Top Quotes: “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” — Beverly Tatum

Introduction

“The 2014 school year marked the first time in US history that the majority of elementary schoolchildren were children of color.”

“The percentage of multirace babies has risen from 1% in 1970 to 10% in 2013.”

Residential Segregation

“Clearly our national diversity is growing rapidly, yet old patterns of segregation persist, most notably in schools and neighborhoods. More than 60 years after Brown v. Board, in every region of the country except the West, our public schools are more segregated today than they were in 1980, as measured by the percentage of all Black students who are attending schools that are ‘90–100% non-white,’ with the highest rates of school segregation in the Northeast. Though the South has made rapid progress toward school desegregation in the late 60s and 70s, typically in response to court orders and other federal pressure, the Northeast didnt’ budget much, and patterns of de facto segregation in the Northeast continue to rise slowly but steadily, such that today more than 50% of Black students in the Northeast attend schools that are classified as ‘90–100%’ non-White.’ Nationwide, nearly 75% of Black students today attend so-called majority-minority schools, and 38% attend schools with student bodies that are 10% or less White. Similarly, large numbers of Latinx students, approximately 80%, attend schools where students of color are in the majority, and more than 40% attend schools where the White population is less than 10% of the student body. Both Black and Latinx students are much more likely than White students to attend a school where 60% or more of their classmates are living in poverty, as measured by the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch programs.”

“A series of key Supreme Court decisions during the three decades between 1974 and 2007 dramatically reduced the number of implementation methods available to communities engaged in school desegregation by eliminating strategies such as cross-district busing, dismantling local court supervision of desegregation plans, and limiting use of race-based admissions to ensure diversity in magnet school programs. As these options for desegregation have been curtailed by court rulings, the number of intensely segregated schools with 0–10% White enrollment has more than tripled.”

“In a crucial historical moment that would pave the way for the rest of the country, the [Chicago Real Estate Board] put in place an ethics code provision that prohibited brokers from selling to buyers who threatened to disrupt the racial composition of the neighborhood. The move was so effective that the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) adopted an identical provision. New brokers would have to risk their careers to sell across racial lines — state commissions were authorized by state law to revoke the state licenses of those brokers who violated this provision.

NAREB not only adopted the ethics code provision but also copied the Chicago use of the racially restrictive covenant, a legal instrument that served to prevent individual White homeowners from selling or leasing their property to Black residents, and spread the practice nationwide. For nearly three decades, these practices were not only legal but undergirded by federal policy.

The policies of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) all converged to establish redlining as a national practice. ‘The most important factor encouraging white suburbanization and reinforcing the segregation of blacks was the FHA requirement for an ‘unbiased,’ professional appraisal of insured properties, which naturally included a rating of the neighborhood.’ Using a coding system originally created by the HOLC, Black neighborhoods received a score of four, the lowest rating, and were coded as red. Those areas were deemed at risk of becoming Black neighborhoods received a rating of three and were labeled ‘hazardous.’ As a matter of policy, the FHA loans went toward the purchase of homes in the top two neighborhood rating categories, ‘new and homogeneous’ and ‘expected to remain stable.’ In effect, the federal loans were issued to White families to buy homes in new suburban neighborhoods that were all White in and in older White neighborhoods that were expected to remain homogeneous. Private lenders took on the same redlining practices of the federal government, making it very difficult for Black families to obtain loans for property in the neighborhoods to which they were being confined. ‘The lack of loan capital flowing into minority areas made it impossible for owners to sell their homes, leading to steep declines in property values and a pattern of disrepair, deterioration, vacancy, and abandonment. The racially restrictive covenants that served to keep Black people from moving into White residential neighborhoods were officially endorsed by the FHA in the late 40s and maintained until 1950, even though the Supreme Court declared such covenants unconstitutional in 1948.

The legacy of these policies and practices lives on in the present as past housing options enhance or impede the accumulation of home equity and eventually the intergenerational transmission of wealth. And though such policies are now illegal at the federal, state, and local levels, evidence suggests that they haven’t been eliminated in practice. In 2006 the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) released the results of a multiyear, multicity investigation of real estate practices using paired teams of testers (White and Black, or White and Latinx) that were matched in terms of housing needs, financial qualifications, and employment history. 87% of the time the testers were steered to neighborhoods on the basis of race and/or national origin. In most cases, Whites were shown homes in primarily White neighborhoods, Blacks in primarily Black neighborhoods, and Latinx buyers in primarily Latinx neighborhoods.”

“By 2010, as the result of accelerating ‘Black flight,’ more Blacks lived in the suburbs than in the cities of the biggest metro regions.

Contemporary surveys of racial attitudes among Whites indicate that the larger the hypothetical Black population in an area, the more likely White respondents are to express discomfort about living in the same neighborhood. The behavioral result of such attitudes is that in some cities that still have large urban Black populations — places like NY, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee — progress toward residential integration has been quite limited. According to the 2010 census, roughly a third of all Black metropolitan residents live in extremely segregated neighborhoods.

A similar pattern is visible among Latinx families in the two largest Latinx communities — NY and LA — where nearly 20% are in hypersegregated neighborhoods. However, Latinx residential patterns do vary on factors such as country of origin, recency of immigration, and skin color. New Latinx immigrants are likely to live in highly segregated communities, and those who are darker-skinned (many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, for example) also tend to live in segregated neighborhoods, often in or adjacent to Black neighborhoods. Those who are lighter-skinned (many Cubans and South Americans, such as Argentines, for example) may self-identify racially as White and are more likely to live in areas with Whites.

Discussing the housing patterns of American Indians and Alaska Natives is difficult because of the group’s relatively small population and the fact that many still live on rural American Indian reservations and in Alaska Native villages. It’s estimated that 34% of the 4 million American Indians and Alaska Natives (1.5% of the total U.S. population) live outside metro areas. Of all groups of color, Asian Americans are the least segregated from Whites, though there’s variation in that pattern as well. Recent immigrants are more likely to be concentrated in ethnic enclaves. Not surprisingly, of all racial groups, Whites are the most isolated, the most likely to live in racially homogeneous communities and the least likely to come into contact with people racially different from themselves.”

Education

“In 1996 CA voters approved an initiative, Prop 209, that prohibited ‘preferential treatment’ based on ‘race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin’ in employment, education, and contracting programs, effectively ending all state-run affirmative action programs. The CA legislation inspired other states to place a ban on affirmative action in state-run programs. As of 2014, WA, FL, MI, NE, AZ, NH, and OK had done so.

In the case of CA, Prop 209, which took effect in 1998, had a devastating effect on the enrollment of Black and Latinx students at the two leading public universities in CA: UCLA and UC Berkeley. Black undergrad enrollment dropped at UCLA by more than 37%, from 5.5% of the freshman class to 3.5%. Almost two decades later, the proportion of Black freshman students enrolling at UCLA remains below the pre-Prop 209 levels. At UC Berkeley, Black undergrad enrollment has fluctuated between approximately 3–4% between 1998 and 2014, far below the pre-Prop 209 level, which was approximately 6.5%. Similarly Latinx undergrad enrollment also fell sharply in the wake of Prop 209 at both institutions. At UC Berkeley, Latinx enrollment dropped from 17% of the freshman class to 8% in the years between 1995 and 1998. Enrollment of American Indian students also plummeted. AS of 2014, American Indian undergrad enrollment at UCLA and UC Berkeley is still 45% lower than it was when Prop 209 went into effect. The decrease in students of color has led to a greater sense of isolation among those who do enroll.

A similar impact was seen in Michigan following the passage of its own version of Prop 209. Known as Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) became law in 2006. As in CA, the proposal banned all affirmative action programs that gave ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color in state contracting, employment, and higher education. Before Prop 2 took effect, underrepresented students of color made up 13% of U of M’s total enrollment. By 2014, the overall percentage had dropped to 11.5%. The figures are even worse for Blacks, with undergrad enrollment dropping more than a third, from 7% in 2006 to 4.5% in 2014. Ironically, this decrease occurred even as the total percentage of college-aged Blacks in Michigan increased from 16% to 19%.

The CA and MI flagship institutions have found that without taking race into consideration, it’s very difficult to achieve representative levels of diversity across the higher ed landscape, despite the demographic changes of the 21st century.”

“After decades of being denied mortgages on racial grounds, black Americans made a tempting market for bubble-crazed lenders, with the result that high income blacks were almost twice as likely as low income whites to receive high interest subprime loans. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, Latinos will end up losing $75–98 billion in home-value wealth from subprime loans, while blacks will lose $71–92 billion. United for a Fair Economy has called this family net worth catastrophe the ‘greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern U.S. history.’

Not only did many families of color lose their homes in the Great Recession, they also lost their jobs. Disparate unemployment rates continue, despite the national economic recovery. At this writing in Q3 2016, the White unemployment rate is 4%, but for Blacks it is 9% (4% for Asians and 6% for Latnixs). ‘The racial wealth gap between whites and people of color is the highest it’s been in 25 years; 2014 estimates by the Pew Research Center put the gap in net worth between Blacks and Whites at 1,300% and that between Whites and Hispanics at 1,000%. The economic disparities translate into educational disparities as well. College access is much more difficult when families have had little opportunity to accumulate savings and have no real estate assets against which to borrow.”

“The percentage of Black students whose families had nothing to contribute to their college education went from 42% in 2008 to 60% in 2012. For the Black elites that President Obama mentioned in his Howard commencement speech, the last 20 years may have represented an improvement in their economic circumstance, but for the vast majority of Black and Latinx families it has been a downward slide.

It’s worth noting that some White families have been sliding, too. The number of White families with ‘an expected family contribution of zero’ went from 19% in 2008 to 29% in 2012. The poverty rate among working-class Whites rose 3%, from 8% in 2000 to 11% in 2011, still less than half of the poverty rate of working-class communities of color (23% in 2011). Nonetheless, the gap between White and Black poverty is closing, due to the declining fortune of Whites in that sector of the economy. That fact is fueling both economic anxiety and anger among Whites.”

“When, during the Great Migration (1915–1970), more than six million black Americans escaped the Jim Crow South, thereby threatening the southern economy so dependent on their cheap labor, White southerners used both legal and illegal means to try to stop their exodus.”

Police Violence

“When the police arrived on the scene, they took Zimmerman to the police station for questioning but accepted Zimmerman’s account that he’d acted in self-defense and let him go. Though Trayvon Martin was just a short walk away from where his father was staying, the police made no effort to determine if he was from the neighborhood, tagging his body as ‘John Doe.’ It was not until his father filed a missing-person report with the police the next day that Trayvon’s parents learned what had happened to their son.”

“Though the circumstances of the shooting by White police officer Darren Wilson remain in dispute — were Brown’s hands up in surrender when Wilson shot the unarmed youth, as some witnesses reported, or was Brown lunging toward Wilson to attack, as the officer claimed? — what is indisputable is the inhumane treatment of Michael Brown’s body, left to lie uncovered in the street where was he was slain for four hours, lifelessly baking in the summer sun, his parents kept away at gunpoint and with police dogs. The disrespect continued. When residents spontaneously created a memorial of teddy bears and other mementos at the site of the shooting, a police officer with a canine unit allowed one of the dogs to urinate on it, and later a police cruiser drove by, crushing it and scattering the rose petals Michael Brown’s mother had arranged at the site. When she returned the next day, placing a dozen roses at the memorial, a police cruiser again came through and destroyed it. It was later that night the Ferguson protest began.”

“Under the cover of the nighttime protests, some vandals started looting a corner gas station, eventually setting it on fire. A riot was underway. Journalist Wesley Lowery notes that it wasn’t the death of another unarmed Black man that drew national attention; rather, it was the destruction of property that brought the national media, including reporters like him, to Ferguson.”

“A community of only 21,000 residents, Ferguson’s population had shifted dramatically in the last quarter of the 20th century. It was 99% White in 1970; by 1990 the population was 25% Black, and by 2000 it had become a majority (52%) Black suburb. By 2014, when the DOJ launched its investigation, the population was 67% Black, but the Ferguson Police Department was still almost entirely White, as was the city council. As a matter of policy, the FPD was instructed to raise revenue for the city by generating fines and fees, mostly for traffic violations, so many that fines and fees became the second largest source of town revenue. Most of that money was being collected from Black residents, who were much more likely than White residents to be given several citations at one time. According to the DOJ report, ‘It’s common for a single traffic stop or other encounter with FPD to give rise to fines in amounts that a person living in poverty is unable to immediately pay. This fact is attributable to FPD’s practice of issuing multiple citations — frequently 3+ — on a single stop. While 67% of the town’s population, Blacks represented 85% of the traffic stops and 92% of the arrests associated with traffic stops, whereas Whites were 29% of the population but only 15% of the stops. Once stopped, 50%+ of the Blacks received multiple citations while only 26% of the non-Black drivers did.”

“The overwhelming majority of force — almost 90% — is used against Black Americans. In every canine bite incident, the person bitten was Black.

Lest one think the differential pattern of enforcement is the result of different rates of criminal behavior, the DOJ report addresses that point directly. For example, in the two-year period from 10/2012 to 10/2014, only 5% of White drivers were searched after a traffic stop, while more than double that number (11%) of stopped Black drivers were searched. Yet FPD officers were more likely to find illegal substances when searching the vehicles of White drivers (30% of the time) than when searching Blacks (24% of the time).”

“In his first public statements, Sharpton’s rhetoric was critical of some of the protesters, urging them to contain their anger and using terms like gangster and thug to describe them. In Ferguson, Sharpton, Jackson, and other established civil rights leaders were rejected as part of a generation out of touch with the young people’s struggles. Dontey Carter, a young Ferguson activist, said of these older leaders, ‘I feel in my heart that they failed us. They’re the reason things are like this now. They don’t represent us. That’s why we’re here for a new movement. And we have some warriors out here.’”

“On April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, SC, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old veteran, initially pulled over for a missing taillight, tried to escape while the officer was busy checking his registration and license. The officer caught up with him, but after a brief struggle, Scott broke free and started running away again. That was when the officer pulled out his gun and shot the unarmed Scott several times in the back, and then placed his own stun gun next to the dying man’s body in an apparent attempt to make it look like Scott had threatened him with it. Indeed, he told his supervisors that he shot Scott because he feared for his life. Unbeknownst to him, there was a witness, Feidin Santana, who captured cell phone video of the fatal shooting and Slager’s planting of the weapon. When Santana realized that the version of the shooting being reported in the local news was contradicted by what he had recorded, he reached out to the attorney representing the Scott family and turned over the video. Millions of viewers were able to see what Mr. Santana saw — the execution of an unarmed man as he ran away. This time, in light of the video evidence, the officer was fired immediately and charged with murder, yet the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision, and the case ended in a mistrial.”

“Today, the face of the Black Lives Matter movement is largely queer and female. How has this come to be? Female leadership may actually have been an outcome of the deeply racist policing Black men have experienced in Ferguson. According to the Census Bureau, while there are 1,180 Black women 25–34 living in Ferguson, there are only 580 Black men in this age group. More than 40% of the Black men in both the 20–24 and 35–54 age groups in Ferguson are missing. It’s not just Ferguson. Across the U.S., 1.5 million Black men are ‘missing’ — snatched from society by imprisonment or premature death.”

Race on Campus

“To highlight the concerns of Black students, Jonathan Butler and ten other student activists formed Concerned Student 1950, named for the year when the first Black student enrolled. In October 2015, they decided to stage a protest at homecoming by blocking the car in which U of Missouri president Tim Wolfe was riding, determined to get the attention of the senior administration. During the parade, they blocked the path of the car, linking arms and speaking passionately about the issue of racial discrimination on campus, but Wolfe remained in his car and never acknowledged them. The students were flabbergasted by Wolfe’s refusal to speak to them. Eventually police dispersed the crowd. Though led by Black students, the protest attracted White students as well. Said one, ‘White silence is compliance…I feel like I can’t just sit by and watch. It’s not my fight, but I support it.’

On October 21, ten days after the homecoming incident, Concerned Student 1950 issued a statement of eight demands, including enforcement of mandatory campus-wide racial awareness training, increased hiring of Black faculty and staff, an increase in mental health support with counselors of color, and more staff for social justice centers on campus. Among the demands was a call for a formal apology from President Wolfe for his lack of responsiveness to the students and a call for his removal from office. Just a few days later, a swastika made from feces was found on a bathroom wall in a residence hall. The vandalism, recognized as an ‘act of hate,’ added to the sense of urgency for campus leadership to respond. On October 27, reps of Concerned Student 1950 met with Rolfe, but without resolution. On November 2, Jonathan Butler, one of the founders and a grad student at Mizzou, announced that he would go on a hunger strike until Wolfe was removed. That evening student activists set up an encampment on the campus quad in support of Butler’s hunger strike, announcing their intention to stay until the end of the semester, if necessary. More students and faculty began to rally around the protesters and their call for Wolfe’s removal. Mizzou sociology professor Scott Brooks said, ‘It’s been a long boil. Students felt like they weren’t being heard and the university wasn’t taking them seriously. And in a post-Ferguson world, increasingly the students felt the mantra of ‘all-deliberate speed.’

In an unprecedented turn of events, the Mizzou football team asked to meet with Butler to better understand why he was on his hunger strike. He shared with them his undergrad experiences with racial harassment going back to 2008, and his frustration that years later ‘nothing has changed.’ By the time the meeting ended, the football players were on board with the protest. Though only 60 of the 124 players were Black, the entire team took action as a collective. With the support of their coach, on November 8, they announced, ‘We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experiences.’ The next morning, in an emergency meeting of the U of Missouri Board of Curators, Wolfe resigned as president of the U of Missouri system. Later the same day, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin also resigned, and Jon Butler ended his hunger strike.”

Interracial Networks

“The PRRI researchers found that 75% of White have entirely White social networks, without any minority presence. This degree of social-network racial homogeneity is significantly higher than among Black Americans (65%) or Hispanic Americans (46%). The CEO of PRRI writes, ‘The chief obstacle to having an intelligent, or even intelligible, conversation across the racial divide is that on average white Americans…talk mostly to other white people.’”

Native Lives Matter

“‘When compared to their percentage of the U.S. population, Natives were more likely to be killed by police than any other group, including Blacks…analysis of CDC data from 1999 to 2014 shows that Native Americans are 3 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.’ Yet there’s very little news coverage when the victim is an Indian. In a study of articles about lethal police shootings between May 2014 and October 2015, in the top 10 U.S. newspapers, researchers found that while there were hundreds of articles about 413 Black Americans killed by police during that period, there was virtually no coverage of the 29 Native people killed during that same period.”

“Over the past 40 years, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), an independent government agency, has held numerous hearings on discrimination in border towns surrounding reservations…in South Dakota, the commission heard testimony about a police department that found reasons to fine Natives hundreds of dollars, then ‘allowed’ them to work off the debt on a ranch. USCRR Rocky Mountain director Malee Craft described the situation as ‘slave labor.’

Inspired by the BLM protests, a grassroots Native Lives Matter movement was started in late 2014 by Lakota People’s Law Project attorney Chase Iron Eyes.”

White Compliance

“Because racism is so ingrained in the fabric of American institutions, it’s easily self-perpetuating. All that’s required to maintain it is to go about business as usual.

I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of White supremacy and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. Some of the bystanders may feel the motion of the conveyor belt, see the active racists ahead of them, and choose to turn around, unwilling to go the same destination as the White supremacists. But unless they’re actively walking in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt — unless they’re actively antiracist — they’ll find themselves carried along with the others.”

“In the late 80s, a Money magazine article called ‘Race and Money’ chronicled the many ways the American economy was hindered by institutional racism. 30 years later, the analysis still rings true. Whether one looks at productivity lowered by racial tensions in the workplace, or real estate equity lost through housing discrimination, or the tax revenue lost in underemployed communities of color, or the high cost of warehousing human talent in prison, the economic costs of racism are real and measurable.”

Race and Young People

“Because of the risk inherent in unequal relationships, the subordinates often develop covert ways of resisting or undermining the power of the dominant group. Popular culture is full of folktales, jokes, and stories about how the subordinate — whether the woman, the peasant, or the sharecropper — ouwitted the ‘boss.’ In his now-classic essay ‘I Won’t Learn From You,’ Herbert Kohl identifies one form of resistance, ‘not-learning,’ demonstrated by targeted students who are too often seen by their dominant teachers as ‘others.’

Not-learning tends to take place when someone has to deal with unavoidable changes to their personal and family loyalties, integrity, and identity. In such situations, there are forced choices and no apparent middle ground. To agree to learn from a stranger who doesn’t respect your integrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is to not-learn and reject the stranger’s world.

The use of either strategy, attending very closely to the dominants or not attending at all, is costly to members of the targeted group. Not-learning may mean there are needed skills that aren’t acquired. Attending closely to the dominant group may leave little time or energy to attend to one’s self. Worse yet, the negative messages of the dominant group may be internalized, leading to self-doubt or self-hate.”

“One day, as we drove home from the day-care center, Jonathan said, ‘Eddie says my skin is brown because I drank too much chocolate milk. Is that true?’ Eddie was a White 3-year-old in his class who had observed a physical difference and was now searching for an explanation.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘your skin is brown because you have something in your skin called melanin. Melanin is very important because it helps protect your skin from the sun. Eddie has melanin in his sin, too. Remember when Eddie went to Florida on vacation and came back showing everybody his tan? It was the melanin in his skin that made it get darker. Everybody has melanin, you know. But some people have more than others. At your school, you’re the kid with the most!’

“How does one talk to a four-year-old about the legacy of cruelty and injustice?

I began at the beginning. I knew his preschool had discussed the colonial days when Europeans first came to these shores. I reminded him of this and said:

A long, long time ago, before there were grocery stores and roads and houses here, the Europeans came. And they wanted to build roads and houses and grocery stores here, but it was going to be a lot of work. They needed a lot of really good, strong, smart workers to cut down trees, and build roads, and work on farms, and they didn’t have enough. So they went to Africa to get the strongest, smartest workers they could find. Unfortunately they didn’t want to pay them. So they kidnapped them and brought them here as slaves. They made them work and didn’t pay them. And that was really unfair.

Even as I told this story, I was aware of three things 1) I didn’t want to frighten this 4-year-old, who might worry that these things would happen to him (another characteristic of 4-year-old thinking); 2) I wanted him to know that his African ancestors were not just passive victims but had found ways to resist their victimization; and 3) I didn’t want him to think that all White people were bad. It is possible to have White allies.

So I continued:

Now, this was a long, long time ago. You were never a slave. I was never a slave. Grandmommy and Granddaddy were never slaves.This was a really long time ago, and the Africans who were kidnapped did whatever they could to escape. But sometimes the Europeans had guns and the Africans didn’t, so it was hard to get away. But some even jumped off the boats into the ocean to try to escape. There were slave rebellions, and many of the Africans were able to escape to freedom after they got here, and worked to help other slaves get free. Now, even though some White people were kidnapping Africans and making them work without pay, other White people thought that this was very unfair, which it was. And those White people worked along with the Black people to bring an end to slavery. So now it’s against the law to have slaves.”

“When Jonathan was just learning to read on his own and had advanced to chapter books, I introduced him to the Boxcar Children series, which I’d loved as a child. Written in the 1940s, these books feature four White children, two boys and two girls, orphaned and homeless, who lived in an abandoned railway car until they were found by their wealthy grandfather. From then on, they traveled with Grandfather and solved mysteries wherever they went.

Reading these volumes again with Jonathan, I had a new perception of them: how sexist they seemed to be. The two girls seemed to spend most of their time on these adventures cooking and cleaning and setting up house while the boys fished, paddled the canoe, and made the important discoveries. After reading several pages of this together, I decided to say something about it to my then 7-year-old son. I asked if he knew what sexism was. He didn’t, so I explained that it was when girls were treated differently than boys just because they were girls. I said that the girls in this story were being treated differently than the boys, and I pointed out some examples and discussed the unfairness of it. Jonathan wanted to continue the story, and I agreed that we could finish it, despite my new perception. What pleased and surprised me as we continued to read was that Jonathan began to spot the gender bias himself: ‘Hey Mom,’ he interrupted me as I read on, ‘there’s that stuff again!’

Learning to spot ‘that stuff’ — whether it’s racist, or sexist, or classist — is an important skill for children to develop.”

“I didn’t point out every omission or distortion I noticed (and I’m sure that a lot got by me unnoticed), and sometimes my children didn’t agree with my observations. For example, when discussing with them my plans to talk about media stereotyping in this book, I offered the example of The Lion King. I was dismayed at the use of ethnically identifiable voices to characterize the hyenas, clearly the undesirables in the film. The Spanish-accented voice of Cheech Marin and the Black slang of Whoopi Goldberg clearly marked them racially. The little Lion King is warned never to go to the place where the hyenas live. When the evil lion (darker in shade than the good lions) takes over and the hyenas have access to power, it’s not long before they’ve ruined the kingdom. ‘There goes the neighborhood!’

My sons, then 10 and 14, countered that the distinguished Black actor James Earl Jones as the voice of the good lion offset the racial characteristics of the hyenas. I argued that to the target audience of young children, the voice of James Earl Jones wouldn’t be identified as a voice of color, while the voices of the hyenas surely would.”

“For children to feel good and confident about themselves, they need to be able to say, ‘That’s not fair,’ or ‘I don’t like that,’ if they’re the target of prejudice or discrimination. For children to develop empathy and respect for diversity, they need to be able to say, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing’ to a child who’s abusing another child. If we teach children to recognize injustice, then we must also teach them that people can create positive change by working together…Through activism activities children build the confidence and skills for becoming adults who assert, in the face of injustice, ‘I have the responsibility to deal with it, I know how to deal with it, I will deal with it.’

Racial Identity in Adolescence

“How does it happen that so many Black teens end up at the same cafeteria table? They don’t start out there. If you walk into racially mixed elementary schools, you will often see young children of diverse racial backgrounds playing with one another, sitting at the snack table together, crossing racial boundaries with an ease uncommon in adolescence. Moving from elementary school to middle school (often at sixth or seventh grade) means interacting with new children from different neighborhoods than before, and a certain degree of clustering by race might therefore be expected, presuming that children who are familiar with one another would form groups. But even in schools where the same children stay together from kindergarten through 8th grade, racial grouping begins by the 6th or 7th grade. What happens?

One thing that happens is puberty. As children enter adolescence, they begin to explore the question of identity, asking ‘Who am I? Who can I be?’ in ways they haven’t done before. For Black youth, asking ‘Who am I?’ usually includes thinking about ‘Who am I ethnically and/or racially? What does it mean to be Black?’”

“In the prepuberty stage, the personal and social significance of one’s REC-group membership hasn’t yet been realized, and REC identity isn’t yet under examination. Before puberty, David and other children like him could be described as being in a pre-awareness state relative to their REC identity. When the environmental cues change and the world begins to reflect their Blackness back to them more clearly, they begin to develop a new social understanding of their own REC-group membership and what that means for them and others. During adolescence their understanding evolves to include not just more about themselves but also more about their group, including an ‘understanding of a common fate or shared destiny based on ethnic or racial group membership and that these shared experiences differ from the experiences of individuals from other groups.’

Transition to this new understanding is typically precipitated by an event or series of events that force the young person to acknowledge the personal impact of racism. As the result of a new and heightened awareness of the significance of race, the individual begins to grapple with what it means to be a member of a group targeted by racism. Research suggests that this focused process of examination of one’s racial or ethnic identity may begin as early as middle school.”

“In a study of a school district in North Carolina, Roslyn Mickelson compared the placements of Black and White high school students who had similar scores on a national standardized achievement test they took in sixth grade. More than half of the White students who scored in the 90th-99th percentile on the test were enrolled in high school AP or IB English, while only 20% of the Black students who also scored in the 90th-99th percentile were enrolled in these more-rigorous courses. Meanwhile, 35% of White students whose test scores were below the 70th percentile were taking AP or IB English. Only 9% of Black students who scored below the 70th percentile had access to the more-advanced curriculum.

This disproportionate access to the most rigorous college prep curriculum is so common that in 2014 the US Department of Education issued a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter to school districts across the country [about it].”

“For many parents, puberty raises anxiety about interracial dating. In racially mixed communities, you often begin to see what I call the birthday party effect. Young children’s birthday parties in multiracial communities are often a reflection of the community’s diversity. The parties of elementary school children may be segregated by gender but not always by race. However, at puberty, when the parties become sleepovers or boy-girl events, they become less and less racially diverse.

Black girls, especially in predominantly White communities, may gradually become aware that something has changed.”

“What do these encounters have to do with the cafeteria? Do experiences with racism inevitably result in so-called self-segregation? While certainly a desire to protect oneself from further offense is understandable, it’s not the only factor at work. Imagine the young 8th-grade girl who experienced the teacher’s use of ‘you people’ and the dancing stereotype as a racial affront. Upset and struggling with adolescent embarrassment, she bumps into a White friend who can see that something is wrong. She explains. Her White friend responds, in an effort to make her feel better perhaps, and says, ‘Oh, Mr. Smith is such a nice guy. I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that. Don’t be so sensitive.’ Perhaps the White friend is right, but imagine your own response when you’re upset, perhaps with a spouse. Your partner asks what’s wrong and you explain why you’re offended. In response, your partner brushes off your complaint, attributing it to your being oversensitive. What happens to your emotional thermostat? It escalates. When feelings, rational or irrational, are invalidated, most people disengage. They not only choose to discontinue the conversation but are more likely to turn to someone who will understand their perspective.”

“In adolescence, as race becomes personally salient for Black youth, finding the answer to questions like, ‘What does it mean to be a young Black person? How should I act? What should I do?’ is particularly important. And although Black fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles may hold the answers by offering themselves as role models, they hold little appeal for most adolescents — the last thing many 14-year-olds want to do is grow up to be like their parents. In their view, it’s the peer group, the kids in the cafeteria, that holds the answers to these questions. They know how to be Black. They have absorbed the stereotypical images of Black youth in the popular culture and are reflecting those images in their self-presentation.”

“We need to understand that in racially mixed settings, racial group is a developmental process in response to an environmental stressor, racism. Joining with one’s peers for support in the face of stress is a positive coping strategy. What is problematic is that the young people are operating with a very limited definition of what it means to be Black, based largely on cultural stereotypes.

Unfortunately for Black teens, those cultural stereotypes do not usually include academic achievement. Despite that fact, the majority of Black students (more than 85%) express a desire to go on to college or other postsecondary education.”

“According to Pew, Black and Latinx parents are significantly more likely than White parents to say that it’s essential that their children earn a college degree. As has been the case historically, these parents of color see college education as the ticket to their children’s life chances, yet too often their children’s academic performance lags behind that of their White counterparts. Does the fear of being accused of ‘acting White’ by one’s peers play a role in the academic behavior of Black adolescents in the process of defining their REC-group identity?”

Black students in my studies rarely equated whiteness with academic ability and/or high achievement unless patterns of achievement by race (and usually social class) in their own school settings were stark…A burden of acting white…was most relevant to black students in school settings where only Whites (usually wealthy Whites) or disproportionately few Blacks had opportunities to participate in higher-level programs or courses…Students who hadn’t experienced such explicit linking of race and achievement — those who attended all-black schools or schools that had more racially balanced classrooms — rarely recalled ever being accused of acting white specifically because of their achievement or achievement-related behaviors.’”

“Stereotype type is a kind of performance anxiety that can impact academic performance because [stigmatized students] must contend with the threatening possibility that should their performance falter, it could substantiate the racial stereotype’s allegation of limited ability.’

Anyone can experience stereotype threat under the right circumstances. For example, researchers have shown that talented female math students perform less well on a ‘math ability’ measure when they’re told that their scores will be compared to those of men than they do when that info is not provided. White male golfers perform less well on a golf course when they’re told their performance is part of a measure of ‘natural athletic ability’ than they do when no such info is provided. Two decades of research has demonstrated that when an individual identifies with a group (e.g. race or gender) as part of their social identity and that group is stereotyped in negative ways, the person is at risk for lower performance relative to the stereotyped dimension of that identity.

In the case of Black students, the more they identify with their group and the more invested they are in doing well academically, the more vulnerable they can become to stereotype threat. They know that ‘intellectually inferior’ is a stereotype about their group, and they want to disprove it. That added pressure can inhibit performance, especially in high-stakes testing situations.”

“Black students taking the test under stereotype threat seemed to be trying too hard rather than not hard enough. They reread the questions, rechecked their answers, more than when they were not under stereotype threat. The threat made them inefficient on a test that is set up so that thinking long often means thinking wrong, especially on difficult items like the ones we used.

This result was particularly noted when students were asked to check a box indicating their racial group membership before taking the test. The act of checking the box brought racial-group membership (and resulting performance anxiety) to mind. When they were administered the same test without being asked to designate their race at the beginning, stereotype type wasn’t triggered and their performance on the test was significantly better — in fact, it equaled the performance of White peers taking the same exam.”

“The key to doing this seems to be found in clearly communicating both high standards and assurance of belief in the student’s capacity to reach those standards.”

“Research suggests that young people who hold a belief in fixed intelligence see academic setbacks as an indicator of limited ability. They’re highly invested in appearing smart and consequently avoid tasks on which their performance might suggest otherwise. Rather than exerting more effort to improve their performance, they’re likely to conclude ‘I’m not good at that subject’ and move on to something else. Students who view intelligence as malleable are more likely to see academic setbacks as a sign that more effort is needed and then exert that effort. They’re more likely to face challenges head-on rather than avoid them in an effort to preserve a fixed definition of oneself as ‘smart.’”

Race in College

“When I was in high school, I did not sit at the Black table in the cafeteria because there weren’t enough Black kids in my high school to fill one.”

“In college, I thrived socially and academically. Since I’d decided in high school to be a psychologist, I was a psych major, but I took a lot of African American studies courses — history, lit, religion, even Black child development. I studied Swahili in hopes of traveling to Tanzania, though I never went. I stopped straightening my hair and had a large Afro a la Angela Davis circa 1970. I happily sat at the Black table in the dining hall every day. I look back on my days at Wesleyan with great pleasure. I maintain many of the friendships I formed there, and I can’t remember the name of one White classmate. I don’t say that with pride or malice. It’s just a fact.

I was having an ‘immersion experience.’ I had my racial encounters in high school, so when I got to college I was ready to explore my Black identity, and I did so wholeheartedly. Typically this process of active exploration of REC identity is characterized by a strong desire to surround oneself with symbols of one’s racial-ethnic identity and actively seek out opportunities to learn about one’s own history and culture with the support of same-REC peers. While anger toward Whites is often characteristic of the adolescent phase, particularly in response to encounters with racism, during the immersion phase of active exploration, the developing Black person is likely to see White people as simply irrelevant. This is not to say that anger is totally absent, but the focus of attention is on self-discovery rather than on White people. If I’d spent a lot of time being angry with the White people I encountered, I’d remember them.”

“There’s considerable evidence that Black students at historically Black universities achieve higher academic performance, enjoy greater social involvement, and aspire to higher occupational goals than their peers do at predominantly White institutions. Spelman College, a historically Black college for women, sends more Black women on to earn PhDs in the sciences than any other undergrad institution.

In 1992, Walter Allen offered this explanation of the difference in student outcomes:

On predominantly White campuses, Black students emphasize feelings of alienation, sensed hostility, racial discrimination, and lack of integration. On historically Black campuses, Black students emphasize feelings of engagement, connection, acceptance, and extensive support and encouragement. Consistent with accumulated evidence on human development, these students, like most human beings, develop best in environments where they feel valued, protected, accepted, and socially connected. The supportive environments of historically Black colleges communicate to Black students that it’s safe to take the risks associated with intellectual growth and development. Such environments also have more people who provide Black students with positive feedback, support, and understanding, and who communicate that they care about the students’ welfare.”

Affirmative Action

“Researchers found that ‘when asked to estimate the current percentage of the U.S. population that’s composed of racial and ethnic minorities, Americans are considerably off the mark. The median response — 49% — indicates that the typical American thinks we’re nearly a majority-minority nation already; the actual percent of the nation that’s a minority is about 37%. Respondents were wrong about the future as well, estimating that the population of color in 2050 will be 62%, considerably more than the Census Bureau projection of 53%.”

“The term affirmative action was introduced into our language and legal system by Executive Order 11246, signed by President Johnson in 1965. This order, as amended by subsequent presidents, obligates all contractors who employ 50+ people and who conduct more than $50k of business with the federal government to ‘take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.’ As set forth by this order, contractors were to commit themselves to ‘apply every good faith effort’ to develop procedures that would result in equal employment opportunity for historically disadvantaged groups. The groups targeted for this ‘affirmative action’ were White women and men and women of color. Later legislation broadened the protected groups to include persons with disabilities and veterans.”

“Quotas, defined here as fixed numerical allocations, are illegal, except in those rare situations when a court has ordered them as temporary remedy for a well-documented, proven pattern of racially motivated discrimination.

Public-sector employers may use quotas or preferences when a sufficiently compelling government interest has been established — that is, to remedy discrimination by the government entity itself. Even in these cases, preferences are acceptable only if no reasonable demographically neutral alternative exists. And the preferences must be flexible, focused, limited in duration, and not overly burdensome to nonbeneficiaries. Federal government regulations explicitly prohibit private employers from utilizing quotas or preferences.

Goals, on the other hand, are essential. Goals aren’t a fixed allocation meant to limit (as quotas did in the past). Instead, goals provide a necessary target for which to aim. As any long-range planner knows, goals are necessary to chart one’s course of action and to evaluate one’s progress. Goals are a fundamental component of effective affirmative action programs.

In practice, federal contractors are expected to monitor their own records to make sure they’re employing qualified people from specified targeted classes in proportion to their availability in the workforce. If they find that there’s a significant pattern of underrepresentation, they’re expected to make a plan to address the discrepancy. Orgs that don’t have federal contracts aren’t required to have affirmative action programs, but over the years many companies have adopted them voluntarily.

Though much of what we’ve seen in the news about affirmative action is in reference to Supreme Court cases focused on admissions at public universities, in fact, most of the laws related to affirmative action are in reference to employment.”

“Educators estimate that no more than half of the four-year institutions are selective. The rest admit everyone who applies. Thus, issues concerning college admissions relate, at most, to about 6 million Americans. In contrast, about six times as many people are affected by affirmative action programs in employment.

Though Exec Order 11246 required affirmative action, it didn’t specify exactly what the action should look like. Given this lack of specificity, it’s not surprising that there’s a great variety in the way affirmative action programs have been developed and implemented throughout the country. These attempts can be categorized as either process-oriented or goal-oriented.

Process-oriented programs focus on creating a fair application process, assuming that a fair process will result in a fair outcome. If a job opening has been advertised widely, and anyone who’s interested has a chance to apply, and all applicants receive similar treatment, the process is presumed to be fair. The search committee can freely choose the best candidate knowing that no discrimination has taken place. Under such circumstances, the ‘best’ candidate will sometimes be a person of color. In theory, such would seem to be the case, and because process-oriented programs seem consistent with the American ideal of the meritocracy, most people support this approach. At the very least, it’s an improvement over the ‘old boy network’ that filled positions before outsiders even had a chance to apply.

Unfortunately, research suggests that bias can enter into the selection process at the very start of the search process.”

“In a study of hiring behavior, a sociologist sent paired testers to apply in person for jobs that required just a high school degree. White applicants were twice as likely to be called back for an interview as the matched Black applicants. Surprisingly, even White applicants who indicated that they had a criminal record received more callbacks (17%) than Black applicants without a criminal record (14%).

In a subsequent study in NYC, teams of White, Black, and Latinx testers applied for real entry-level jobs. The testers were articulate, clean-cut, college-educated young men 22–26, similar in height, physical attractiveness, verbal skill, and interactional style and demeanor. The Latinx testers spoke without an accent. The testers were trained to present themselves in similar ways to potential employers as high school grads with steady work experience in entry-level jobs. They applied for jobs in restaurants and retail, as warehouse workers, couriers, telemarketers, stockers, movers, customer service reps, and other similar jobs available to someone with a high school degree and little previous experience. In applications to 171 employers, the White testers received a positive response (interview or job offer) 31% of the time, the Latinx testers 25% of the time, and the Black testers 15% of the time. Stated differently, the Black applicant had to search twice as long as the equally qualified White applicant before receiving a callback or job offer.

In another version of the same experiment, the White testers presented themselves as ex-felons (having served 18 months for possessing cocaine with intent to sell) and were teamed up with Latinx and Black applicants with no criminal records. Whites with criminal records still had more callbacks or job offers (17%) than did Latinx testers (15%) and Black testers (13%) with no criminal records.Though the discriminatory outcomes were clear, ‘few interactions between our testers and employers revealed signs of racial animus or hostility toward minority applicants.’ In the absence of prejudiced remarks, would rejected Black applicants even be aware that discrimination was operating without being able to compare their results to those of their White and Latinx teammates? Maybe not. But as these studies demonstrate, getting to the point of an interview is a higher hurdle for Black applicants than White ones, and in the case of the last study, a higher hurdle for Latinx applicants as well.

Goal-oriented affirmative action can help address this problem. At each step of the process, the question is asked: is our pool of qualified candidates diverse, and if not, have we cast our net wide enough? In this approach, more of those resumes of Black candidates would likely have been at least considered for the next step in the evaluation process. In a goal-oriented process, once the qualified pool of applicants has been identified, those in the pool who move the org closer to its diversity hiring goals are likely to be favored. This doesn’t mean that underrepresented candidates would always be the ones selected (the consistently lower rates of White unemployment let us know that White people are still being hired), but some of the time candidates of color would prevail. The White candidates who aren’t selected are likely to feel disappointed and might even believe that they were better candidates than the ones selected, but such perceptions are by definition subjective.”

“Pointing to the findings of several impressive research studies, Dovidio and Gaertner argue that because so-called aversive racists see themselves as nonprejudiced and racially tolerant, they generally don’t behave in overtly racist ways. When the norms for appropriate, nondiscriminatory behavior are clear and unambiguous, they ‘do the right thing,’ because to behave otherwise would threaten the nonprejudiced self-image they hold. However, in situations when it’s not clear what the ‘right thing’ is, or if an action can be justified on the basis of some factor other than race, racial bias will reveal itself. In these ambiguous situations, an aversive racist can discriminate against Blacks and still preserve the racially tolerant self-image.”

“When they measured students’ overt expressions of prejudice using a self-reported prejudice scale, the 1999 students expressed less prejudice than then 1989 students, but the pro-White bias in their decision-making was virtually the same.”

“When applicants were strong in one area but not both, differential treatment emerged. Black candidates were more likely to be rejected based on the weak area (either weak grades or weak SATs), minimizing the strength in the other area, but White candidates were more likely to be accepted based on the area of strength, minimizing the weakness in the other area. In other words, the participants systematically changed how they weighed the criteria to justify their decisions on the basis of race. Unevenly qualified White candidates were given the benefit of the doubt in a way that Black candidates weren’t. Summarizing the results, they concluded, ‘Aversive racism — racism among people who are good and well-intentioned — can produce disparate outcomes.’”

“We now know that automatic White preference is pervasive in American society — almost 75% of those who take the Race IAT on the internet or in lab studies reveal automatic White preference. This is a surprisingly high figure…

Second, the automatic White preference expressed on the Race IAT is now established as signaling discriminatory behavior. It reliably and repeatedly predicts discriminatory behavior even among research participants who earnestly (and, we believe, honestly) espouse egalitarian beliefs.”

“Some might say, ‘Doesn’t such an outcome-based focus lead to instances of ‘reverse discrimination,’ when well-qualified majority-group candidates are rejected in favor of a less-qualified candidate from an underrepresented group simply because that candidate meets the diversity goal?’ Certainly that could happen, but only in a poorly administered program. When affirmative action programs are functioning appropriately, no one is ever hired who isn’t qualified for the job. Such an occurrence would undermine the program and would be patently unfair to the newly hired person, who’s in effect been set up to fail.

In a well-conceived and well-implemented affirmative action program, the first thing that should be done is to establish clear and meaningful selection criteria.”

“If one candidate meets the criteria but also has some additional education or experience, it may be tempting to say this candidate is the ‘best,’ but this one may not be the one who moves us toward our diversity goal. Because of the systematic advantages that members of the dominant group receive, it’s often the case that the person with the extra experience or educational attainment is a person from the majority group. If our eyes are on our org goal, we are not distracted by these unasked-for extras. If we need someone who toured Europe or had a special internship, it should already be part of our criteria. If it’s not part of the criteria, it shouldn’t be considered.

And if making our org a more inclusive environment is a goal, then perhaps that goal should be reflected in our criteria so that whoever is selected can support the org’s goals: criteria like the extent and favorability of one’s experience working in multicultural environments.”

Latinx Americans

“Though the largest community of color in size, the Latinx population is no longer the fastest-growing demographic segment in the U.S., a designation now held by Asian Americans. Since the onset of the Great Recession in late 2007, there has been both a drop-off in immigration from Latin America and a declining birth rate among Latinx women in the U.S., slowing the growth rate of the Latinx population. Still, Latinxs have accounted for 54% of the total US population growth thus far in the 21st century (2000–2014). Over the last two decades of the 20th century, the Latinx immigrant population jumped from 4 to 14 million; however, between 2000 and 2014, it was the increase in babies born to Latinx families in the U.S. that drove the population growth. In the first decade of the 21st century, there were 10 million Latinx births as compared to 7 million new immigrants. Consequently, as of 2014, two-thirds of all Latinxs living in the U.S. were born in the US and nearly half of those US-born were under age 18. With a median age of 28, Latinxs are the youngest major group in the US. (By comparison, the median age of Whites in 2014 was 43; for Blacks and Asians, the median age was 33 and 36, respectively.)

Approximately 67% of Latinxs are of Mexican ancestry, a population that includes US-born Mexican Americans, whose families may have been in the Southwest for many generations, as well as recent Mexican immigrants. 10% of Latinxs are Puerto Rican, 4% are Salvadoran, 4% are Cuban, 3% Dominican, and 2% Guatemalan. The remaining 10% are from other Central or South American countries. Each of these groups is a distinct population with a particular historical relationship to the US.”

“Education attainment and family income remain below the US average. Only 9% of Mexican Americans 25+ have earned at least a BA (compared to 13% of all Latinx adults and more than 30% of all US adults 25+).”

“Like the conquered Mexicans in the Southwest, Puerto Ricans didn’t choose to become US citizens, it was imposed upon them. Puerto Rico became an unincorporated territory of the U.S. in 1898, ceded by Spain at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Puerto Rico, which had struggled to become independent of Spain, did not welcome subjugation by the U.S. An active policy of Americanization of the island population was implemented, including attempts to replace Spanish with English as the language of instruction. The attempts to displace Spanish were vigorously resisted by Puerto Rican teachers and students alike. In 1915, resistance to the imposition of English resulted in a student strike at Central High School in San Juan, part of a rising wave of nationalism and calls for independence. Rather than let the Puerto Rican people vote on whether they wanted citizenship, the US Congress passed the Jones Act of 1917, imposing citizenship and the obligation to serve in the US military but denying Puerto Ricans the right to vote in national elections. In 1951, Puerto Ricans were allowed to vote on whether to remain a territory or to become a commonwealth. Though there were those who urged a third option, Puerto Rican independence, commonwealth status was the choice. Commonwealth status allowed Puerto Ricans greater control of their school systems, and Spanish was restored in the schools.

Economic conditions on the island have driven many Puerto Ricans to New York and other northeastern US cities. Many came in the 40s and 50s to work in the factories of the Northeast, but as industry left the region many Puerto Rican workers were displaced. Fluctuating employment conditions have contributed to a pattern of circular migration to and from Puerto Rico, which is made easier by US citizenship. However, since 2005, more Puerto Ricans live on the US mainland than on the island. By 2013, the number on the mainland had grown to 5 million, compared to 3.5 million on the island. Mainland Puerto Ricans are concentrated in the Northeast (51%), primarily in New York, and in the South (31%), mainly in Florida. A multiracial population descended from European colonizers, enslaved Africans, and the indigenous Taino Indians, a significant number of Puerto Ricans are dark-skinned. Consequently, on the mainland, they’ve experienced patterns of residential and school segregation similar to that of black Americans.

Salvadorans and Cubans are the next largest populations of Latin American origin living in the U.S. As of 2016, Salvadorans had surpassed Cubans in population, representing 3.8% of the population while Cubans are 3.7%. Of the two groups, Cubans have a longer history in the U.S. Although Cuban communities have existed in Florida and New York since the 1870s, nearly 60% of Cubans in the US are foreign-born, most of them having been in the country for 20+ years. Cuban immigration to the U.S. increased dramatically following the 1959 revolution led by Castro. The first wave of immigrants were upper-class, light-skinned Cubans who left in the very first days of the revolution. They were able to bring their personal fortunes with them and established businesses in the U.S. The second major group left after Castro had been in power for a few months and largely consisted of middle-class professionals and skilled workers. Though many were unable to bring possessions with them, they received support from the US government and charitable orgs.

Cuba’s close proximity to the US mainland and the tense political relationship between the two countries has led to unique immigration policies specifically for Cubans escaping its communist regime. In 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act was passed by the US Congress to provide an accelerated pathway to permanent residence for Cuban refugees. In 1980, another major group of Cuban refugees arrived as part of the Mariel boatlift. These Cubans had lived most of their lives under a socialist government and were more impoverished, less educated, and darker-skinned than earlier refugees. Another surge of immigrants arriving by boat occurred in 1994, prompting an agreement between the US and Cuba known as the ‘wet foot, dry foot policy,’ whereby those Cubans who were intercepted on water would be returned to Cuba but those who made it to the US shore would be allowed to remain and given permanent resident status after one year, putting them on a faster path to citizenship than most immigrants experience. As of 2013, 59% of Cubans living in the US were naturalized US citizens. In 2014, President Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, agreed to normalize relations between the two countries, opening the door for potential changes to the pattern of Cuban migration to the US. In fact, in 2017, just a few days before the end of his term, Obama announced an end to the wet foot, dry foot policy, stating, ‘Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the US illegally and don’t qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with US law and enforcement policies…By taking this step, we’re treating Cuban migrants the same as we treat migrants from other countries.’

When compared to other Latinx communities in the US, Cubans are more concentrated geographically — 77% live in Florida. They also have the highest education levels — approximately 25% of Cubans 25+ are college grads. 60% aged 5+ speak English fluently, but despite their longevity in the US, more Cubans speak Spanish at home: 79%, compared to 73% of Latinxs as a group. Perhaps because the early Cuban immigrants viewed themselves as people in exile who might return to Cuba when the government changed, they’ve worked to keep Spanish an integral part of their lives in the U.S.

In the wake of civil war and natural disasters, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans have fled El Salvador to come to the US. The first wave came in the 80s, resulting in fivefold increase in population — from 100k to 500k. In the two decades that followed, the number of Salvadoran immigrants continued to grow as families sought to reunite and to escape the aftermath of additional hurricanes and earthquakes. As of 2016, approximately 2 million Salvadorans were living in the US. More than half live in CA & TX, but they’re also concentrated in NY and the metro DC area. Nearly 2/3s of immigrants from El Salvador arrived in the US in 1990 or later. Only 29% of Salvadoran immigrants are US citizens. Almost half (48%) of Salvadorans age 5+ speak English proficiently, compared to 66% of Latinxs overall.”

“Venezuelans are the most likely to have a college degree (51%) while Guatemalans and Salvadorans are among the least likely (7%). Argentines have the highest annual median household income ($55k) while Hondurans have the lowest ($31k).”

“About 3/4 of Latinxs, no matter where they’re from, speak Spanish at home.”

“The bilingual education programs of the late 20th century have largely been eliminated. In 1998, CA voters approved Prop 227, replacing bilingual education with Structured English Immersion (SEI), an approach that involves separating English-language learners from their English-speaking classmates and teaching them not only the English language but some of their academic content in English, rather than using the foundation of the child’s first language to build understanding of academic content. In 2002, with the intro of the federal No Child Left Behind law, signed by President Bush, the Bilingual Education Act was effectively repealed. Regrettably, research indicates that the elimination of bilingual education programs has had a negative impact on student learning.

All good teachers know that learning builds on prior knowledge and experience. In the case of language-minority students, this means that their native language can be a strong foundation for future learning. If we think of language development as the concrete foundation of a building, it makes sense that it needs to be strong to sustain the stress of many tons of building materials that’ll be erected on top of it. This is analogous to what takes place when English-speaking students enter school: they use the language they know as a foundation for learning the content of the curriculum. Because they know the majority language, this is usually a seamless process. For English-language learners, however, not knowing English is a tremendous disadvantage, not because their native language is ineffectual for learning but because schools don’t generally view languages other than English as a resource for learning.”

“According to Pew, as of 2014 there were 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US, representing 3.5% of the total population, a number that’s been stable since 2009. At that time, Mexicans made up 52% of all unauthorized immigrants, 1/6 of the total Mexican American population was unauthorized.”

“Between July 2010 and September 2012, 200k noncitizens who were deported claimed to have at least one US-citizen child, representing an annual average of about 90k parental deportations.”

“It’s around age 16, when US-born peers start to drive, get part-time jobs, and fill out financial aid forms for college applications, that undocumented teens’ awareness of their dilemma becomes acute. All of these activities require a Social Security number, which they can’t get. When the realization hits, the emotional response is anger, frustration, confusion, and despair — a ‘period of paralyzing shock.’”

“Feeling scared and alone, some of the adolescents Gonzales studied lost hope for the future and dropped out of school. Others confided in a trusted adult and were encouraged to stay in school, and in some cases, they were able to get to and through college with the assistance of mentors who helped them find financial assistance. Sadly, whether they successfully completed high school and college or not, eventually they hit an occupational dead end due to their legal limbo. Gonzales found that by their mid-20s, both college-goers and school dropouts held similar occupations — the same low-wage jobs that their parents held. They had few legal choices even if they had earned advanced degrees. Coming to that realization was like ‘waking up to a nightmare.’”

“The history of who gets to be ‘legal’ in our country is complex. European immigrants who came to the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries faced few restrictions. And even when immigrants broke the rules, short statutes of limitation meant they were rarely deported. When laws changed in 1924, the federal government took steps to make European immigrants ‘legal’ and pave the way for their eventual assimilation. Deportations were suspended, and immigrants could pay a small fee to register when they arrived in the U.S. Mexican immigrants enjoyed no such opportunities. Instead, they faced increasing regulation through the Border Patrol, established in 1924.”

Native Americans

“By the time European settlers begun to arrive in large numbers, the indigenous population had already been reduced significantly. Military conflict, forced relocations, and other traumas added to the depopulation. By the early 20th century, census figures reported the American Indian population above the Rio Grande to be just 500k.

Now, as of 2015, the number of people who self-identify as American Indians or Alaska Natives is 7 million, including those who choose more than one racial group on the census form. They represent 567 different cultural communities federally recognized as sovereign entities with which the US has a government-to-government relationship.

Each of these cultural communities has its own language, customs, religion, economy, historical circumstances, and environment. They range from the very traditional, whose members speak their indigenous language at home, to the mostly acculturated, who speak English as their first language. Most Native people identify with their particular ancestry community first and as American Indians second.

The Native population grew slowly in the first half of the 20th century but has grown rapidly in the second half due to a high birth rate and reduced infant mortality. Another source of the population increase, however, has been the fact that since 1970 a significant number of people have changed their census identification to American Indian from some other racial category on the census forms.”

“Declining social discrimination, growing ethnic pride, a resurgence in Native activism, and the pursuit of sovereign rights may account for the growing numbers of racially mixed US citizens who are now choosing to identify themselves as American Indians.

“Over the last 40 years, significant numbers have moved from rural areas to major cities. In 1970, 45% of lived in a metro area; by 2010 that number had grown to 70%. The cities with the greatest number of indigenous people are NY, LA, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, and Anchorage. Only 22% of all American Indians live on reservations and trust lands, with the remaining living in nearby rural communities. According to 215 census data, the median income of single-race American Indian and Alaska Native households was $39k; the national median was $56k. More Native people live in poverty than any other racial group. Approximately 27% of Native families are at or below the official poverty level, compared to a national rate of 15%. Among single-race American Indians (25+), 14% had earned a BA or higher. Overall, Natives have the lowest educational attainment rates of all ethnic and racial groups and face some of the lowest high school grad rates nationwide.”

“Cultural disruptions occurred in the 1940s and 1950s when federal Indian policy shifted, this time with the goal of terminating the official relationship between the Indian nations and the US government. Many Indians were taken from their homes and relocated in urban areas, in a manner reminiscent of the earlier forced removal to reservations. The upheaval brought on by the relocation process was devastating. Alcoholism, suicide, and homicide increased to epidemic proportions and continue to be among the leading causes of death among American Indians.”

“My parents married soon after they came home from the boarding school. They came from different tribes. They left my father’s reservation encouraged by the US government and the boarding school system to find jobs in the ‘real world’…The promised jobs never materialized and, stuck between two worlds, the big city and the reservation, the Indian world and the White, my father drank and beat my mother. My mother worked at menial jobs to support us. My life was built on this foundation. I was never parented because my parents, raised in government boarding schools, had nothing to give me. They had lost their languages and retained only traces of their cultures. They had never been parented themselves. Boarding school nurturing was having their mouths washed out with soap for talking Indian and receiving beatings for failing to follow directions.

So this is my legacy and the legacy of many Indians, both reservation and urban…We are survivors of multigenerational loss and only through acknowledging our losses will we ever be able to heal.”

“In response to American Indian activism, the federal government condemned its own destructive policies of the past and increased support for Indian self-determination, passing legislation in the 80s and 90s designed to promote Indian-controlled schools, protect American Indian religious freedom, and preserve traditional Indian languages. During the civil rights era, tribal colleges were established to improve postsecondary educational opportunities for Native communities on or near reservations. As of 2017, there are 32 fully accredited Tribal Colleges and Universities in the US. Dine College, established in 1968 by the Navajo nation, was the first and is the largest of these tribally controlled institutions, awarding ‘associate degrees and certificates in areas important to the economic and social development of the Navajo Nation.’”

“Revenues have grown from $225 million in 1987 (generated from tribal bingo operations) to $10 billion in casino gaming revenue in 1998 and $27 billion in 2009. Native American casinos now represent 40% of the gaming industry in the US. While not all American Indian nations have chosen to participate or are located near population centers that would make gaming success possible, by 2009, approximately 237 tribes were operating 442 gaming facilities in the US. Two of the largest — operating by the Pequots and the Mohegans, both in CT — have been generating billions of dollars annually, dramatically improving the economic well-being of the two nations’ members. The gains for members of other tribal groups have been quite modest. American Indians on gaming reservations experience a 7% increase in per capita income and reductions in both family and child poverty rate as compared to those on non-gaming reservations.”

“The most highly visible [Native mascot] example has been the NFL team the Washington Redskins. The term redskin was widely used in the 19th century to describe the scalped head of a Native American for which state governments paid bounties. The ugliness of its history continues in the present, as it’s now used as a derogatory racial slur. There’s growing pressure to change the name, and there are media outlets that now refuse to use it, referring to the team as simply ‘the Washington football team.’ The NFL owner asserts that the name will ‘never change.’”

“Paul Ongtooguk, an Alaska Native educator, has made it his mission to develop curricula that assumes Alaska Natives are not just people with a past but also people with a future.

We have a suicide rate for Alaska Native males that’s about eight times the national average in ages 15–24. What does that say? Some people would look at that stat and say, well, that’s not about education — it’s not an education stat. But I look at that, and I look at the lives of the people who are trapped in it. We are talking about young people who are going through life so ill-prepared for the future, whose opportunities are so narrow, whose sense of the future is so bleak, and whose circumstances are so overwhelming that death is preferable to the life that lies before them. Isn’t that an educational issue? Something for us to consider.

Throughout his career, Ongtooguk has pushed to create curricular materials that would inspire Native students to see themselves in the future. He worked to recontruct the ‘Inupliaq Heritage Curriculum,’ which at the time he began consisted primarily of Native arts and crafts projects. While the traditional arts and crafts were worthy of study, the curriculum embodied a ‘museum’ perspective whereby the traditional life of Alaska Natives was studied as ‘an interesting curiosity commemorating the past,’ he explained, ‘The most disturbing picture of Inupiaq culture, then, was of its static nature — something that happened ‘back then’ rather than something that was happening now. Did this mean that the people living in the region now were like a cast of actors who had run out of lines?’

He set out to reconstruct the curriculum to reflect not only traditional life but also transitional life and the modern period. ‘If, as their teachers commonly implied, being Inupiaq only meant being traditional (or Ipani), then both assimilation and all of modern schooling were essentially cultural genocide in that they moved the students away from things traditional…[Students] needed to know both what was and what is crucial for survival and for leading productive lives within the Inupiaq community.’

The inclusion of contemporary life as part of this revised Inupiaq Studies curriculum was essential if Inupiaq students were to see themselves reflected in the schools and see the Inupiaq identity as having a future, not only a past. They needed a coherent picture of the continuity, conflict, and cultural transformation that had shaped and continued to shape their community. Ongtooguk’s reconstructed curriculum was eventually adopted by the NW Arctic School District and became a model for Yup’ik studies in several school districts in SW Alaska.”

Asian Americans

“The Asian population in the U.S. grew by 43%, from 10 to 15 million, between 2000 and 2010, while the US population overall grew 10%. In 2014, the estimated number of people of Asian descent was 20 million, approximately 6% of the total US population. At 4.5 million, the Chinese are the largest Asian group, followed by Indians (4 million), Filipinos (4 million), Vietnamese (2 million), Koreans (2 million), and Japanese (1.5 million). Together these top six groups account for 85% of the total Asian population. Asians in the US are concentrated on the West Coast (47%), with 20% in the NE, 21% in the South, and just 11% in the Midwest.

In 1960, most Asian Americans were descendants of early Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Changes in immigration policy in 1965 dramatically increased Asian immigration, significantly altering the demographic makeup of the Asian American community. By 2010, 59% of Asians in the US were foreign-born, compared to 13% of the total US population. Among Asian adults 25+, the percentage of foreign-born is even higher — 74%.”

“The Chinese were the first Asians to immigrate to the US in large numbers, arriving in CA in 1850 as part of the rush for gold. These first arrivals were single men who paid their own way to the gold fields, hoping to get rich and then return to China. As the gold rush waned, many Chinese didn’t have enough money to go home. Hired at wages 1/3 below what Whites would have been paid, Chinese men found employment as laborers working on the transcontinental railroad and on California farms. When the US economy took a sharp downturn in the mid-1870s, White labor union leaders blamed Chinese workers for the depressed wage levels and the Chinese became a frequent target of racial bigotry and violence. In 1871, the largest mass lynching in US history took place in LA when a mob of White men attacked and lynched more than 20 Chinese men.

The anti-Chinese sentiment culminated in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Immigration was severely restricted by the Chinese Exclusion Act and completely forbidden by the 1924 Immigration Act.”

“Laws prohibiting marriage between a White person and a ‘negro, mulatto, or Mongolian’ were passed. These laws, combined with immigration restrictions, special taxes directed against the Chinese, and discrimination in housing and employment, limited the growth of the Chinese population. Most of the men didn’t start families in the US, and many returned to China.

A second wave of Chinese immigration occurred after WWII. In an effort to promote an alliance with China against Japan, the US government repealed the Exclusion Act to allow a few thousand Chinese to enter the country. Chinese scientists and professionals and their families escaping communism were part of this second wave.

A third wave of Chinese immigration occurred after the 1965 Immigration Act (and its 1990 extension). Because racial quotas on immigration were eliminated by this legislation, Chinese immigration dramatically increased, with entire families immigrating at once. The Chinese population grew from 237,000 in 1960 to over 4 million in 2010.”

“In 1906 the SF Board of Education established a separate school for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children, and the CA Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited Japanese immigrants and other foreign-born residents from purchasing agricultural land because they were ineligible for citizenship. (The Naturalization Act, passed in 1790, only allowed Whites to become naturalized citizens, so while children born in the US automatically became citizens, until this law was repealed, their immigrant parents could never be eligible.) As with the Chinese, immigration of Japanese came to a halt with the Immigration Act of 1924.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 intensified anti-Japanese sentiment. In March 1942, Exec Order 9102 established the War Relocation Authority, making it possibly to remove 120k Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes without a trial or hearing and confine them to internment camps in places as far away as Idaho, Colorado, and Utah. One response to this internment experience was for Japanese American families to encourage their children to become as ‘American’ as possible in an effort to prevent further discrimination. For this reason, as well as their longevity in the US, Japanese Americans as a group are the most acculturated of the Asian American communities, and the only Asian ethnic group not currently growing in population size. Japanese have high rates of intermarriage — more than half of Japanese American newlyweds in 2020 married a non-Asian — and 35% of Japanese Americans identified themselves as multiracial in the 2010 census.

Like the Chinese, Koreans arrived in the US in distinct waves of immigration, beginning with 7,000 farmers who came to Hawaii to escape poverty and work on plantations there in the early 1900s, followed there by Korean ‘picture brides.’ Koreans were subject to the same antimiscegenation laws that affected the Chinese. Another small group of immigrants came to the US after WWII and the Korean War. This group included Korean adoptees and Korean women who were married to US soldiers. As with the Chinese, the 1965 Immigration Act dramatically increased Korean immigration of entire families, with 30k Koreans arriving annually between 1970 and 1990. Most Korean Americans currently living in the US were part of this post-1965 immigration.”

“Filipino Americans also experienced a pattern of male immigration to Hawaii, and then the mainland US, in the early 1900s. Because these men couldn’t establish families, there are few descendants from this wave of immigration. This pattern ended in 1930 when Congress set a Filipino immigration quota of 50 per year. As with Chinese and Koreans, tens of thousands of Filipinos have immigrated annually since 1965. As of the 2010 census, 69% of Filipinos were foreign-born. 47% of Filipino adults have a college degree, and the poverty rate is only 6%, the lowest of all Asian groups.”

“Among Vietnamese, another wave of immigration occurred after 1980 as the result of an agreement negotiated between Vietnam and the US. A subsequent wave of Vietnamese immigration in the 1990s was the result of the process of family unification, as new immigrants came to join family members that had already established a presence in the US. Vietnamese now represent 10% of the adult Asian American population, 84% of whom are foreign-born. Less well educated than other Asians, 26% of Vietnamese adults have college degrees and 15% live in poverty, compared to 12% of Asians overall.”

“Indians have also experienced a dramatic population growth in the US since 1965. The number of Indian Americans increased from 800,000 in 1990 to almost 4 million in 2014. The first wave of immigrants from India — about 6,000 — came to work as farmhands, arriving in the first decade of the 20th century. Initially, Indians were classified in court cases of 1910 and 1913 as ‘Caucasians’ and consequently were allowed to intermarry with US-born whites. Because previous Supreme Court rulings had established that being Caucasian was synonymous with being White, a group of Indians, on the basis of their Caucasian classification, pursued their right to become citizens but were denied because of their brown skin. In 1923, the case went to the Supreme Court — US vs. Bhagat Singh Thind. The judges ruled that while Indains were Caucasians (descended from the Caucasoid region of Eurasia), they couldn’t be considered White and consequently weren’t eligible for US citizenship. This ruling made explicit the concept of skin color as a bar to becoming a citizen. As the court ruling stated, ‘It may be true that the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences between them today,’ adding that ‘the intention of the Founding Fathers was to ‘confer the privilege of citizenship upon the class of persons they knew as white’ This racial barrier to citizenship wasn’t removed until 1952 when the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act revoked the 1790 Naturalization Act.

The real turning point in Asian immigration occurred in 1965 during the civil rights movement when US leaders decided to abandon previous racist desires to maintain a primarily all-White republic. The 1965 act provided for annual admission of 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western, with 20,000 immigrants per country allowed from the Eastern.

As we’ve seen, the legislative action of 1965 dramatically changed the flow of immigration from Asian countries. In the case of India, it allowed for an influx of well-educated, English-speaking adults to come to the US for skilled employment. As of 2010, 87% of Indians in the US were foreign-born, and 70% of all Indian adults age 25+ had earned at least a BA, making them more highly educated as a group than other Asians and more than the US population as a whole. Because of their high level of education, median family incomes are also higher — in 2010, the median annual income for all Indians was $88k, much higher than for all Asians ($66k) and all US households ($50k). While the majority of Indians in India are Hindus, as of 2012 only about half of Indian immigrants to the US are Hindus; 18% identified as Christians and 10% are Muslim.”

“A highly diverse group, Native Hawaiians make up 41% of the NHPI population, followed by Samoans (13%), Guamanians or Chamorros (10%), Tongans (5%), Fijians (3%), Marshallese (2%), and 26% are from other, much smaller Pacific Island origins. Relative to the Asian American population, NHPIs have lower levels of educational attainment (21% have a college degree) and a higher poverty rate (18%).

The linguistic, religious, and other cultural diversity of these disparate groups, some of whom have long histories of conflict with one another in Asia — gives validity to the question posed by Valerie Lee, director of the 1992 Asian American Renaissance Conference, ‘What do we have in common except for racism and rice?’”

“When the immigrants have above-average education as compared to their peers at home, they’re a ‘highly-selected group, but when they have above-average education relative to the host country peers as well, they can be described as ‘hyperselected.’ By these criteria, there’s no doubt that Chinese immigrants are a hyperselected group. While only 4% of adults in China have at least a BA, half of Chinese adult immigrants to the US do, and nearly half of the college-educated Chinese immigrants have earned a masters or doctoral degree as well, mostly from US universities. Not only are they 12 times more likely than Chiense at home to have a college degree, with a college grad rate of 50%, their education rate is far above the college-going rate among the general US population (28%). Because of their higher level of education, they’re able to earn above-average incomes in the US.

By contrast, Vietnamese immigrants are not hyperselected, because their educational attainment doesn’t exceed the general US population’s, but they are highly selected, because 23% have at least a BA, compared to only 5% of their peers in Vietnam. While not all Vietnamese are well educated — in fact, a significant portion didn’t finish high school — the positive perception of Asians as highly educated is cast over them as well.”

“Compare this to the situation of Mexican immigrants. As a group, they’re ‘hyposelected’ because on average their educational attainment is lower than their peers’ back in Mexico, and it’s also lower than the general population’s in the US. Though the overall education level of Mexicans in Mexico is relatively high, Americans tend to perceive all Mexicans as poorly educated because of the low selectivity of Mexican immigration. Conversely, Indians are another hyperselected group, creating the perception that Indians as a whole are highly educated, but most Indians in India don’t have formal schooling. in general, Asian immigrants are likely to be more economically successful upon arrival in the US than Mexican immigrants, for example, because they’re coming with more social capital in the form of their advanced education.”

“Zhou and Lee identify another factor important to the successful educational outcomes of Asian children: mind-set. ‘Asian immigrants have been raised in countries where the prevalent belief is that effort, rather than ability, is the most critical ingredient for achievement…By contrast, native-born American parents believe that their children’s outcomes are more heavily influenced by innate ability.’ If you have an ‘effort’ mind-set, you’re more likely to persist in the face of academic challenges. Families with an effort mind-set emphasize the value of practice and are more likely to invest in supplemental resources (like tutors) to achieve the desired outcomes.”

“Based on the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metro LA (IIMMLA) data, we find that nearly two-fifths of 1.5 and second generation Chinese don’t graduate from college, and half of Vietnaemse don’t obtain a BA.”

“Another dimension of the Zhou and Lee study using data form the IIMMLA survey was the comparison they were able to make between the outcomes of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants and their 1.5 and second-generation children and the outcomes of Mexicans and their 1.5 and second-generation children. Perhaps not surprisingly, they found that the Chinese children of immigrants exhibited the highest levels of education — as with native-born families, the strongest predictor of a child’s level of education is the parent’s level of education. But they found that Mexican children of immigrants had made the greatest educational advances relative to their parents. Though more than 55% of Mexican immigrant parents didn’t graduate from high school, this figure dropped to 14% within one generation. In essence, the 1.5 and second generation nearly doubled the high school graduation rates of their parents. Moreover the college grad rate of 1.5 and second-generation Mexicans (18%) is far lower than the rate for the Chinese (63%), but it’s more than double that of their Mexican immigrant fathers (7%) and triple that of their immigrant mothers (3%). Thus, when we measure attainment intergenerationally rather than cross-sectionally, the children of Mexican immigrants exhibit the greatest education gains of the three second-generation groups. In this respect, the children of Mexican immigrants are successfully assimilating and doing so rapidly.”

“There are some Asian subgroups that have much higher [high school] dropout rates: Bhutanese (37%), Burmese (21%), Nepalese (11%), and Cambodian (6%). In general, the high school dropout rate among Southeast Asians (5%) is more than double that of the total Asian rate. Among 18–24-year-olds, college-going rates also vary across Asian ethnic groups, ranging from 20% for Bhutanese young adults to 84% for other Southeast Asian (e.g. Indonesian and Malaysian) young adults. In 2013, the total college enrollment rate for Asian 18–24-year-olds was 67%.”

Middle Eastern Americans

“The first wave of MENA immigrants came to the US between 1890 and 1940 from regions now known as Syria and Lebanon. 90% were Christian, with limited education, seeking economic opportunity. These early immigrants seem to have assimilated in their new country with relative ease, recognized by others as White by their physical appearance.

The second wave of MENA immigrants began after WWII, following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and revolutions in Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s. Dominated by Palestinians and Muslims with an ‘Arab identity’ from Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, this group consisted of highly educated elites. Following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the third wave of immigrants came to the US seeking family reunification, education, and employment opportunities and an escape from the war and violence in the MENA region. Many of this cohort of immigrants are Muslim. The growth of the MENA immigrant population has been steady, going from 223,000 in 1980 to over 1 million in 2013. Approximately 70% of the MENA population is from the Middle East and 30% from North Africa, and it’s concentrated in CA, MI, and NY. It’s important to note that while the MENA population is only about 1 million people (not all of whom are Muslim), the US Muslim population is approximately 3 million, the majority of whom are US-born. Only a quarter of American Muslims are of Arab descent. Approximately 1/3 of Muslim community is Black, 1/3 is of South Asian descent, and the rest are from all over the world, including a growing Latinx Muslim population.”

Multiracial Americans

“The multiracial population has grown substantially since 2000, the year that the Census Bureau began allowing people to designate more than one racial category on the census form. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of biracial Americans describing themselves as Black and White more than doubled, and the number describing themselves as White and Asian increased by 87%. The percentage of multiracial babies born in the US has grown from 1% in 1970 to 10% in 2013. In 2013, the US Census Bureau found that 9 million Americans chose 2+ racial categories to describe their race.”

“Though it’s estimated that 75–90% of Black Americans have White ancestors and almost 25% have Native American ancestry, the widespread use of the one-drop rule meant that people with known Black ancestry, regardless of appearance, were classified by society and self-classified as Black. During that time period, the choice of a biracial or multiracial identity wasn’t a viable option.”

“According to Davis, the one-drop rule applies only to Blacks in the US, and to no other racial group in any other nation in the world.

In 1983, the one-drop rule was challenged in the Louisiana courts by Susie Phipps, a woman who’d been denied a passport application because she’d given her race as White on the passport app although her birth certificate designated her race as ‘colored.’ The designation had been made by a midwife, presumably based on her knowledge of the family’s status in the community; however, the info came as a shock to Phipps, who’d always considered herself White. She asked the Louisiana courts to change the classification on her deceased parents’ birth certificates to White so that she and her siblings could be legally designated as White. They all appeared to be White, and some were blue-eyed blonds. At the time, Louisiana law indicated that anyone whose ancestry was more than 1/32 Black was categorized as Black. In this case, the lawyers for the state claimed to have proof that Phipps was 3/32 Black, which was more than enough African ancestry to justify her parents’ classification as ‘colored.’ Consequently, she and her siblings were legally Black. The case was decided in May 1983, and in June 1983 the state legislature gave parents the right to designate the race of newborns themselves rather than relying on the doctor or widwife’s assessment. In the case of previous misclassification, parents were given the right to change their children’s racial designation to White if they could prove the children’s Whiteness by a ‘preponderance’ of evidence. But the 1983 statute didn’t abolish the one-drop rule. In fact, when Phipps appealed her case, the state’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision, concluding that the preponderance of the evidence was that her parents were indeed ‘colored.’ In 1983, when the case was appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court and then to the US Supreme Court, both courts refused to review the decision, in effect leaving the one-drop rule untouched.”

“Though the number of interracial marriages across all groups has grown significantly since 1967, up from less than 1% of all marriages in 1970 to 6% in 2013, Black-White marriages are among the least common. Although they’ve increased from 167k in 1980 to 558k in 2010, Black-White unions still represent less than 1% of all married couples.”

“Her son had observed that he and his Black father both had penises, but his White mother did not. Attributing the difference to race rather than gender, he asked, ‘Why do White people have vaginas?’”

“In 2013 more than 40% of adoptions in the US were transracial in nature, up from 28% in 2004. In considering the identity development of children of color adopted by White parents, issues similar to those experienced by nonadopted biracial children emerge relative to the question, ‘Where do I fit racially?’ However, some issues are unique to children adopted into White families. In particular, the absence of an adult of color in the family to serve as a racial role model may make adolescent identity development more difficult. In addition, the identity process is often complicated by the adolescent’s development journey. ‘In college he began what he calls a ‘descent into blackness and out of whiteness.’ He describes it as a journey, giving up the privileges he claimed as a child of White parents and learning to accept his identity independent of them. He added Sojourner to his name.’

Adopted in 1972, he gives his parents credit for doing the best they could to prepare him for his life as a Black man. They were among the first in his community adopt transracially; in that sense they were pioneers. He says today’s adoptive parents can and should do better. ‘I don’t have a checklist, ‘he says, ‘But if I did, it would sound something like this: if you don’t have any close friends or people who look like your kid before you adopt a kid, then why are you adopting that kid? Your child should not be your first black friend.’”

Conclusion

“The Atlanta Friendship Initiative (AFI) was started in 2016 by two business leaders, white Bill Nordmark and black John Grant. It was Bill’s idea. He was at a Rotary Club meeting when he heard a philanthropist talking about racial issues that still plague the city. Troubled, Bill decided to do something. He reached out to John, with whom he was only casually acquainted, and asked if they could take their acquaintanceship to the next level and become friends as the first step toward his vision of the Atlanta Friendship Initiative. Bill explained the concept — to pair up two people from different racial backgrounds and have them become friends. The pairs would agree to get together at least once a quarter, and once a year they’d bring their families together in fellowship.”

“Can new cross-racial friendships change the racial climate of a city or the structural racism that’s baked into its historical foundation and the map of its neighborhoods? There’s no guarantee that it will, but it could. Institutional policies and practices are created and carried out by individuals, and when those individuals have homogeneous social networks, they too often lack empathy for those whose lives are outside their own frame of reference. I believe opening social networks and closing the empathy gap is a step toward bringing about positive change.”

“A community initiative that has 20_ years of history behind it can be found in South Orange / Maplewood, NJ. Two neighboring towns that 20 years ago were faced with the specter of ‘white flight,’ turning what was an integrated suburb into a racially segregated one, formed the Community Coalition on Race with this mission statement: ‘To achieve and sustain the benefits of a thriving, racially integrated and truly inclusive community that serves as a model for the nation.’ Collectively, they were successful in curbing the ‘white flight’ phenomenon and have maintained a very diverse community. Their challenge now is to keep it affordable for all who live there, as they’re attracting more high-income White New Yorkers who’re drawn to the suburban diversity they offer, and housing prices are now escalating.

“The idea for the Welcome Table can be traced back to Philadelphia, MS, in 2004, when the 40th anniversary of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 was approaching. In June 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered — one Black Mississippian and two White students from the North. Though a local Klan leader bragged about ordering the killings, no one was ever charged with the crime. With that historical backdrop, the community was in disagreement about how to commemorate the town’s role in the struggle for civil rights. Two community leaders, a Black NAACP President and a White newspaper editor, joined together and reached out to the Winter Institute for help. The executive director responded by helping to facilitate community storytelling sessions where participants were able to build trust among each other and to create an oral history project for the town. Importantly, they decided to work together to lobby local officials to prosecute the Klan leader, who after 40 years was eventually brought to justice. The institute did similar reconciliation work in McComb, MS, known as the ‘bombing capital of the world’ because of the anti-civil rights violence perpetuated there during that era.

The lessons learned from those experiences led to the Welcome Table Framework in use today. The three phrases include: 1) a period of trust building across racial lines, accomplished through a series of monthly meetings and a weekend retreat built around a curriculum of structured storytelling activities; 2) a period of planning and implementing a community-building group project, such as an oral history, after-school mentoring program, or community garden, while monthly workshops continue; and 3) developing an equity action plan, specifically focused on addressing a structural issue (a policy or practice) that is perpetuating inequality in the community. Participants say that the face-to-face nature of the interaction is a welcome antidote to the disconnection many people feel in our digitally driven society, and connection offers hope for action. ‘When you have a group that has some commitment to each other, the group becomes aware of so much in our culture that needs to be worked on. It’s like, ‘I was blind to all of this and now I see it.’ It compels people to action.’ The executive director believes that ‘Mississippi is going to lead the nation in dealing with race. We want to be a part of providing the tools for people to be able to do that.’”

“In 2016, the foundation launched its Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Enterprise, a ‘multi-year national and community-based effort to engage communities, orgs, and individuals from multiple sectors across the US in racial healing and addressing present-day inequities linked to historic and contemporary beliefs in a hierarchy of human value.’ Partnering with 100+ national and local orgs, diverse and broad in scope, ranging from the American Liberty Association and the Boys & Girls Clubs to the Council of State Governments and the Sundance Institute, the THRT will bring together ‘the intellectual power and resources of foundations, communities, governments, and corporations in efforts to dismantle racism.’

At the core of their mission is the recognition that it will be necessary to rid ourselves of the belief in a racial hierarchy of human value and replace it with a belief in a shared common humanity, a task much easier said than done.

Jettisoning belief in a hierarchy of human value — a belief that’s been well-established in America for 4 centuries — will require a multipronged, strategic effort to heal the racial wounds of the past and to transform our socioeconomic institutions. These two goals are intimately connected, because belief in racial hierarchy translates into values and principles that influence public, personal, and corporate practices and thereby perpetuate biases and inequities based on race and ethnicity.

The THRT effort is based on lessons learned from the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that have been effective in resolving deeply rooted conflicts around the world, but the US model emphasizes transformation rather than reconciliation, because the root cause of racial hierarchy is not the result of conflict between groups; rather, it’s built into the foundational governmental structures of the nation. It’s always been there, and it must be rooted out for lasting progress to take place. The VP delineates 7 guiding principles that have been developed to undergrid this work:

1. There must be an accurate recounting of history, both local and national. Truth-telling requires that there be an atmosphere of forgiveness and people of all racial and ancestral backgrounds have the opportunity ‘to tell their stories without fear of recrimination, but with a sense that justice will be served.
2. A clear and compelling vision, accompanied by a set of ambitious but achievable goals, both long and short term, must be developed, and progress will be regularly assessed.
3. The process must be expansive and inclusive in all respects, and there must be a deep and underlying commitment to a) understanding the different cultures, experiences, and perspectives that coexist in a community; b) recognizing and acknowledging the interdependence of the variety of approaches to seeking enduring racial equity; c) reaching out to nontraditional allies in order to broaden support for meaningful change; and d) giving every participant an opportunity to tell their story in a respectful and supportive setting.
4. The process of healing requires a building of trust and must be viewed as a ‘win-win’ process. Ultimately we all share a common fate. Substantial and enduring progress toward racial equity and healing benefits all of us.
5. There must be a commitment to some form of reparative or restorative justice and to policies that can effectively foster systemic change.
6. A thoughtful and comprehensive communications strategy must be designed to keep the entire community informed, even those who are neither involved in, nor supportive of, the process.
7. There must be a broadly understood way of dealing with the tensions that will inevitably arise. If orgs can anticipate ‘teachable moments,’ it’s possible to keep moving forward and not become derailed by the tensions of the moment.”

“The Michigan Community Scholars Progarm (MCSP) is a model undergrad residential learning community at U of M. Established in 1999, it has an inspiring mission statement:

The MCSP is a residential learning community emphasizing deep learning, engaged community, meaningful civic engagement/community service learning, and intercultural understanding and dialogue. Students, faculty, community partners and staff think critically about issues of community, seek to model a just, diverse, and democratic community, and wish to make a difference throughout their lives as participants and leaders involved in local, national, and global communities.

The community is made up of 120 first-years and their RAs, as well as 10–15 faculty members linked to the program. An intentionally diverse community, MSCP interrupts the experience of segregated residential communities from which the students typically come. MSCP uniquely brings together service-learning, diversity, and dialogue in a powerful way. David Schoem explains, ‘Groups of students are brought together from their first day on campus to build bonds and begin the process of engaging one another in substantive issues.’ Unlike the typical residence hall experience where students from different backgrounds might just pass each other in the hall, at the core of the MCSP experience is the opportunity, indeed the requirement, for intergroup dialogue. The students take a seminar together and participate in various structured dialogues in the residence hall.

In a study of the impact of MSCP on students’ growth relative to social justice outcomes, Rebecca Christensen found that 19 out of 22 participants exhibited greater cognitive, affective, and behavioral empathy toward others and were actively engaged in educating others and speaking out against injustice. They had heightened motivation to ‘create small-scale change in their everyday lives’ and to ‘incorporate social justice into their future careers.’ Students identified the dialogues both in and outside of the classroom as the most influential activities.

Though only a small number of students will participate, it serves as an excellent model that could be expanded at Michigan and certainly replicated on other campuses. Alternatively, Michigan students have the opportunity to register for one of the dialogue courses offered by the Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR).

The first program of its kind in the nation, the Program on Intergroup Relations is a social-justice education program founded in 1988. Unique in its partnership between Student Life and the College of Literature, Science, and the ARts, IGR blends theory and experiential learning to facilitate students’ learning about social group identity, social inequality, and intergroup relations. It’s intentional in its effort to prepare students to live and work in a diverse world and educate them in making choices that advance equity, justice, and peace. An intergroup dialogue is a face-to-face encounter that seeks to foster meaningful engagement between members of 2+ social identity groups that have a history of conflict. Each identity group is represented in the dialogue by a balanced number of student participants, usually 5–7 from each group. We also offer intragroup dialogues.

The course structure emphasizes both process and content, using a 4-stage model that provides a developmental sequence for the dialogue: ‘The stages are: creating a shared meaning of dialogue; identity, social relations, and conflict; issues of social justice; and alliances and empowerment.”

“Does dialogue lead to social action? The research evidence suggests yes! Both White students and students of color demonstrate attitudinal and behavioral changes, including increased self-awareness about issues of power and privilege, greater awareness of the institutionalization of race and racism in the US, better cross-racial interaction, less fear of race-related conflict, and greater participation in social-change actions during and after college.”