West Liberty, which is near Iowa City, has become a minority majority town. And now, its news about Latinos v. news about Blacks.
According to the Press Citizen:
In 2010, 52 percent of the city’s population identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino. It is the first city with more than 1,000 residents to reach the “minority majority” milestone in more than a century, said Jeff Schott, program director at the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Iowa. The city of 3,700 people saw its population increase by 12 percent overall over the past decade.
Hispanics composed about 23 percent of the town’s population in 1990 and 40 percent in 2000.
And what is so interesting about this is the amount of coverage the influx of Latinos to the area has received in recent years. This change has been (maybe rightfully) celebrated. But at the same time, the increased movement of African Americans to Iowa City has been discussed through crime reports and racialized code, which I have written about here before.
So why talk about it again?
Well, I am just so interested in the way this story about the Latino West Liberty depicts the place of a Latino West Liberty. Whereas Iowa City’s Southeast Side has been depicted as a
Black ghetto, full of crime and decline (I have an article coming out in July in Visual Communication Quarterly that talks about these depictions), West Liberty is shown through this story and photograph to be a place of life and prosperity.
I wonder why. Is it that local media cover place so differently based upon the people who live there?
Some more examples:
This story talks about a more “diverse” school district, with little voice to the space, place, and people involved in the “diverse” changes.
Here is a Writer’s Group column about how the Southeast Side should conform to the “dominant” culture of Iowa City. In this piece, the writer suggests the following ways to get the people of the Southeast Side (read that the perception is of Blacks from Chicago) could include:
an orientation program focusing on the dominant value systems here and identifying those individual/group activities that are encouraged here and those that aren’t. It could be especially for families coming from markedly different socio-economic and cultural areas and moving into local rent-subsidized homes.
He also says that the spaces in question in Iowa City should not be viewed as having fewer resources, because:
For the Cross Park-Broadway area, there’s nearby Weatherby Park, and a few blocks further east is the expansive Grant Wood School playground and FairMeadows Park area. Additionally, about a mile away in another direction is the large Napoleon Park softball complex, and about a mile beyond that is the huge new Terry Trueblood Recreation Area being constructed around Sand Lake. In addition, adjacent to South East Junior High is Mercer Park and Aquatic Center.
Similarly, regarding sports and other activities, there are soccer, baseball, softball, touch football, and other organized leagues, plus more than a dozen “Parties in the Park” each summer and fall.
Cause, yeah, baseball among urban communities is really popular. So is golf. And, it is so way easy to travel a mile or two in the blazing heat, not an air conditioned car, which I am sure the author uses. (There are other interesting suggestions in this article, too, that you should read.)
Finally, there is this story that talks about how the Iowa City Public Library need not spend time or money (at least for the next 10 years) to get a library substation in the Southeast Side, because there is no real need for it. However, the library’s findings and the news report do little to voice the thoughts of people actually living in the Southeast Side.
So, another question: Is it that easy to travel to West Liberty to cover their changing community, but not to go into Southeast to talk about the changes in ours?