The Accelerating Change of American Diversity

School Administrator, May, 1999 by Carlos Cortes

The New Multiculturalism packs a 1-2-3 punch for public schools

I guess Mom and Dad were ahead of their time. When a Mexican Catholic immigrant boy from Guadalajara and an Austro-Russian Jewish girl from Kansas City met, married and had a son named Carlos more than half a century ago, they had to deal with opposition from both of their families. And I had to deal with the ramifications of coming from such a background.

At that time my parents were relative oddities, and so was I, the offspring of a very mixed marriage. My oddball status was hypertrophied in school. In contemporary psycho-jargon, I had nobody ethnically quite like me with whom I could identify--no other students, no teachers, no faces or stories in textbooks.

But if I were a student today, I would have plenty of company. History has caught up with my family. At one point in the not-so-distant past, 36 states had anti-miscegenation laws banning specified types of intermarriage. But since 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the remaining such laws in the Loving v. Virginia decision, the nation has experienced an intermarriage boom.

Nearly one-third of U.S.-born Latinos now intermarry. So do more than 10 percent of blacks. In some Asian American groups (for example, Japanese Americans), more people out-marry than in-marry. From these marriages, obviously, come children, who ultimately take their places in school.

Children of intermarriage form one prominent dimension of what I call the New Multiculturalism, the accelerating change in the ecology of American diversity. I will address three aspects of that change--intermarriage, "tipping" and transnational cultures--and their educational ramifications.

Demographic Revolution

With plummeting European birthrates, 93 Out of every 100 children now are being born in Asia, Africa and Latin America. That statistic reflects a marked change from the beginning of the 20th century when one-third of the world's population was born in Europe. Today European descendants have fallen to one-tenth of the globe's population. Such population shifts provide the launching pad for significant changes in the patterns of U.S. immigration.

During the first decade of the 20th century, 97 percent of immigrants came from Europe. Now 85 percent are coming from Asia and Latin America. While many factors have contributed to this shift, one has been the drying up of the white European pool.

Add to this changes in American fertility patterns. Birthrates of Anglos (non-Hispanic white Americans) have dipped to 1.6 children for every two people, well below the 2.1 replacement level. Despite birthrate declines, all other racial/ethnic groups remain above that level.

What are the results of this demographic one-two punch? Where the United States was 10 percent "minority" in 1960, it now has become nearly 30 percent "people of color" (an unwieldly label for Americans who are not Anglo). Projections indicate that, somewhere around the middle of the 21st century, descendants of people of color will become the majority of Americans. I say descendants, because we do not know how future Americans will identify themselves racially and ethnically, particularly in light of the growing number of children of intermarriage. In schools, that crossover point may occur within the next 20 years!

Tipping the Balance

These demographic changes are ethnically "tipping" the balance between racial and ethnic groups in schools and communities. By the end of 1998, Anglos had become a numerical minority in 243 U.S. counties, with 42 making that transition within the past five years. This darkening of America has led to three evolving patterns of schools and locales in which Anglos are not the numerical majority.

First, in myriad schools and communities, another group has become the majority (in some cases, totality), with Anglos the minority, if present at all. Second are bicultural schools and communities in which Anglos comprise neither of the two ethnic groups. Finally, there are truly multicultural schools and communities in which no single group forms a numerical majority.

For example, at the end of 1997, the city of Carson, Calif., had a population divided into four nearly equal parts, 25 percent black, Latino, Anglo and Asian/Pacific Island American. Let's call these three types of schools and communities Anglo minority, non-Anglo bicultural and multiethnic plurality.

Ethnic-Global Intersection

Let's add one more ecological factor--the intersection between global and national diversity. Rapid advances in transportation and communications are inexorably reducing the significance of political boundaries. Accompanying the easier global movement of people, new communications technologies have simplified the piercing of national cultural spaces.

For example, multilingual media are becoming an expanding part of the social fabric not only of the United States but of an increasing number of nations.

Such technological changes have helped nations, cultures and linguistic groups create and expand globe-girdling social and institutional networks. These, in turn, have contributed to transnational cultural reinforcement and facilitated ethnic group solidification (including language maintenance).