16 December 2008
The Many Faces of American Communities
Shared values, unity of purpose bind people together
This article is excerpted from the IIP publication Sketchbook USA, a richly illustrated volume that depicts Americans at work, at play, in their communities, and engaging in civic life. View and download the fully formatted Sketchbook.
Ask an American what the word “community” means, and you will likely get a variety of answers.
A community is a neighborhood of houses, apartments, offices, shops, maybe factories within a certain geographic area. It is an ethnic population. It is a group with the same religious or political beliefs. It is an organization of business people, teachers, health care professionals, or lawyers. Communities are also groups sharing similar interests — a book club, a choir, a hiking club, or an online chat room.
What makes a group a community is a sense of shared values or a unity of purpose. What makes a community successful is the willingness of its members to work together to achieve a common goal.
Communities in the United States reflect the geographic, political, religious, racial, ethnic, and economic diversity of the nation. Some are small … several dozen boys and girls in a suburban baseball league. Some are large … millions of African Americans, for example. And some are huge … like, everyone who uses the Internet. Whether local or national, communities give individuals an identity and a sense of contributing to something greater than themselves.
Envisioning a community is easy. Lots of people think it would be great to have a garden in the neighborhood or a chat room in cyberspace or an event to raise money for cancer research. Creating a community to accomplish these goals is harder. Who will seek the permit to turn a vacant lot into a garden and divide the space into plots? Who will set up and monitor the chat room? Who will organize the charity event?
Communities need leaders and action plans. Democratic communities need transparency and a mechanism so everyone’s voice can be heard.
Maintaining a community, whether new or long-established, can be difficult. The challenge is to keep the community relevant and attuned to the goals and the needs of members. Members want their efforts to be appreciated. They want to know that they are not wasting their time. They want to see progress. Communities must continually re-assess the reason they exist. They must listen to their members and make changes when necessary.
Even strong communities based on ethnic, racial, or religious ties are not immune from change. Their members intermarry and combine beliefs and traditions. Or they move away from the old neighborhood and different groups move in. While many communities remain fairly stable for decades, many others experience frequent change. Americans are free to choose to move to the suburbs, or back to the city, or to someplace warmer, or to a college town, or to where they can afford a better home … and they do.
For example, in many U.S. cities today, Korean, Jamaican, Somali, or Pakistani immigrants live where German, Irish, Greek, or Polish immigrants once lived. It is why unmarried people and same-sex couples live in family neighborhoods. It is why university professors live next door to carpenters. Communities allow most Americans to experience such diversity at a young age. For them, it is normal. And an increase in familiarity usually brings an increase in tolerance — a key ingredient in any community.
What keeps American communities alive is their ability to hold on to their history and values while adapting to social, economic, or technological changes. This requires a clear sense of purpose and a plan for passing responsibilities and traditions from one generation to the next.
