Valley has many positives, but racial divide will retard progress

EDITOR:
In a recent ranking of the "Best Performing Cities" of the nation's largest 200 cities, Youngstown, Ohio, was ranked by the Milken Institute just above Gary, Indiana. They are numbers 199 and 200.
The guidelines for the ranking are limited to growth in jobs, wages and technology. Crime rates (D), cost-of-living (A) and quality-of-life (C+), (The grades are mine) were not part of the Milken formula. Moving up in rank can be accomplished only with implementation of pragmatic, long term regional planning and good fortune (luck).
I like living in the Youngstown/Mahoning County region, not for what it is today or was 40 or 100 years ago, but for the possibilities available in the region's inherent resources.
I went to a football game of an organized league of 9- and 10-year-old boys at Mill Creek Park's Volney Rogers Park. I had become acquainted with one 9-year-old and promised to go to one of his games, in the role of a mentor for CASA.
The park, in addition to a football field, has a tennis court and playground. There was an enthusiastic crowd of 200 to 300 people there at that time, including parents, fans and several football teams and their cheerleaders.
It was immediately apparent that two of the park policemen assigned to the Saturday football games and I were the only white people I saw at that day's events. I found my way to a bleacher and sat in front of the foster mother of the 9-year-old football player. When another lady asked to sit in front of me, I responded that she couldn't because this was the white section. Fortunately she had a sense of humor.
I have been to the Philippine Islands, Mexico and the Amazon River area of Peru, Brazil and Colombia, but never did I encounter the separation of cultures that I did at that football game.
It should be impossible for any such racial disconnect in Mahoning County and Youngstown, but that's how it is, and until there is a change, we will never become the region we want for our grandchildren.
There is no one to blame and no explicit villains, but a blemish exists that must be treated and removed. No one is wise enough to know how this current divide happened or how to bring about a change that is different and better than all of the previous efforts. Past top-down efforts and plans and schemes have not reduced prejudice or provided real connection or promoted the earned respect that is essential to remove a social cancer that depletes from any community's potential.
Youngstown remains an "us and them" community, except in a few pockets of mutual respect, understanding and common sense we occasionally enjoy and delight in. The political and religious community should provide an endowment to set free wasted human resources and promote newly fashioned paradigms. We must overcome a fruitless history of talking the talk and not walking the walk.
Youngstown has:
* Youngstown State University, a growing and classy educational institution.
* A number of public parks, including Mill Creek Park, the second-largest public park in the nation and second to none otherwise.
* An interconnecting library complex that is top of the line.
* A juvenile court that is a model for an enlightened approach to juvenile justice.
The locale has a highway and transportation system that would be the envy of most of the country. It has amenities like world class biking and hiking trails, great shopping, excellent restaurants, low-cost real estate and top-notch medical services.
Most profound, Youngstown has a fertile diversity of 10 or more proud cultures, except for one that was cruelly disrupted and severed from its birthplace by an inhumanity that remains with us, as I observed recently at Volney Rogers Park.
WILLIAM B. ROORBACK
Boardman