Race and Your Community

Race and Your Community

My community, Florence Kentucky, is the second largest city in the state of Kentucky and is in one of the fastest growing counties in the state. Florence has a population of 27,745 of which 53% are females and 47% are males. Not sure why, however, when I looked at the stats for the city I was surprised to learn that 92% of my community is white. That leaves 3% of my community being African American, 1% being Asian and 4% other/mixed. [ (Florence Profile) ] Statistics show that Florence is not a very ethnically diverse community.

It has been great living in Florence the last six years, however, I do wish that it was little more diverse so that my daughter could be exposed to a little more.

However, I grew up in a community that was much more diverse than Florence. It is about 15 miles away from Florence in a city named Covington Kentucky. Covington is right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati Ohio. I grew up in the 1980’s and I went to a high school where there was a good population of African Americans and a fair amount of Vietnamese students. It was a time where Vietnamese families were being located to Covington by the government. Many times the Vietnamese students couldn’t speak English but learned very quickly.

It was a time that I enjoyed very much and looking back the best place for me. It allowed me to learn about diverse cultures, behaviors and friendships. I wasn’t afraid of African Americans like many were at the time. They were my friend. I remember as a teenager getting upset because everyone would talk badly about my high school. Not because of academics or sports but because we had a much heavier population of African American in our schools. We were one of the only schools that offered the academics that we did, however, we were know as the “bad” school because we had the African Americans.

Today Covington consist of 84% whites, 10.1% African Americans, 2.6% Hispanics. [ (Covington Kentucky...