but six of the area's residents identified themselves as white. 

In fact, the census shows white population growth in all towns within a 40-mile radius of Lexington. The list consists of Gothenburg, Cozad, Overton, Bertrand and Elm Creek. And while each town also experienced growth in nonwhite numbers, people of color still represent a small percentage of the overall populations. 

During the recently completed school year, 86 students opted out of Lexington schools to enroll in neighboring districts. And 58 students from other districts enrolled in Lexington. 

Michael Shimeall, director of elementary and secondary education at Lexington, said those figures represent about average numbers for the school district. While he could not readily provide an ethnic breakdown, he said most of the students who opted out were white. 

A surface examination of the numbers, combined with anecdotal reports from citizens who resent IBP and the changes spurred by the plant, points to white flight. But the numbers don't even begin to tell the whole story, said Lexington Mayor John Fagot. 

"The retirement-age population has just moved nine miles south of town," he said. "Johnson Lake, I would call it a Lexington suburb." 

Yes, longtime white residents have left, but they left simply to build their retirement homes around the lake, he contended. Others have built acreages nearby or moved to a housing development just north of the city's limits. Regardless, many still do business in Lexington and support the community in other ways. 

"I don't consider that flight," he said. "Flight would be if they moved to Lincoln." 

He then pointed at new ball fields, a new swimming pool and major school additions and improvements. Would a racist, hateful white community contribute to such investments knowing the children of new immigrants stood to benefit as much as their own? 

Carolyn Fairbanks, who co-owns a Lexington farm implement dealership with her husband, said she and her husband moved to Johnson Lake because they wanted to live in a "leisure setting." But they are still strongly connected to Lexington, as are many lake residents, she said. 

"I think it's become a haven for people who want to retire and be close to friends and family," she said. "If you were flying, you'd go further away." 

As for the complaints about odor, IBP spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company is installing covers over the wastewater lagoons and is "scrubbing" sulfur from the fumes and burning off excess gasses. He also said nearby feedlots and a rendering plant could contribute to odors in Lexington. 

City Manager Joe Pepplitsch said with so much focus on race, some people lose sight of the fact that Lexington grew by 52 percent in the 1990s. Housing arose as just one challenge presented by the growth and it may explain why upper-income residents who wanted to build new homes sought options outside city limits. 

He, too, rejected the notion of white flight. 

"If someone wants to build a home on a lake because they're retiring, then someone wants to call that white flight," he said. "I guess I don't really see it." 

They're right, at least in contending it's an oversimplification to say the decline in white numbers is a response to the increase in Hispanics, said Gouveia, the UNO sociologist who has published several scholarly works on changes in Lexington. 

Research has shown that many factors contribute to a person's choice to move, even in metropolitan areas where migration has been contributed to white flight. 

"Unless you are a committed racist, it is seldom the reason alone," she said. 

Economic opportunity, however, has proven to be a major factor. Recall that Lexington lost its major employer and went four years without a replacement. 

"The white exodus started long before Latinos ever got there," she said. 

IBP filled the void, but with less-desirable, lower-paying jobs. At the same time, the area experienced a retail shift as national discounters such as Wal-Mart, fast-food chain restaurants and others came in and challenged the traditional downtown businesses. And while the farm economy has recovered somewhat since the 1980s, many small, independent producers continued to struggle. The upshot was gradual erosion of economic opportunity, Gouveia said. 

"You see the cumulative effect all these variables impinge on the economic health of the community," she said. "You're going to have a town that for old timers isn't as attractive, and many of them decide to leave." 

Regardless, without extensive interviews of people who've left, it's impossible to say for sure. Gouveia will join a state task force - recently funded by the Legislature - to study integration of Latino immigrants in Nebraska. So-called white flight is one area she hopes the task force will investigate. 

"It's something to be concerned about," she said. 

Pablo "Jim" Macias moved to Lexington eight years ago, and he runs a downtown furniture and appliance store. As a bilingual, Macias operates with ease in both the white and Hispanic communities, but he was surprised to learn about the 26 percent decline in the white population. 

His first reaction was that language and cultural differences present barriers some people would rather avoid than overcome. If Lexington residents, both white and Latino, made more effort to understand each other, perhaps they could save money on moving. 

"I just feel (it's) a lack of understanding of the people who are coming in," he said. "Not taking the time to get to know your neighbor as well as you should."