Pick Up a Newspaper, Guys

Because the Census doesn't tell you everything...

New Census Bureau figures released on Thursday show that the immigrant population in the United States is becoming younger, a shift likely to foster more tolerance for diversity and perhaps accelerate assimilation, demographers and immigration experts say.

The figures show that immigration trends are forming a unique generational divide: those immigrants over 40 are largely white, while those under 40 are increasingly Hispanic, Asian and from other minority groups.

...Mr. Frey [a demographer for the Brookings Institution] added: "We will become a more tolerant society as these young people move toward adulthood and a blurring occurs of the sharp racial distinctions of the previous decades."

...Mr. de la Garza, [a political scientist at Columbia University] who is 60, said that when he was young the idea of a Mexican-American riding the waves was ridiculous. "Now there are Chicano surfers," he said. "It is indicative of cultural incorporation. "

I don't want to be a naysayer, but I doubt Chicano surfers are much of a cultural indicator. Black baseball players, tennis players, golfers, television and music stars haven't made Americans significantly more tolerant of the African American community.

If anything the reverse might be true - as society becomes more heterogenuous and whites who find themselves disenfranchised by circumstance are likely to blame incoming immigrants for their woes, much as they did at the turn of the century when Chinese, Japanese, and Indian laborers came to work in the lumber mills and railroads. Those guys were pretty young back then, too.

Comments

[Joe]

"I don't want to be a naysayer" he says. Desi, you do excel at one thing, and one thing only, which is naysaying.