R.I. perseveres at the dawning of a new era
By SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer
At the Democratic National Convention in 1996, the Rhode Island and Texas delegates stayed in the same Chicago hotel. The Texans were amazed that all of the Rhode Island delegates were on a first-name basis; the Rhode Islanders shrugged retort was hey, most of us are related.
In Rhode Island, everybody knows everybody else. Or knows somebody who does. This means the person who lives across the street cares whether you are alive or dead. This neighbor also knows what you ate for breakfast, when you last mowed the lawn, and what your brother is really like; she dated him before she married your cousin.
Looking back at the 20th century in Rhode Island is like going to a high school reunion: you can recognize everybody but immediately notice that they all have changed. The most striking thing that has not changed about Rhode Island since 1900 is we are still the smallest state. (It would take 200 Rhode Island-sized states to fill Texas.)
Many churches are full on Sunday mornings, but the Sabbath is no longer a day most people devote exclusively to worship and prayer. The State House was once the most imposing building on Smith Hill. Now it is dwarfed by Providence Place, a glitzy shopping center, and a new hotel.
The unremitting march of commerce seems to be crowding out everything else, as if the pursuit of bright shiny objects is our main mission on earth.
Some lament this trend as an example of a fissure in our moral and spiritual underpinning; others boast that in the mall Providence has acquired the retail cachet necessary to compete for visitors in a society that so values getting and spending. One certainty about life today is that we are assaulted by commercial messages every waking minute.
Our lives are filled with -- some say controlled by -- gadgets. Just 25 years ago, there were no cell phones, no personal computers, no ATM machines. Only doctors and the conspicuously self-important wore pagers. When people talked of surfing, they were referring to Misquamicut or Narragansett town beach, not the Internet or television channels.
IN SOME WAYS Rhode Island has evolved into a two-tiered society. In some places, everyone seems to be wealthy, barking orders into cell phones perched behind wheels of huge, elongated Jeeps. They drink fancy wines and eat at restaurants with names they can't pronounce properly. Their talk is of stocks and bonds and 401K plans and the giddy run-up in the price of real estate.
You can see a sadder group in the shadows of the hulking office buildings in downtown Providence or outside the Travelers Aid shelter, huddled against the cold, begging coins from passersby. Some are addicted to drink or drugs; some have cut relations to their families; some are just poor.
Statistics show we are neither the richest nor poorest state; Rhode Island is known as an easy place to live but a hard place to make a living. Our economy has to be reinvented every generation or two. We have metamorphosed from trading colony to farming stronghold to factory center to tourist destination. Our parents and grandparents may have worked in a mill or on a military base. We are more likely to log long hours in a hospital, school, or restaurant.
New arrival or scion of old Yankee family, Rhode Islanders still don't like to be told what to do. The first white settler, Roger Williams, came here because he couldn't bear to live under the Puritan theocrats who ran Massachusetts. The first stop of an immigrant from the dusty countryside of Latin America is often to sign up to learn to speak English; the classes in Providence are always oversubscribed. But when a candidate for Congress a few years back proposed requiring immigrants to learn English, the state's Latino groups organized to doom his campaign.
These new Rhode Islanders from Latin America or those from Southeast Asia are much like previous generations of immigrants from Ireland, Portugal, and Italy. Life isn't easy, but it is better here than where they came from for those who obey the law, work hard, and learn English. They live in the same neighborhoods -- even in the same triple-deckers -- as earlier generations. Their first jobs are often in small businesses or assembling jewelry.
These new arrivals are the state's future. Eighty-one percent of the students in Providence's public schools are members of minority groups. How well our state and country's democracy holds up in the 21st century is largely up to them and their children.
A snapshot of boys playing a basketball game at mid-century would show 10 white boys vying for baskets and rebounds. A generation ago, the same scene would be of six or seven whites and three or four blacks. At a big-time college game today -- Providence College or the University of Rhode Island -- nine or 10 starters are black.
Thirty years ago, women would be at the game -- as cheerleaders. Today women's basketball has a big following, with fans cheering in the stands and watching games on television. Other women's sports -- soccer, hockey, tennis -- draw even more fans.
WOMEN'S LIVES have changed more than men's in this century. When Flora Dutton graduated from college in the 1920s, her dean told her that educated women don't go into business, they teach school. Dutton ignored that advice and became a wealthy and respected Providence restaurant owner.
A generation ago, it was unusual to see a female doctor or lawyer. Today, the Brown University Medical School enrolls more women than men. As long as brains trump brawn in the job market, women will inevitably equal or surpass men in professional positions.
Professional women must juggle the competing demands of family and career. Many of them say that men do not do their fair share.
While educated women today can pursue pretty much any career they choose, many women say that climbing to the top of the business or professional world in a society dominated by men is daunting. Women got the vote in 1920, and it took 62 years for Rhode Island to elect its first female statewide officeholder, in 1982. Today there are no women in statewide elected office.
By 1950, the Colonial and Victorian architectural wonders of Newport and Providence stood in mocking glory of a state that reeked of the second-rate. The newspaper headline blared "What's Wrong with Rhode Island" as factories emptied and jobs fled to states and countries with warmer climates and cheaper workers.
RHODE ISLAND gained a reputation as a place run by union leaders, priests, party bosses, and the underworld. Today many Catholics take their religion a la carte; they attend Mass and consider themselves good Catholics, but they don't necessarily swallow such church teachings as the ban on using birth control.
You can still book a bet on a college basketball game in Providence, but organized crime is not the influence on the state's political and economic life that it once was. There are many more mobsters on HBO than in the AFL-CIO.
The state has long had a reputation for shady dealings by politicians. In the 18th century, George Washington said Rhode Island "perseveres in . . . scandalous conduct."
We are reminded too often that petty graft seems a price we pay for democracy. Recently, one of our top highway officials was busted for looting dented tins of butter cookies from debris left in the wake of a truck rollover. A former governor just got out of prison.
But on the whole, our public officials are less corrupt now than at any time in the state's history, which may not be saying much. But public cynicism with these officials may be at an all-time high; this is also true nationally, where fewer and fewer people bother to vote.
Thankfully, it is rare that official malfeasance ruptures everyday life in the state. For the most part, broken bones get set, kids get educated, streets get cleaned, the many public beaches along our 400 miles of sparkling coastline open every summer.
Rhode Island at the dawn of 2000 is a delicious and confounding mix of contradictions. We are relentless boosters and dour pessimists. We are skinny joggers and plump pizza-pie hoggers. We say no to anything that threatens to despoil our beloved Narragansett Bay but blithely toss litter out the car window.
We are known as maniac drivers, brimming with road rage when we slide behind the wheel. Yet we are among the most law-abiding of American citizens; survey after survey shows Rhode Island has one of the country's lowest rates of violent crime.
Human conditions may change but human nature does not. Despite all of the changes in the way we live, most Rhode Islanders in 2000 are searching for the same things their forebears desired in 1900 or 1950: friendship, love, meaningful work, a nurturing family, a satisfying spiritual life, freedom from want.
Staff writer Scott MacKay coauthored the Journal's year-long series "The Rhode Island Century."
Copyright © 1999 The Providence Journal Company
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