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12.31.2001 00:10
The face may change but the spirit endures


• The 2000 Census showed that the growth of the Hispanic population brought the biggest shift in Rhode Island's ethnic mix since 1900.

BY SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- They are the phrases applied forever to Rhode Island: parochial and provincial, resistant to change, wary of outsiders, sealed off by its culture as New England's little backwater.

Census 2000 gave Rhode Island a multicolored portrait of itself at the dawn of a century. Along the way, it punctured some of those Rhode Island stereotypes -- but also reinforced a centuries-old theme: that of a state constantly reinventing itself through immigration.

During the 1990s, the state's population grew by 41/2 percent, to 1,048,319 people -- the most ever.

This growth was attributable solely to the presence of minority-group members, because the rest of the population -- the non-Hispanic whites -- decreased by nearly 38,000. Almost 1 in 5 Rhode Islanders is now a member of one of the state's minority groups.

A decade ago, only one small place in Rhode Island had a predominance of minority-group members: the South Side of Providence. By 2000 -- for the first time in history -- minority-group members dominated the numbers in both Providence and Central Falls, and in parts of Pawtucket.

The scales were tipped in these places by the growth of Rhode Island's Hispanic population, which during the 1990s doubled to 90,000. This growth represents the biggest shift in Rhode Island's mix since 1900, when European immigrants started competing in numbers with the Yankees and the Irish-Americans.

And, fueling Providence's 8-percent growth (almost twice the state's growth rate), Hispanics brought the city's total population to 173,618 -- allowing Providence to surpass Worcester and reclaim its historical position as New England's second-largest city.

The growth in the state's minority numbers is consistent with that of most of the rest of the country, including Rhode Island's neighbors, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Minorities now compose about 31 percent of the U.S. population.

THERE WERE other trends in Rhode Island that the 2000 Census confirmed.

Many Rhode Islanders now want to live in communities they once viewed as summer destinations. The coastal and South County communities saw soaring growth, and many black and some Asian residents of Providence moved to such once-white cities as Pawtucket and Cranston.

To literally see some of this shift, take a walk.

Stroll down Broad Street, South Providence's lifeline, and note the names: El Malecon Restaurant, Pella Del Caribe Market, Pito's Restaurant, Hernandez Liquors, Asian Bakery, Sanchez Market, Mekong Market, and El Nanito Record Shop.

Fifty years ago, these buildings bore different names: Cohen's Market, Kolodoff's Liquor, Colarusso Bakery, Prescott Drug Co., McNeil's Children's Shop, Moran's Bakery, Hanley's Tap, and Celona Pharmacy.

Eavesdrop inside these places, and Spanish is what you'll mostly hear.

It isn't just on Providence's Broad Street that you'll encounter such change. Smith Street, running from the State House to North Providence, showed these names on a map from 1950: Cook's Fish Market, the Scottish Fish and Chips Store, Rinaldi's Variety, McPhillips Ice Cream, MacLachlan's Service, Zeitel's Radio and Appliance, and Max Weinberg Tailors.

These businesses are no more. Today's traveler down Smith Street passes Yun Nan Restaurant, Lao Lanexang Market, Patrick's Pub, Mandarin Garden, Cristina Market: Spanish and American Foods, and Alvarez Furniture.

BUT RHODE ISLAND'S new ethnic communities involve much more than business. A good place to witness all-encompassing change is Providence's Silver Lake neighborhood -- transforming faster than any other neighborhood in the state.

Ten years ago, Silver Lake had one of Providence's smallest concentrations of minority-group members. An Italian-American redoubt, the neighborhood was 86-percent non-Hispanic white. Today, non-Hispanic whites make up just 34 percent of the population.

Silver Lake had produced such politicians as U.S. Sen. John O. Pastore, Gov. Christopher Del Sesto, and Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. At midcentury, the names you would see on Pocasset Avenue included Dr. Vincent A. Cianci (the mayor's father), Buonanno's Pharmacy, Gelfuso Bros. Gas Station, Casali Brothers Liquors, Franco's Clothing Store, Zompa's Cleansers, Pannone Meats, DePasquale Fruits, Spadaro Shoe Repair, and Calabrese Variety.

Today in this neighborhood, even a business with a generic name is likely to be run by someone of Hispanic origin. Wendy Garcia, for example, is the principal broker at Silver Lake Realty.

St. Bartholomew's Church was founded by Italian immigrants, but its Spanish-language Mass now draws six times as many worshipers as its Italian-language Mass. And at the Silver Lake Little League field, middle-aged white coaches hit fungoes to mostly Hispanic, Asian, and African-American children. When the coaches call the players' homes to schedule a practice, the parents answering the phone may not speak English; the children must translate for the adults.

English as a Second Language classes are common now at Webster Avenue School -- which 10 years ago had such a high proportion of white native English speakers that officials talked of busing out some of the pupils, to comply with desegregation laws.

Meanwhile, in other parts of Providence, other kinds of movement took place during the '90s. Many of the black inner-city residents moved to less urban settings in Pawtucket, North Providence, and Cranston -- reducing Providence's racial segregation to its lowest level since the 1930s.

LESS HEMMED in than ever by geography, Rhode Islanders nowadays commute much farther than in the past. Their forebears may have walked from wood-frame triple-decker to red-brick cloth factory, but today's residents live on the ocean or out in the country, while working in downtown Providence or even Greater Boston.

Every weekday, about one of seven employed Rhode Islanders crosses the line into Massachusetts for the many high-tech jobs and better pay. You can see them at 6 a.m. at the Providence train station, or on Routes 95 and 295, slugging coffee from behind the wheel.

In their retreat to the rural, many of these commuters have spread out into such once-quiet communities as Richmond, West Greenwich, and South Kingstown. To receive them, developers have plowed under fields of potatoes and turf, and erected subdivisions of single-family houses with multicar garages.

In their wake have come environmental pressures, traffic, and, to educate all the new children, soaring tax bills.

Some would say that this is the downside of the flourishing southeastern - New England economy of the late 1990s.

CHANGE in Rhode Island during the 1990s also occurred within the community of the elderly.

Some of the harsh truths of getting old are unwavering; the elderly will always face the death of spouses and friends, failing health, loss of independence, and depression.

Yet much has evolved in the last decade in the lives of the older residents of Rhode Island -- the state with the sixth-highest percentage of elderly residents in the country, and the highest percentage in New England.

Gone is the old "senior center," with its coffee-drinking, chain-smoking elders playing endless rounds of bingo or sitting in a corner knitting. In its place are such multipurpose facilities as Cranston Senior Services and, in North Providence, the Salvatore Mancini Resource and Activity Center.

The people who come to these centers are more likely to attend an exercise class than play bingo. They get blood-pressure checks, eat nutritious lunches, and enroll in high-school and college courses that they may have missed when they were younger and busier.

These Rhode Islanders -- many of them widows and widowers -- are getting involved with each other in ways that would have made earlier generations blush. Take 92-year-old Bill Della Valle, of North Providence, and 78-year-old Irene Pickles, of Smithfield. They have been inseparable since their eyes locked during a line-dancing class; they speak openly of their love for each other, and are physically affectionate.

The dating scene among the elderly is easier for the men. Women tend to live longer -- Rhode Islanders 85 years and older are about 74-percent female -- so there is a clear imbalance.

IT ISN'T just among Rhode Island's elderly, though, that there is a shortage of men. The census confirmed what all Rhode Island women seem to know: this state has a higher ratio of females to males than any other. For every 100 women, there are just 92.5 men.

The gender gap may be widest among the elderly, but look at this age group: on the college campuses in Rhode Island, 42,000 female students take classes alongside 33,000 males.

Another kind of gender gap exists in the world of work -- the gap in pay. The numbers show that, on average, Rhode Island women earn about 64 cents for every dollar earned by Rhode Island men. The difference is slightly more pronounced in low-wage jobs, those in which women make less than $20,000 a year. Yet it exists at all levels of the working world.

When it comes to gender roles, Rhode Island's biggest change in the last decade has been in the number of households headed by same-sex partners -- particularly those of male couples in what were once "Ozzie and Harriet" suburbs.

Rhode Island now ranks 16th among states in percentage of households headed by same-sex couples. While gay-rights advocates say discrimination persists in some quarters, almost everyone in the state's gay community says that things have gotten better since 1995, when Governor Almond signed into law the Gay Civil Rights Act.

Typical of male partners openly living together are Tony Caparco and Frank Ferri, of Warwick's Riverview section. Since 1985, Caparco, a store manager, and Ferri, a bowling-alley owner, have shared their home in this traditional suburban neighborhood of minivans and married couples with children.

Just like their neighbors, Caparco and Ferri hold neighborhood barbecues. One neighbor, who at first wasn't sure what to expect, refers to the two as "regular guys."

It is no longer unusual to see gay couples holding hands at Providence's WaterFire . And a magazine for lesbian women, Girlfriends, has ranked Rhode Island's capital among the cities most friendly to lesbians.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island households headed by a single parent are mostly headed by women. Yet a small but growing number of single-parent households now feature men. The census showed 7,300 male-headed single-parent households in Rhode Island in 2000 -- a 76-percent increase since 1990. Still, about 80 percent of the state's single-parent households in 2000 were headed by women.

WHILE the census showed Rhode Island blending the new with the old, that doesn't mean, of course, that every community is in flux. In many places, the Rhode Island of 2000 looks pretty much like the Rhode Island of 1990 -- or 1950.

Take Burrillville, the woodsy former mill town in the state's northwest corner. Roughly 98 percent of the 15,976 residents are non-Hispanic white; with Little Compton, this represents the highest proportion of such residents in the state.

Life in Burrillville still moves to the rhythms of church (mostly Roman Catholic), high-school hockey, rural roads, and open spaces.

Time moves similarly slowly in other outer suburbs of Providence, such as nearby Glocester and North Smithfield. In these towns, too, the minority population barely exceeds 2 percent of the total.

Another old mill community whose appearance has changed little is Woonsocket. Its distinction is that it is the one Rhode Island community to have steadily lost population since 1950.

While the city has a much larger minority population than it did a decade ago, it keeps losing non-Hispanic whites, and the economic boom of the 1990s bypassed its downtown.

Once a world-famous textiles producer -- its worsted wool was particularly prized -- Woonsocket has yet to find a modern engine. Few businesses, old or new, have succeeded in the graceful old red-brick downtown, although city officials keep searching for magnets to attract them.

The city has made a real effort. The Stadium Theatre has been reopened in all its Jazz Age splendor, and in October the Museum of Work and Culture, a tribute to Rhode Island's industrial past, attracted the most visitors it had ever had. Programs abound to fix up old houses downtown, where there is now even a skating rink.

Still, a drive around downtown Woonsocket is a trip to the past. The brick mills shadow the Blackstone River, their smokestacks -- though long extinguished -- still competing on the skyline with the steeples of the churches.

The northern part of Woonsocket, where the mill owners' stately Victorian houses can be bought for a fraction of what they would cost in Providence, increasingly serves as a bedroom community for Greater Boston.

FIDDLE with the car-radio dial, in Woonsocket or Westerly, and you can find a talk show that is a gripe session about state and local government. This, too, is an unchanging aspect of Rhode Island.

Rhode Islanders love to grouse about how much money their governments spend, and how high their state and local taxes are.

The 2000 Census figures show, however, that the state ranks 27th nationally in expenditures. And its tax burden, though higher than that of many other states, is lower than the burden in Connecticut, Maine, New York, and New Jersey.

CHANGE and continuity: Despite all the new trends documented during the past decade, there is still much about Rhode Island that endures.

As the state's non-Hispanic white population has declined, new immigrants -- many fleeing the poverty of Latin America -- have poured in. It's part of a time-tested Rhode Island pattern.

The newcomers, whether Latin Americans or Asians or others, arrive and weave a community. These new communities come to dominate neighborhoods that earlier received people from other parts of the world -- Portugal, Eastern Europe, Italy, Canada, Ireland . . . initially, England.

Once again, the new Rhode Islanders are proving that the experience of immigration remains much the same from generation to generation and from one group to another. It is the oldest of American stories -- people moving here in search of safety, self-direction, betterment of their children, a satisfying spiritual life, and freedom from want.