Woohoo New Ulm! The monkey is off your back. You’re no longer the “least diverse” city in America.
I remember hearing that New Ulm was the most “ethnically homogenous community of over ten thousand in America.” It was fun to share that with friends through the years, even though “ethnically homogenous” is hard to say without twisting my tongue.
That came from analysis of the 1980 census that was reported in a National Geographic article. New Ulm led the way of places with “low diversity.” At the time, 99.2% of New Ulmers were classified as white, non-Hispanic. Not only white, most were of German descent.
In a recent “Curious Minnesota” column in the Minnesota Star Tribune, someone asked if that is still true? Reporter Jp Lawrence looked at data from the 2020 census. While New Ulm is still overwhelmingly white of German ancestry, it no longer leads in ethnic homogeneity. That honor now belongs to St. Marys, Pennsylvania.
New Ulm is now 93% white, non-Hispanic. New Ulm is being dragged along in a state which is 76% white. Minnesota, like much of our country, is increasingly diverse.
I grew up by the little town west of New Ulm. New Ulm was always the big city to me. I like to joke about not getting off the farm much. It was literally true when I was a kid. We would go to Polka Days and the County Fair, so in my mind New Ulm was a town of big events.
A rare visit to the Red Onion was fine dining for us. Every piece of sports equipment I had came from my mom taking me to Nichlasson Athletics. We listened to New Ulm’s radio station and subscribed to New Ulm’s newspaper. Those things haven’t changed.
I never thought about New Ulm being non-diverse. After all, Hanska had those Norwegians just down the road. Then there were Catholics and Lutherans.
How much more diversity do you want?
The Sleepy Eye of my youth wasn’t much different. We weren’t quite as German as New Ulm. There were descendants of the first businessmen, many of whom were British ethnics. Gradually they were supplanted by Germans, many of whom moved into town from the surrounding German Bohemian farms.
I remember hearing German spoken in both communities. Many of the older generation of that time had grown up speaking it in their homes. Two world wars when Germany was the enemy probably diminished that.
Then in my young adult years, things began changing in Sleepy Eye. Hispanic families began to arrive. The earliest were migrant workers who worked seasonally at the Del Monte packing plant. This was as our local white families were having less kids. Laborers were needed.
Gradually, Hispanic workers began to fill other positions. Now they are essential to the continued success of our pork companies along with the other industries here. Their families began to stay and take up homes. Especially at Public School, Hispanic children are a substantial number of the student body.
Now Sleepy Eye is 78% white, close to matching the rest of Minnesota. Early on, there were some conflicts, things like bar fights. I remember hearing complaints about all those “Mexicans” coming here. That was inaccurate as most of these newbies were American citizens who moved here from Texas.
Has Sleepy Eye benefited from this demographic shift?
Absolutely. If white people would have all had 10 kids and farms filled every quarter section like seventy years ago, there’ would have been no need.
If you drive through the Midwest, you see plenty of dried-up towns with empty schools and closed churches. Sleepy Eye has avoided that fate, and it is exactly because of the “Mexicans.” Besides labor, the families who’ve come are younger. They use the parks and play music, things young white families used to do. You occasionally hear Spanish spoken, not unlike the German of my youth.
New Ulm has managed to sidestep these larger demographic movements. Look at Wilmar and Worthington to see comparable size communities and the large changes in their populations.
New Ulm seems to have some secret sauce. From 1980 to 2020, New Ulm did go from being 99% white to 93% white. A sizable number of those are still of German descended. The Chamber of Commerce promotes it as “the most German town in America.”
But change of a type has touched New Ulm. I drove on Minnesota Street recently and tried to remember what stores were there when I came with my mom. Like every downtown then, there were independent businesses with local owners. I remember it as being very busy.
Now of course, much of that busyness has gone to the gigantic Walmart and Menards built where fields used to be west of town.
But give New Ulm credit for being at least a little more diverse. That leads to a question.
Is diversity a good thing?
For most of 250 years, as America grew and benefited from immigrants from many places, that was just accepted.
Now of course, we have to defend that notion. There has grown an extreme paranoia around even the use of the word “diversity.” “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” has been replaced by “Tired, poor, and huddled masses, stay out.”
It would be as if I pined for a return of the Sleepy Eye of 1960 when diversity meant the Lutherans were on the south side of town and the Catholics were on the north side of town, and we were all white and knew our place.
That was OK, but I wouldn’t trade that for the dynamism and vibrancy of the Hispanic culture that blended with ours since then.
New Ulm seems a little slow to the party but give them credit. They are now the 15th most ethnically homogeneous community in America. That’s still hard to say, but I don’t think I’ll bother pointing that out to visitors.
— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.
