Culture Clash

By David Ruenzel

"Have you heard of Pierre de Vise?'' Donald Offermann, principal of Oak Park and River Forest High School--long considered one of the nation's most successfully integrated schools in one of the most successfully integrated communities--cheerfully asked me shortly after I had met him at an early morning school assembly. "He said Oak Park would eventually become all black, but he didn't understand our resolve to make diversity work. We refused to become 'ghettoized.' ''

As the assembly began, I took a seat across from a couple whose son, along with perhaps 200 other students, was receiving an award for "best exemplifying the school's commitment to cultural diversity and human dignity through their interpersonal actions with others regardless of race, ethnic or socioeconomic background, and physical ability.'' The father, upon learning that he was sitting across from a reporter, explained to me that the excellence of this high school had kept the community intact, while at other places whites fell prey to racial fears. Then he added, "Do you know about this guy Pierre de Vise?''

When de Vise's name came up yet again later that afternoon, it began to sound a bit like the punch line to a joke, yet his notoriety made perfect sense when understood in the context of community self-esteem. For de Vise had affronted the town's sense of uniqueness by predicting nearly 30 years ago that Oak Park, Ill., located just nine miles west of downtown Chicago, was about to become part of an inexorable phenomenon--white flight. Blacks had begun crossing Austin Avenue, the borderline separating Chicago and south Oak Park, an area with an abundance of relatively inexpensive rental units. Virtually all-white Oak Park, de Vise forecasted, would "fall'' at a rate of two blocks per year, becoming 25 percent black by 1980. This figure would place Oak Park well beyond what several studies suggested was the "tipping point''--the point at which panicked whites would flee as black demand took over. (Oak Park is currently 18 percent black, up from approximately 10.8 percent in 1981 and...