FINNEY COUNTY, Kansas — U.S. communities are changing complexion as ethnic diversity grows in the American heartland. Going to church is a popular activity on Sundays in racially diverse Garden City, Kansas. Though not new in California, Arizona, Texas or Florida, the change of demographics is a bit more surprising in southwest Kansas. Finney County, Kansas, is one of six counties across the nation that became majority-minority between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced. The agency defines majority-minority as a county where more than half the population is made up of a group that is not single-race, non-Hispanic white. Nearly 10 percent (309) of the nation’s 3,142 counties were majority-minority as of July 1, 2008. ‘Why there?’ people ask Tim Cruz, former mayor of Garden City, Kansas, the largest town in Finney County. And then, ‘How do you all get along?’ ‘It’s just another melting pot you know,’ Cruz says. ‘It makes it nice to have those different cultures. And sure they’re different — we have to understand what they celebrate and why they do it.’ In the last couple of decades, massive meatpacking plants in Garden City have drawn workers […]