For much of the day, Katie Capron's shop looks like any bakery in any Maine town, with cinnamon buns and apple turnovers tempting folks who walk by its picture windows on Cumberland Avenue.
Then the school bus stops a few doors from the bakery, and a stream of kids flows by in a multiracial parade never seen in most Maine towns and neighborhoods.
A middle-schooler with rich, dark skin and a big, bright smile stops in the bakery, drops her backpack and intently folds six cake boxes as she chats with Capron. For lending a hand, she is rewarded with a large piece of apple cake baked that morning.
"I love this neighborhood," said Capron, who opened Katie-made after moving here from Manhattan. "Being in a 97 percent white state is kind of strange. This neighborhood is as close to city life as I've seen here."
The bakery sits in the most racially diverse neighborhood in Maine, according to a Press Herald computer analysis of new U.S. census data. The slice of Portland's peninsula, between the Franklin Arterial and Washington Avenue and stretching from Marginal Way to Commercial Street, includes Kennedy Park and East Bayside.
Officially labeled Census Tract 5, it is the closest any Maine neighborhood comes to the racial diversity of the average American neighborhood. In Tract 5, there is a 48 percent chance that two residents randomly meeting on the street would have different races. Nationwide, the average chance of such a meeting is 49 percent.
Whites make up 97 percent of Maine's population, but only 71 percent of the population here, according to the census.
Life in the neighborhood is full of contrasts. Families share the same basic routines: work, school, homework and chores. Kids here fling the spring snow with the same enthusiasm as young Mainers everywhere.
But there is also variety found nowhere else in the state: different languages, religions, cultures, foods and social events. In some ways, the diversity here goes deeper than what the census finds in larger cities.
Many of Portland's African, Asian and Hispanic immigrants have only recently settled here and the neighborhood is filled with first-generation refugees and immigrants still directly connected to native cultures.
That trend is changing the face of neighborhoods around the city, although nowhere as dramatically as here, according to the census.
Trinh Nguyen is working hard, as usual, at the Portland Asian Market on Cumberland Avenue. She works here seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and lives with her husband and two children upstairs. While she rarely leaves the building, the neighborhood's diversity comes to her.
"Thai, Korean, Cambodian, Japanese, American, Somalian, Spanish . . ." says Nguyen, whose native language is Vietnamese. "I like it."
The common language is usually English, however. A couple of girls stop for shrimp chips and juice. Their families are from Thailand, though they speak English like natives.
Nguyen and her husband send money to family members in Vietnam, a common practice in this neighborhood. "That's why we're working hard, you know," she says.
Ten or 20 years ago, the area was home to mostly lower-income white families. Kennedy Park was built as subsidized public housing in the 1960s, and became one of many "projects" occupied by native families down on their luck and, in many cases, on welfare.
The 160-apartment complex, which became notorious for violence and drugs, is now under renovation, with gray and pastel-colored vinyl siding covering the old darkened cedar.
During the past 10 years, immigrant and refugee families from Asia, Africa and other parts of the world have resettled here. They've come to Census Tract 5 for some of the same reasons as Italian and Irish families who came here decades before them – affordable housing, jobs and services.
"One of the reasons is it's small and quiet and good for families," said Khadija Suldiman. Her family came from Somalia to Kennedy Park in 1994. The oldest of six girls and one brother, Suldiman is 23 and studying social work at the University of Southern Maine.
On Monday afternoon, Suldiman is at Kennedy Park's Educational Center, a converted apartment where college students help youngsters with their homework after school. A group of kids, immigrants from Somalia and Sudan, flip through textbooks in between bouts of giggling.
"I don't even know how many Somalis are here," Suldiman said. "Every day I walk down the street and I see new faces."
As Kennedy Park's population changes, it also is slowly shedding its reputation. Residents and police say there is far less crime than in Kennedy Park's past. And they agree that the various cultures and races co-exist well even if, for the most part, separately.
Ho Van sits quietly with friends at a corner table at the Portland Asian Market, drinking soda beneath a list of daily specials written in Vietnamese with prices in American dollars.
"I think Maine is a pretty good place to raise a kid," he says. "Some of the places are a lot more lousy than here. You know, the big cities."
Immigrants who live in subsidized apartments in Kennedy Park work to move into their own homes, where they can have more control over their children and keep them from being exposed to cigarettes, drugs or other dangers of the American culture, said Margaret Lado. "In Africa, we don't have drugs," she said.
But living amid a sea of white people in Maine is not a problem, neighborhood residents say.
Lado and her family emigrated from Sudan to Atlanta and then moved to Maine, which is nearly a 180-degree racial reversal from home. "Some people who come from rural areas (of Sudan) might have not interacted with white people," she said.
There also is isolation for many of the neighborhood's residents who cannot communicate with natives or other newcomers. Sudanese immigrants often cannot even speak with other Sudanese because they come from different tribes, about 15 of which are represented in Portland.
Still, Lado said, neither being a minority nor dealing with Maine's long winters is enough to outweigh the sense of security and community that has developed in the neighborhood and in Portland.
"I have friends here and I like smaller places," said Lado, who works at the Center for Cultural Exchange. "You see, we don't have big cities in Sudan. We like quiet, peaceful and secure places."
Staff Writer John Richardson can be contacted at 791-6324 or at: jrichardson@pressherald.com
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