On the quiet Main Streets that run through its towns, locals still wave to strangers as they pass through. It is also, perhaps not surprisingly, one of the least diverse counties in Indiana. With roughly 44 blacks and 20 Asians calling Vermillion home, whites make up 98.4 percent of the county's 16,788 residents. Statewide, 87.5 percent are white, according to data from the government's 2000 census. Thirty-one counties have a white population of more than 98 percent.
Rural dwellers are more likely to be waving at other whites than at people from other cultures.
That subtle reality, social scientists say, affects the state's identity, its politics and the way people think about race. And then you've got the ones with the white sheets in the closet. But I think that you have them everyplace. Meanwhile, the number of whites coming to or being born in the state far outpaces the number for all other races combined. For every 100 new, nonwhite residents who arrived since 1990, there were 185 new whites.