Living in an Iowa town in which Caucasian is a minority race requires listening and an open mind. That’s the message about 75 Greene County residents heard Aug. 9 at “The Storm Lake Story,” a program hosted by Nueva Vida en Greene County, the diversity initiative launched by Greene County Development Corporation last November.
The evening was planned by Nueva Vida en Greene County steering committee chair Chuck Offenburger. He lived and worked in Storm Lake for five years prior to moving to Greene County, and used contacts there to assemble a panel of Storm Lake leaders and residents to talk about diversity in their city.
Offenburger and Carlos Arguelo of Latin IQ, the consultant hired to assist GCDC with the diversity project, served as moderators.
Members of the panel included Sara Monroy-Huddleston, Matthew Huddleston, Dr Stacey Cole, Vianney Medina Sanchez, Emma Dierking, and Mark Prosser.
Sara Monroy-Huddleston grew up in Yucatan, Mexico, in a city of 1 million people. She met her husband Matthew while she was an exchange student at Simpson College in 1989. She moved to Storm Lake in 1990 and has worked in banking, immigration law, and domestic violence victim advocacy. She calls herself the conquistadora of Storm Lake, as she was one of the first Latinas there and was the first Latina on the Storm Lake city council.
Matthew Huddleston was also on the panel. He’s the son of a Methodist minister and has worked in education.
Retired Storm Lake police chief Mark Prosser arrived in Storm Lake in 1989. He was previously in East St Louis, IL, a Black majority city. In 1989, the population of Storm Lake was 8,900. There were already Southeast Asians who came as part of Gov Robert Ray’s refugee relocation programs.
He said the community started changing in 1990. The population is now 14,000.
Dr Stacey Cole is superintendent in the Storm Lake Community Schools, a district with a K-12 enrollment of 2,600. The majority – 52 percent – of them are Latino. The second largest group are southeast Asian. Whites are the third largest group at 13 percent. Pacific Islanders is currently the fastest growing group. About 5 percent of Storm Lake students are African (mostly refugees). There are 23 different native languages in the Storm Lake student body.
Cole said the diversity on staff is “not nearly what it should be.” The number of teachers who speak Spanish has grown, but she’d like to see African teachers, too. “We’ve had a number of phenomenal leaders, a lot of great role models of what it means to be truly welcoming. What does it mean to learn about myself, to learn about how I will take in other cultures and I also project my own culture? I think the schools have played a vital role in moving Storm Lake toward diversity.”
She later said she learned that she needed to change her thinking about how races are portrayed in classrooms and in the media. “I didn’t recognize that every negative character I saw in a TV show or in a movie was a person of color. I didn’t recognize that because I didn’t have to.
“The thing I’ve learned more than anything living in Storm Lake is that I need to sharpen my own listening skills. My noticing skills have to be super sharp…. It starts with us deciding to think about the experiences of people who don’t look like me,” Cole said.
Police chief Prosser answered a question from Offenburger about the relationship between diversity and criminal activity.
Prosser said it’s a myth that diversity increases crime rates. He said he started tracking data comparing arrests by gender, ethnicity and age in 1992. He said there was never a year that there was disproportionate activity by any ethnic group. “When our Spanish speaking population represented 5 percent of the total population, they represented 5 percent of the crime. When they were 40 percent of the population they represented 40 percent of the crime…. What we experienced was that the population was growing, so the crime was growing, too.”
He also said he didn’t consider it the job of local police departments to enforce immigration law, but to “create a safe environment for all.”
Toward the end of the program the panelists were asked what advice they’d give a town hoping to become more diverse in population and culture.
Monroy-Huddleston explained that growing up in Yucatan she saw tourists from all over the world. She wasn’t prepared when people stared at her in Storm Lake. She asked her husband why people were staring. “He mentioned the word ‘racist’. I went home and opened my dictionary and found the word ‘racist.’ Even today, I have a hard time believing in that word, because it isn’t that. It’s about the values and privileges and all the stuff that we grew up with, the way of thinking.
“We have to identify our own biases, the biases we grew up with. I think everybody likes to be treated the way you want to be treated. That’s why we need respect, communication, because we’re not going to change anybody. Changes hurt,” she said.
School superintendent Cole’s advice was “Listen. The biggest thing we’ve learned to do is listen…. In our school district we recognize the synergistic relationship we have between our families and our school district. We recognize that when our school is better, our community is better. When our community is better, our school is better.”
Vianney Medina Sanchez is a high school senior and the daughter of Latino immigrants. Her advice was to be open minded to new cultures and new people.
Retired police chief Prosser admitted the challenge of increasing diversity. “It’s not easy. It’s not all roses. I applaud all of you for being here and for these efforts, but we’re talking about a 30-year period of learning, of climbing and falling and getting back up,” he said.
“Understand that there will be successes and failures and don’t let that get you down. Be welcoming. One of the early things was a series of diversity task forces that helped guide us. The first several generations of those were all White. They weren’t very diverse at all. Invite your people of color, your different ethnic groups, to be a part of that. We made some assumptions that were mistakes. Good hearted people who wanted to move forward made mistakes and we hurt feelings because we didn’t have everybody at the table we should have.
“Just understand this is a process. It has to be your lifestyle. It has to be your philosophy of welcoming and working and being able to pivot and adapt and open your arms to other folks.”
Emma Dierking, a sophomore and a member of the student council at Storm Lake High, was also on the panel. She’s in the White minority. She summed up the promise diversity offers. “Having a diverse community is a gift,” she said. “You grow and adapt in this community with a lot of different people and you learn about a lot of different peoples’ background and culture, and it’s truly amazing. I’m so glad that I have a diverse community and not a one-race community. It’s better for more friends, more open-mindedness, and learning a lot more about a lot of cultures and different places.”
