"You know what I love about Northwest Arkansas?" my wife asked upon her return from ushering at the Rodeo of the Ozarks in Springdale. "The people in my group included the Springdale school superintendent and a state highway commissioner."
Her point was not that they rubbed elbows with her. It is that community leaders routinely rub elbows with everyone. They did not expect someone else to do it. They did not do it for show. There was a job to do. In talking about that night, she reminded me that we worked side by side at Fayetteville High School band fundraisers with people who could easily have afforded to send their own kids on the upcoming band trip without any fundraisers. They were there to help the other parents and the band program.
Another member of her all-volunteer rodeo group told the story of an executive from a multimillion-dollar company who was also a member of the Springdale Rotary Club. A woman he apparently never met before asked him to hold her purse while she took her kids to the restroom. The fact someone would hand her purse to an usher at a rodeo shows how this community assumes people can be trusted. It is a small thing, but a telling one.
The 1 percent still usher at rodeos for the 99 percent here. They still are part of the same community. I think that comes from having only recently made it into the 1 percent. This corner was the poorest part of a poor state within living memory. The social lines have not fully stratified yet. Perhaps such community feeling is more widespread than I give it credit for. I hope so.
I remember volunteering to help new students move into their dorms at the University. Then-chancellor David Gearhart came in his ball cap, T-shirt and jeans to carry loads, too. It was not just an appearance, either. He stayed at least as long as I did and hauled more.
The best-known thing about Northwest Arkansas is that it keeps having a massive influx of people. My wife raised an important point I had never thought of before. The thriving economy did not just attract outsiders to come here. It gave the people born here reason and opportunity to stay. The sense of community not only survived the massive influx -- the opportunities created by the influx helped.
All this reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad in late 1998. I had just moved to Fayetteville from North Little Rock. We were talking on the phone a couple of months later and he asked me if things were still going all right. How were the people up there, he asked.
"Aww dad, they're like any other bunch of people who were poor once and made some money," I replied. "They think they've got the world figured out and everybody would be doing just as well as they are if they just worked as hard."
I have lived here a long time since then. When I got here, you could go to a crowded place and see nothing but white faces. That changed. The growth in the Spanish-speaking and Marshallese populations is obvious. We should also take note that more than 12,000 African-Americans live in Washington and Benton counties. They outnumber the African-American population of Phillips County, the archetype Arkansas Delta locale.
The fact the region's sense of community has not weakened as its diversity increased is both notable and very encouraging. I do not pretend that the Marshallese, the Spanish speakers and others feel no separation from the rest of the community. I only contend they can come to the rodeo, be ushered and have purses held, too.
Immigration remains the region's most contentious issue. There are others. There was the struggle over Fayetteville's civil rights ordinance, for instance, and the recent backlash now embodied by Ozark Indivisible, the anti-Trump group.
Sometimes, a little division helps. I have written before of what I call the "string of pearls" nature of Northwest Arkansas. We don't have one clearly dominant city. All the big towns are on roughly equal footing. Their competition is healthy. Each town has to keep with up the Joneses, so to speak.
Northwest Arkansas does not have the world figured out. I wish it did. Then it could share the answers.
Commentary on 08/26/2017