Walking down the streets of places like Ewing, Keyport, Lambertville, Princeton, and Red Bank, one can't help but notice that New Jersey has been blessed with a remarkable diversity of people. As New Jerseyans go to the polls to cast votes for candidates like Clinton and Obama, and all eyes are on the Latino vote, it's good to take stock of our diversity and the challenge it poses for the future.

It used to be that our urban areas were epicenters of population change, the place where immigrants first put down roots, where factory jobs were plentiful, where neighborhoods changed, where ethnic enclaves were established,  and where hopscotching from neighborhood to neighborhood and eventually to the suburbs took place in a multi-generational process. This older pattern no longer seems to hold true, at least to the same extent as before.

In our service-oriented economy, today's immigrants go where the jobs are and many head straight for the suburbs. Other immigrants have the skills and training required in our knowledge-based industries and can afford to buy homes in places like Edison and Fort Lee. The impact that immigrants have on the entire state is immense. For those on the lower end of the occupational spectrum, the strain on the already limited stock of affordable housing in the suburbs is great. For those on the middle and upper end, the boost to the housing market has been huge, perhaps shielding New Jersey from the worst affects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Ethnic clustering which used to be more typical of urban areas has become a feature of the suburban terrain as well.
 
All of this reshuffling and mixing of people -- on one level a positive sign of New Jersey's integration into the global economy - has the potential to create misunderstanding, discord, and conflict as New Jersey residents, immigrant and native-born alike, adapt to changing neighborhoods and communities. As the walls of housing segregation continue to tumble down, African-Americans will also become a more visible presence in previously predominantly white communities, and add to the melange of peoples and cultures that will characterize New Jersey in the future. The days of wide swathes of New Jersey as a bucolic refuge from the dizzying diversity and poverty of the industrial city are over.
 
In my last blog, I talked about the need to understand this process of population change, to describe it clearly and accurately, to set the record straight so to speak, in order to counter the misinformation and bigotry that is poisoning the climate of intergroup relations, and in so doing to relieve the widespread anxiety and fear over the loss of the familiar, especially among middle age and older people brought up in different times. What are equally as important are efforts to bring ordinary people from diverse backgrounds together in shared pursuits.
 
A few groups are stepping forward to promote dialogue and greater intergroup understanding. Over the last year, the League of Women Voters, for example, in places like Lawrence, Montclair, and Plainfield among others, has sponsored so-called "consensus forums" on immigration policy. In Princeton, the League partnered with the Center for Migration and Development and five other Princeton-based groups to convene an "Immigration Reform Roundtable," which managed to put Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello and many of his most vocal critics around the same table for a frank but civilized conversation. A larger and more ambitious dialogue project is taking place in the State of Colorado, where the Colorado Trust is supporting a three-year program called "Dialogues on Immigrant Integration," to create civic spaces where immigrants and native-born can discuss tough issues like "maintaining cultural identities yet feeling connected with others."

These programs directly address misunderstandings and tension between immigrants and established residents. Other groups, however, take a more indirect approach, emphasizing the importance of bringing people from diverse backgrounds together to solve shared problems.  I call this the "familiarity breeds respect" concept, real person-to-person contact often shatters the negative stereotypes that we have of each other.  It also unleashes the power of diversity to solve our most intractable problems, a lesson cutting-edge corporations in the United States have understood for some time. There are abundant opportunities for this kind of interaction to take place, in neighborhood associations, civic associations, religious institutions, appointive boards and commissions, etc. Local political leaders play a critical role in modeling and encouraging this kind of creative exchange.
 
This kind of work isn't the sole responsibility of the native-born alone. Immigrants themselves need to demonstrate their commitment to their new society by reaching out to their neighbors and participating in the life of the larger community. Fortunately, many immigrants are doing just that. When Muslims against Hunger formed a delegation to help out at an interfaith soup kitchen in Morristown, they showed their concern for the downtrodden in the larger community.  When Mexican immigrants in Morristown participated in this year's First Night celebration, they signaled their intention to be part of the larger community. Small gestures such as these go a long way to easing community tensions.
 
When people from diverse backgrounds come together in an atmosphere of mutual respect to find solutions to shared problems, they usually come to appreciate their shared humanity, find creative and workable solutions to their problems, and build lasting relationships in the process.