Changing Ethnic and Racial Diversity in the United States: A Review Essay

Abstract

The issue of race has long plagued the United States. Slavery caused the Civil War, a conflict that narrowly averted the break-up of the Union (McPherson 2015), and its cessation ushered in Jim Crow laws just as destructive as slavery itself (Woodward 1995). Today, its legacies endure in the form of institutional and cultural practices that sustain the disproportionate incarceration of black males and allow people tacitly to condone the occurrence of black-targeted violence (Alexander 2012). Recent police killings of blacks in several US cities suggest that racism toward blacks remains strong. However strong it is, revisionist writings about slavery over the past half-century have sought to avoid the mistakes of earlier narratives that underestimated the negative effects of racism toward blacks (Faust 2015). The desire not to reproduce such distortions today may ironically contribute to exaggerations of the extent to which harsh treatment and prejudice characterize the contemporary experiences of non-white US immigrant groups. While any such tendencies may seem to follow from clear-cut instances of the historical mistreatment of such groups, evidence suggests such treatment has now considerably waned (Foley 2015; Lee 2015). It is with this historical and social backdrop in mind that we approach William H. Frey's Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Dynamics Are Remaking America. The book provides an excellent and important examination of postwar racial and other demographic trends in the United States, along with what they may portend for the country's future, including its race relations. To evaluate the book's evidence and conclusions in light of the above, we first note how Frey uses the term race. By race, he seems to mean white–non-white divisions that often function in a manner similar to the black–white color line. To obtain a classification of race groups, Frey adopts a scheme that uses data collected by the US Census Bureau. This yields a six-category designation based on respondents’ self-reports to questions asking (a) whether the person is white, black, Asian, native-American, or some other race and (b) whether the respondent is Hispanic. If respondents answer the latter question by saying they are Hispanic, Frey adopts this as their “race.” If they do not, he takes their answers to the former question as their “race.” As is well known, these questions are mandated in order to provide information for the implementation of various federal laws, such as the Voting Rights Act. While reliance on such nomenclature and classification is widespread, it conflates a distinction many scholars make between racial and ethnic groups (a better label might thus be ethnoracial groups) and implicitly encourages the idea that all of these groups share common footing and similar experiences in America. We nevertheless learn a great deal from use of the categorization to examine trends in the size and composition of US ethnoracial groups, especially when these are accompanied by the careful scrutiny of other social and economic trends. Frey does this exceedingly well, starting with documentation that US ethnoracial groups are increasing in absolute and relative size. For example, in 2010 these categories in census data reveal that minorities (i.e., non-whites) comprised 36.3 percent of the population. Moreover, the Census Bureau projects that each of the “new” minorities (Asians, Hispanics, and multiracial persons) will double in size by 2050. Frey also emphasizes that 2011 was a “milestone” year demographically, in that for the first time fewer babies were born to whites in the country than to all women in the other race categories combined, foretelling a future in which whites will be a statistical minority. For those who might believe these minority groups, especially the large Latino and some Asian ones, will be likely to experience substantial discrimination and disadvantage, then this milestone would seem portentous in a negative way. Frey is concerned that many people and analysts hold such views. The purpose of Diversity Explosion, then, is to chart demographic trends that imply cause for less concern. The book compiles and presents evidence indicating that minority groups appear to be faring notably better now than in 1970 on various integration measures, thus buttressing the conclusion that “exploding” diversity is not harming the country. This is artfully accomplished not only by charting the degree to which the minority groups are getting larger, but also by demonstrating that most members of these groups have been gaining in average education and income and experiencing less residential segregation. This is informative, but it stops short of explicitly linking rising societal diversity per se to changes in opportunities and attitudes, leaving open the question of whether and how societal diversity might help or hinder minority success. Let us examine some of Frey's evidence that non-white minority groups show notably higher integration outcomes in 2010 than they did 40–50 years ago. First, the members of many of these groups have moved around the country considerably since 1970, with the result that they now tend to live in different places than before, often in locales with greater employment opportunities and less expensive costs of living, mostly because of cheaper housing. Non-white minorities have also improved their jobs and incomes. Because higher socioeconomic status makes people more likely to move, the improvements in socioeconomic status themselves contribute to greater likelihoods of moving, and vice versa. Blacks, Asians, and Latinos are thus now less likely to concentrate in northern industrial cities in “heartland” states (like Illinois and Michigan, in the case of blacks) or in gateway cities in “melting-pot” states (like California or New York, in the case of Asians and Hispanics). Moreover, such trends also contribute to suburbanization on the part of these groups (because so many have moved to growing Sun Belt locales with newer, more affordable suburbs). This mobility tends also to reduce their housing segregation from whites, sometimes even lowering segregation for those remaining in their cities of original location. In short, since 1970, when levels of residential segregation of these minority groups from whites was higher, trends in social and geographic mobility have diminished segregation levels, suggesting that the barriers to improvements in socioeconomic status within all of these minority groups are lower than they once were, and that these can be significantly overcome by geographic mobility. Further evidence in support of an improving climate for non-whites is evident in rising numbers of intermarriages (between spouses from different racial categories as defined above) and in growing numbers of offspring from such marriages, which increase the numbers of people with multiracial parentage. The degree to which people from such backgrounds see themselves in multiracial terms, of course, is a matter of self-perception and thus one that may vary substantially by racial category. For example, people in the South with one black and one white parent appear considerably less likely to define themselves as multiracial than is the case for people with other paired differences in racial background, suggesting that the social and temporal dynamics of black life in the United States remain more constraining than those for other groups (Lee and Bean 2010). Despite this, for the black population, to which Frey devotes special attention in two superb chapters on migration and segregation, the book documents changes since 1970 in indicators that imply moderate improvements in blacks’ well-being, leading Frey rightly to note that many blacks are better off now than they were some 40 years ago in numerous respects. Our interpretation of such trends can always be sharpened by comparisons. And here is where it is possible to reach beyond the approach and results of Frey's study. Because of their relatively rapid growth in recent decades, the main racial groups Frey assesses, other than blacks, are Latinos and Asians. A sizable proportion of the growth in these groups results from immigration, especially when one includes the children of the immigrants. This leads to complications. Mexican and Central American immigrants, who make up a large fraction of Latinos, are disproportionately poorly educated, while Asian immigrants are disproportionately highly educated. This contaminates comparisons between blacks and these other groups, especially when one includes immigrant Latinos with native-born Latinos, thus encouraging the conclusion that the Latino experience is similar to that of blacks. But a variety of recent research findings suggest that many blacks fare less well socioeconomically and are viewed more negatively than Asians or native Latinos, with the exception of Latino unauthorized immigrants (Hainmueller and Hopkins 2015; Lee and Bean 2010). A crucial question concerns not only the nature and magnitude of ethnoracial trends in America, but also the effects of immigration on American society more broadly. Because most of the growth in minority groups in the US results from immigration, what would also be useful is a direct assessment of the impact of immigration on society-level variables, like social cohesion and social solidarity. In short, what might be the effects of immigration on diversity and of diversity in turn on social cohesion and solidarity? Research and theory suggest these effects could be positive. Immigrants bring with them new resources, ideas, and ways of doing things that contribute greatly to social and economic life in America. Rather than emphasizing that newcomers are essentially people of color whose mobility is limited by discriminatory treatment—an orientation that supports anxiety narratives about immigration leading to weakened social cohesion and hardened social boundaries between social groups—we can note a contrasting point of view that emphasizes immigration's social richness and heterogeneity and the positive consequences these may generate. This approach is consistent with scholarship showing that diversity boosts people's awareness of alternative cultures and lifestyles, stimulates creativity, leads to the greater development of interpersonal and problem-solving skills, and fosters increases in innovation (Benkler 2006; Chua 2007; Grewal 2008; Herring 2009; Page 2007). Such consequences of diversity reinforce resilience narratives about the salutary and socially enriching effects stemming from the greater diversity accompanying immigration (Kasinitz et al. 2008). Considerable research has been conducted on how the diversity arising from immigration affects both social cohesion and the strength of ethnoracial boundaries between groups. Interest in effects on social cohesion, for example, grew in response to the argument by Robert D. Putnam that the ethnic heterogeneity resulting from immigration causes natives not only to be suspicious of immigrants, but also to interact less frequently with members of their own group, suggesting diminished social trust and cohesion in general (Putnam 2007). This widely noticed work appeared to support the idea that immigration exerts adverse effects on social cohesion. Since then researchers have conducted dozens of additional inquiries on the topic in the United States and Europe, concluding overwhelmingly that ethnoracial diversity does not negatively influence interethnic social cohesion (van der Meer and Tolsma 2014; Portes and Vickstrom 2011). Such salutary results sometimes emerge less strongly in the United States, often because US studies have failed to take into account the impact of blacks on social cohesion. Because white Americans perceive a greater threat from and exhibit more prejudice toward blacks than toward other ethnoracial groups, people living in areas with larger black groups appear less cohesive because prejudicial attitudes toward blacks also negatively influence many measures of cohesion (Lee and Bean 2010). And in the United States, ethnically diverse neighborhoods are usually working-class neighborhoods in transition (i.e., containing many families moving in and out), with respect to both class and ethnoracial composition (Tran, Brown, and Schneider 2012). As a result, many persons of the same and different ethnoracial groups in such neighborhoods have not been there long enough to develop close bonds with others. What about diversity's effects on factors that can weaken boundaries between members of different social groups and thus may indirectly reflect the potential for greater cohesion? For instance, is diversity diminishing ethnoracial color lines in the United States, including the black–white color line? Do ethnoracial heterogeneity and intermarriage contribute to boundary change? For several reasons, growing ethnoracial diversity may help increase tolerance both for and among the members of new immigrant groups and African Americans. First, as minority immigrant groups have grown relatively larger, the probabilities of contact between the members of such groups and majority natives have increased, thus promoting more familiarity with the members of these groups. As Gordon Allport (1954) noted in his contact hypothesis, greater interaction between the members of different groups fosters familiarity and increases affect and liking, especially under certain conditions, such as when such groups are not seen as threatening (e.g., Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). Second, the presence of a larger number of different groups tends to diminish the significance of any single group (Lee and Bean 2010). Third, the positive psychological and social dividends resulting from diversity, through increasing creativity, raising problem-solving capacities, and fostering social resiliencies, are likely to facilitate ties and relations across ethnoracial boundaries. Recent research on ethnoracial intermarriage and multiracial identification suggests diversity fosters boundary weakening. For example, Frey reports that 8.6 percent of all marriages were ethnoracially mixed in 2010, and others note that 15.1 percent of all new marriages were mixed, almost one in every seven unions (Pew Research Center 2013). Moreover, this latter figure was up from about one in eleven in 2000, a rise of more than half in one decade. Higher levels of intermarriage have also occurred in tandem with growing multiracial populations. For instance, 5.3 percent of all children aged 0–17 were identified as multi-racial in 2010, compared to only 1.1 percent of persons aged 55 or more (Bean, Lee, and Bachmeier 2013). For whites, this figure was 6.4 percent, for blacks 14.6 percent, and for Asians 27.9 percent (comparable figures for Latinos are impossible to derive because Latinos report various racial origins [Ruggles et al. 2010]). Most significant of all, research also shows that intermarriage and multiraciality are highest in those parts of the country that are the most diverse, and that this depends in part on diversity per se, rather than simply the presence of larger minority populations (Lee and Bean 2010). In sum, the huge post-1965 immigration that has brought to the US millions whose ethnoracial status is neither black nor white has boosted ethnoracial diversity, as Frey notes, but more so than one would expect just by dint of larger group sizes alone. More important, diversity appears to be shifting color lines away from the stark emphasis on a black–white divide. Recent rises in intermarriage and multiracial identification— which are more pronounced among Asians and Latinos than among blacks and are stronger than would be expected based solely on shifts in the relative sizes of ethnoracial minority groups—suggest a broad loosening of the boundaries between groups, thus setting the stage for possible increases in inter-group tolerance and social cohesion, but with such positive developments occurring to a lesser degree for blacks. Frey convincingly shows that US ethnoracial groups are faring better now than some forty years ago. The growth in these groups thus makes for a more ethnoracially diverse America. Because the integration of these groups with whites is also increasing, Frey argues that this development reduces fears that such diversity is detrimental to social cohesion. In this he is surely correct, although in part for reasons he does not emphasize. Viewing the groups in racial terms, especially in black–white terms, risks the reification of both whiteness and blackness. As Foley (2015) has cogently demonstrated, classifying many earlier immigrants to the United States as homogeneous white entrants has never been correct because it overlooks the remarkable heterogeneity among those who came to the country as settlers. It also does not consider that today's immigrants are arriving, like those before them, largely because their labor is needed. This results in part from below-replacement native fertility (Bean et al. 2012; Bean, Brown, and Bachmeier 2015), reflecting the beginnings of a third demographic transition (Coleman 2006; Bean and Brown 2015). Moreover, as native baby boomers age and retire, workforce voids are providing prospects for both immigrant and black employment and upward mobility (Alba 2009; Myers 2007). Thus, it is important to view the consequences of ethnoracial diversity not only in terms of race but also in terms of the immigration that accounts for much of diversity's dynamics. Not doing so not only fails to give justice to African Americans, it also reinforces a tendency to view the members of non-white groups as similar to blacks. But most of the former are immigrants whose experiences are different from those of African Americans. Although the situations of blacks in the United States may have improved somewhat compared to their circumstances in 1970, their progress since then clearly lags that of other ethnoracial groups. Thus, one may argue that the country needs a new narrative to guide the formulation of its policies regarding race, one that moves beyond lumping all people of color together and thus minimizing the exceptional disadvantages of blacks. We also need policies that recognize that the disadvantages of non-black Americans often derive at least as much from their low socioeconomic status as from their ethnoracial status. In short, new ameliorative programs, like revised affirmative action programs, could target both blacks and those of all ethnoracial statuses for assistance when needed. A clear exception is unauthorized immigrants, for whom sensible legalization policies are also required because their lack of legal status now leads to strong exclusion that prevents both their own and their children's integration until they are able to legalize (Bean, Brown, and Bachmeier 2015).