We're Not Not in Kansas Anymore

Great piece today in the Times about how Hispanics are reshaping ... small towns in Kansas--quite beyond  the traditionally immigrant-attractice meatpacking meccas like Dodge City:

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.

Fascinating point that the slower pace of small Plains towns appeals to immigrants' because of how it harkens back to their childhood turf.  This news--along with the rapid integration in suburbs around many cities--does call into question whether cradle-to-career initiatives that are too rooted in the "inner-city" may be missing bigger trends.  It's not to understate the poverty challenges still very much present in central cities, but to point out that the conversation about uplift for all kids can't be limited to Harlem, Pilsen, Watts, Roxbury.