Change is everywhere in Lake County. The farm fields are being gobbled up by housing developments, roads are being widened, and retail stores are popping up at nearly every intersection.
The housing boom of the 1990s that brought more people and jobs to Lake County has also resulted in increased diversity. Change can be difficult, for newcomers and longtime residents alike. But schools, churches, community groups and social-service agencies are working hard to ease the transition, showing people that racial and ethnic diversity can make the community a richer place to live.
Lake County’s population has increased by almost 128,000, to nearly 645,000 residents, over the last decade. Recently released census figures show that a significant factor in that growth was an influx of Hispanics. The Hispanic population has more than doubled, to 92,716 in 2000 from 38,570 in 1990.
Hispanics now make up 14 percent of Lake’s population. African-Americans make up 6.9 percent, and Asians 3.9 percent.
It is significant to note that the term “Hispanic” does not refer to race, but to an ethnicity, said Dennis Sandquist, deputy director of the county’s Department of Planning, Building and Development. Hispanics can be of any race, such as white or black, he said.
Hispanics disperse
Although the county’s African-American population is still centered along the lakeshore, Hispanics have moved to communities throughout Lake. Mundelein, where Hispanics represent 23 percent of the population, has been working to improve ethnic and racial tolerance for nearly a decade.
“We recognized that these changes were happening a long time ago,” said Mayor Marilyn Sindles.
Sindles cited a number of programs to help residents better understand each other. The multicultural committee of the village’s Project CAPE (for Creating a Positive Environment) has been working with local minority groups, Sindles said.
The village has opened two resource centers, one in an apartment complex and the other downtown, to provide residents with access to services such as bilingual teachers to help students with their homework, information on how to apply for a driver’s license, immunization information and referrals to other agencies in the area.
“I am very proud that we are a diverse community,” Sindles said.
Round Lake Park is following the lead of nearby Mundelein in trying to promote tolerance among races and ethnic groups. Mano a Mano Family Resource Center opened last fall in the small central Lake County community, which has a large immigrant population.
“We were beginning to experience some gang problems,” said Round Lake Park Mayor Ila Bauer. “I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that if someone feels alienated from his community, he will begin to cause problems.”
Hands clasped
The resource center, housed in a downtown storefront, is open to the public. It is really a community center, said Bauer. The center’s logo shows a brown hand and a white hand clasped together.
The center is reaching out to the entire Round Lake area, said its executive director, Maru Tomusiak.
“This is for the whole community,” she said. “We will never develop as a community if nearly half the people are unemployed and don’t speak the language. We are trying to get residents to understand that only by working together and helping each other will we be able to grow as a community.”
The Hispanic community has not had a strong political voice in Lake County, although that is starting to change. The Latino Coalition of Lake County was started in 1994 as a way to encourage Latino professionals to become active in the community.
“It is a grass-roots effort with about 100 Latino professionals,” said Rosa Reyes-Prosen, who just completed a two-year term as president and is now vice president. She said African-Americans and whites also attend meetings.
The coalition has become more involved politically out of necessity, Reyes-Prosen said.
“So many people in the community don’t realize that they do have a voice and that they can bring about changes,” she said. “We were the silent minority for too long.”
The coalition conducted a voter registration drive in the fall to try to increase Hispanic representation at the polls in communities with large Hispanic populations, including Waukegan, Round Lake, Zion and North Chicago.
Grass-roots effort
Lacking major political clout in Republican Lake County, grass-roots organizations are behind many of the diversity and racial tolerance efforts in the county.
One such group, the Lake County Race Unity Task Force, has been meeting in the YWCA of Lake County each month for more than seven years to discuss ways to end discrimination.
“We cannot wave a magic wand and get rid of the problem,” said co-founder Wadell Brooks, a longtime community activist from North Chicago. “But we can bring it to people’s attention.”
Discrimination is still a problem in Lake County, although it asserts itself differently now, Brooks said.
“When I first came to the area in 1957, there was overt discrimination. Now it is covert,” he said.
Despite decades of work to end racism, African-Americans and Hispanics in Lake still face job and economic discrimination and racial profiling, said Marion McElroy, president of the Lake County branch of the NAACP.
“I wish I could say things are getting better, that there is more tolerance, more acceptance of diversity, but the reality of the situation is that we receive a tremendous number of calls from people who feel that they are discriminated against,” McElroy said. “It is hard to believe that things are getting better.”
One of the major roadblocks to ending discrimination in the county is the way economic development is divided between east and west, McElroy said.
Economy an issue
“Older communities such as Waukegan, North Chicago and Zion have suffered over the years economically, with most of the economic growth going on to the west,” she said. “We hear so much about the 1990s economic boom. The question that we have is, how have African-Americans and Hispanics benefited from that boom? We want to know that the county can deal with issues of economic equality.
“At some point we need to get whites, Hispanics and African-Americans to sit down and discuss the issue of racism in Lake County. It is not going away.”
The Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, founded by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago in 1966, has heightened its efforts to encourage churches and other faith-based organizations to preach on the issue of racial inclusion and diversity, said President and Chief Executive Officer Aurie Pennick. The group, which is active throughout the Chicago area, is also working to provide guidance and support to clergy members in dealing with the issues of fair housing and racial justice.
“We have had some cases in which clergy members, asked to help deal with a negative community response, have told us they weren’t prepared to handle the situation,” Pennick said. “This is a problem. We need to lead by example and help our clergy lead by example. Part of how people feel welcome in a community is how their views are accepted.”
The YWCA of Lake County has made efforts to increase racial and ethnic tolerance. Part of the organization’s mission is to end racism.
To that end, the YWCA has started a program in the Waukegan schools in which middle school students meet in small study circles to talk about racism and racial justice.
“The main focus is not only to discuss racism but also, as a group, to come up with a solution that they can take to their school or their superintendent or to the mayor,” said Ellen Ewing, who ran the program as the former racial justice coordinator for the YWCA.
Forty 7th graders from four Waukegan middle schools have been participating in the program, called Circles of Common Ground, since April. The program has been in effect for two years at Waukegan High School and at the Depke Juvenile Center in Vernon Hills, said YWCA spokeswoman Marty Williams.
The program is designed to combat violence, hate crimes and racism in schools, Williams said. YWCA Executive Director Elizabeth Forbrich said the program fulfills the purpose of the YWCA imperative to “thrust its collective power toward the elimination of racism wherever it exists and by any means necessary.”
Last October the YWCA formed a book club featuring books by women writers from various cultures. The club was designed to foster understanding and open a dialogue among women of different cultures, Ewing said.
Spanish immersion
Schools have become increasingly sensitive to the need to address diversity and tolerance. At least two school districts are embracing dual-language programs as a way to wean non-English-speaking children from Spanish while increasing understanding between cultures. The goal of the two-way immersion program is to merge the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking populations, creating a generation of bilingual children.
In Highland Park, 250 children are enrolled in dual-language programs in three schools in North Shore School District 112, where 13 percent of the children are Hispanic. Half the children in each classroom speak English at home, while the other half speak Spanish. Kindergarten classes are taught mostly in Spanish. By 3rd grade, about 70 percent of the instruction is in Spanish and the rest in English. By 5th grade, the ratio is 50-50.
Diamond Lake School District 76 in Mundelein has a similar program, with 72 pupils enrolled in kindergarten through 2nd grade. Nearly 36 percent of the district’s pupils are Hispanic. In both districts, the programs will continue through 5th grade.
Schools learn to adapt
In North Chicago, the school district has been adapting to meet the students’ changing needs, said Supt. Patricia Pickles.
“Mandatory school uniforms from kindergarten through 12th grade have done quite a bit to take down barriers,” she said. “The uniforms help students focus on how they are alike rather than … on their differences.”
The district, in which 60 percent of the students are African-American and 18 percent are Hispanic, works hard to develop a diverse staff, Pickles said.
“We want to make sure the students are represented in terms of diversity and role models in the classroom,” she said.
Twenty-three percent of the district’s teachers are African-American, 2.5 percent are Hispanic and nearly 2 percent are Asian.
The hiring of a social studies curriculum director has also proved beneficial in ensuring that the curriculum highlights the students’ diverse heritage. “It has really tied together our character education program,” Pickles said.
“Our curriculum is based on state and national standards,” said social studies curriculum director David Brothman. “What I did is take the state standards and determine if an objective can be filled with African-American history or women’s history or the Holocaust or Latin American history.”
Woodland School District 50 took steps two years ago to address increasing diversity, creating a multicultural committee. The committee, made up of parents, teachers and administrators, is a sounding board for issues related to the district’s diverse population.
“We want to give students more than just a celebration of specific holidays” such as Cinco de Mayo and Martin Luther King Day, said Penny Dagley, director of pupil and personnel services. “We are imbedding diversity into our curriculum and everyday lives.”
The district, which draws its 6,400 students from 13 municipalities in central Lake County, is 77 percent white, 4.8 percent black, 9.1 percent Hispanic and 8.4 percent Asian and Pacific Islander.
“About 36 different languages are spoken in the district,” said Dagley, noting the number of international students whose parents work at nearby Baxter International and Abbott Laboratories.
The Northern Illinois Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse is working with schools to increase students’ self-esteem and ability to work together, regardless of race or ethnic background. The center’s ECHO program, which stands for Empowering Choices for Healthy Outcomes, is offered at a number of schools in the county.
“If we can help change kids’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, we can help them to grow up to be responsible adults,” said Laurel Dahl, director of prevention services for the Round Lake-based organization.
Here’s how to find diversity resources
Following are some organizations that help minority groups and promote racial tolerance.
– Affordable Housing Corp. of Lake County, 3701 W. Grand Ave., Suite 8, Gurnee, IL 60031, 847-263-7478. Provides counseling to first-time home buyers in English and Spanish.
– Central Baptist Family Services (East Lake County), 2115 Ernie Krueger Circle, Waukegan, IL 60087, 847-336-1746. Parenting groups in English and Spanish, counseling for adolescents and adults.
– HealthReach Clinic, 1800 Grand Ave., Waukegan, IL 60085, 847-360-8800. Provides medical care to immigrants and other medically underserved residents of Lake County.
– Lake County Race Unity Task Force, 2133 Belvidere Rd., Waukegan, IL 60085, 847-662-4247. Community dialogue on race and ethnic tolerance. Meets monthly in the YWCA of Lake County.
– Lake County Urban League, 122 W. Madison St., Waukegan, IL 60085, 847-249-3770. Mission: “To assist African-Americans and other minority members of Lake County to cultivate and exercise their full human potential.”
– Mano a Mano Family Resource Center, 222 E. Main St., Round Lake Park, IL 60073, 847-201-1521. English as a second language classes, employment counseling, parenting classes, referrals.
– Multicultural Committee of Project CAPE, village administrator’s office, 440 E. Hawley St., Mundelein, IL 60060, 847-949-3200. Working to promote harmony among Mundelein citizens.
– The Northern Illinois Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (NICASA), 31979 N. Fish Lake Rd., Round Lake, IL 60073, 847-546-6450. Offers parenting classes, counseling and youth-development programs in English and Spanish.
– United Way of Lake County, 2020 O’Plaine Rd., Green Oaks, IL 60048, 847-816-0063. Provides funding and referrals to social-service agencies in Lake County.
– Women’s Cultural Diversity Book Club, meets from 1 to 3 p.m. on the third Sunday of each month in Border’s Books and Music, 49 S. Waukegan Rd., Deerfield, IL. For more information, call Borders at 847-559-1999 or the YWCA of Lake County at 847-662-4247.
– YWCA of Lake County, 2133 Belvidere Rd., Waukegan, IL 60085, 847-662-4247. Racial justice and diversity programming for students and adults.
— Compiled by Michelle Groenke
