Who are the victims of the change that took place during the 1970s in Northwest Indiana's urban corridor? That depends on who you talk to.

Leave it to Dan Lowery, vice president for academic affairs at Calumet College of St. Joseph, to complicate and clarify this at the same time.

Speaking last Friday at a conference sponsored by the college's Center for Social Justice, Lowery said the people who remained at home in the urban core believe their cities were looted by the people who fled to the suburbs, taking everything that wasn't nailed down.

But talk to the people who moved out, and they are apt to tell you they were chased out.

Tuesday's referendum on public transportation shows why this chasm cannot be ignored. Porter County voted down the regional transportation district proposal by a 4-1 ratio, harming some of their neighbors in the process.

Many of the opponents expressed the sentiment that they should not be expected to help "those people" in Lake County.

The term "those people" is often considered a symptom of racism, either overt or subtle. There's certainly an element of racism involved, whether people realize it or not.

Look at the data on bias-motivated crimes compiled by Valparaiso University's Community Research and Service Center, and you'll see that 70.5 percent of them are related to race. You'll also see that Porter County has as many of these crimes as Lake County even though Lake County has about three times as many residents as Porter County.

But perhaps it's more than racism involved in this demographic divide.

Perhaps it's lingering resentment among those who believe they were forced to abandoned homes in the urban areas. Perhaps the people aren't focused as much on race as on the culture of public corruption that flourished in the cities they left.

Public transportation, to many of the opponents, is an urban feature that isn't welcome in the suburbs. It's a visual reminder of what they left behind.

The conference was appropriately billed as, "Broken Region: The Need for Reconciliation in Northwest Indiana."

I went to the conference to dispense wisdom in a panel discussion of lessons pertaining to Northwest Indiana. I received more wisdom than I gave.

Bringing reconciliation to the region following the "Gary diaspora" will be a long, long process.

"We've seen a segment in our community that is angry," Lowery said in introducing the topic of reconciliation at the conference. That anger must not continue.

After all these decades of distrust between the emigrees and those living in the cities, it's time to find a way to bridge this gap.

We're all citizens of Northwest Indiana, after all. Together, we can accomplish great things for our region.

Anyone have any great ideas for starting this reconciliation process?

Editorial Page Editor Doug Ross can be reached at (219) 548-4360 or (219) 933-3357 or Doug.Ross@nwi.com. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.