1991 ABC SPECIAL REPORT: "THE MOST RACIST TOWN IN AMERICA"

• Report rights infringement
• published: 13 May 2016
• views: 2304

DUBUQUE, Iowa, Oct. 30— For years now, along the rolling bluffs in this Mississippi River city of Victorian houses and church steeples, nobody ever thought much about race and prejudice. Nobody ever had to. There were only a handful of black people in town. A resident could go for years without seeing a black. And besides, people thought, racism was something that happened in the big cities or the Deep South, not in a nice, quiet place like Dubuque. But in recent weeks and months, Dubuque residents have been talking and thinking of race often. Because of a cross-burning incident two years ago that surprised many people, the city council last May adopted an extraordinary plan to attract 100 black families in hopes of adding diversity to this virtually all-white city of 58,000 people. A Backlash of Fear Since then, a backlash of fear and intolerance has erupted. Five crosses have been burned around town in the last four months. This week, uniformed police officers stood guard at Dubuque Senior High School after racial fights broke out. In recent days, racial epithets have been scrawled on buildings across town, some proclaiming "the New KKK." And when a man who admitted burning three of the crosses returned from jail to his job at a meatpacking plant, his co-workers are said to have greeted him with backslaps and a standing ovation. Scenes like these are searing to many white residents, who say they are struggling with their own racial attitudes. "This is the ignorant, oppressive underbelly of Dubuque," said Peter Kjeseth, a professor of Greek and Hebrew at a Lutheran seminary in Dubuque and a member of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "Young men who are undereducated and worried about jobs are scared to death." All of this is happening in a tradition-bound, heartland city of mostly Irish and German Catholics, where racial minorities make up 2 percent of the population and where there are only 331 black residents scattered across the city. The racial tension has forced residents to confront deeply imbedded prejudices. "People are wondering, 'How can we have a race problem when we don't even have minorities?' ," said Kim Clayton, a counselor at the high school and a member of the committee that drafted the plan. Symbol of Intolerance Dubuque, with its newly tapped well of intolerance, symbolizes race relations in this country, specialists on the topic say. As the economy has stalled and as some politicians mine racial fears to win votes, unresolved prejudices have produced a kind of racism whose code words are "quotas" and "unqualified minorities," one that can explode at any time given the impetus, these experts say. "This is not the South," said Dr. Joe Feagin, a professor of sociology at the University of Florida, who has written extensively about race relations and is white. "If in a heartland city with no history of slavery and segregation, you find such virulent racism, it suggests that it is a cancer affecting us all." For years, blacks in Dubuque say, they have felt alienated and isolated, enduring namecalling and stares. But what seems to have spurred the latest incidents is a plan to encourage local employers to hire minority workers, particularly blacks. The plan's goal is to recruit 20 minority families a year for five years with financial incentives and recognition awards to businesses that hire minority members. The program is to be financed by Federal grants and private donations. A Minority in the N.A.A.C.P. The plan came in the wake of a cross burning two years ago that ignited a black family's garage. A task force set up to examine the situation found what most Dubuque residents already knew: The city is an isolated, homogeneous island where everything from the police force to the fire department to every teacher in every public school is white and where blacks are even a minority in the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. The task force of business leaders and school and city officials said that what Dubuque needed was more minority citizens; the hope was that exposure to other groups might make people more tolerant. The City Council approved the plan, 6 to 1, last spring. Although the city government devised and adopted the plan, its execution is up to private employers, and it is unclear whether they have had any success in luring black workers.