The Other Americans. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, June, 1997 by Greig O'Brien

Horatio Alger, that cultural icon of the 19th century, was the definitive chronicler of the American dream -- a dream based on the celebration of rugged individualism and the promise of upward mobility. Alger's heroes were invariably outsiders, brave men and women who traveled to the infant metropolises of the 1800s and, through toil and determination, rose through the ranks of the social hierarchy. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, Alger's optimistic legacy has withered. Powerful and impersonal economic forces have robbed us of our sense of economic mobility and individual stability. Hope has vanished from the landscape of the American mind

But revitalization is just beyond our border, says Joel Millman. In his new book, The Other Americans, Millman suggests that immigrants could be the most effective source for two of this country's most basic needs: hope and prosperity. Through historical context and individual narratives, Millman constructs a powerful answer to the anti-immigrant ravings of the right. Unfortunately Millman never directly confronts his nativist opposition -- and this weakens his argument. Nevertheless, by showcasing the success of various immigrant groups across the United States, he shows how large groupings of immigrants not only thrive, but benefit their surrounding communities and cities as well.

The presence of immigrants is especially beneficial when immigrant groups reach "critical mass" -- when the influx into specific neighborhoods grows large enough for a cohesive ethnic community to develop. As Millman points out, at least in the case of New York, "throughout the peak years of immigration, arrests for rape, robbery, murder, and theft kept trending, stubbornly, down," while in periods of low immigration, crime rates rose. While he makes sure not to attribute this statistic purely to the presence of new Americans, it is a coincidence that should be investigated further and pointed out to our policy-makers whenever they feel the need to boost their profile by attacking the ever-present "alien" problem.

An important characteristic of this "critical mass" community is a growing immigrant middle-class that stays put. The biggest drain on our nation's cities since World War II has been the middle-class relocation to the suburbs -- a trend that began in the '50s and has since intensified. But making our inner cities more hospitable again doesn't seem to require more law enforcement. (although that remains the favorite prescription of politicians looking to "make a stand.") For a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of this approach, residents of the nation's capital need only recall how President Bush's Drug Czar, William Bennett, pledged to "clean up" the Washington drug scene with an "emergency" $80 million dollar policy -- $79 million of it spent on increased law enforcement. One year later, the effort was declared a miserable failure. Bennett retracting the program and claimed "a limited success" for the federal government.

What seems to be a more effective solution to our crumbling inner cities, if we listen to Millman, is the renewal of these "lost" neighborhoods by immigrant influxes. In America, immigrants see opportunity -- the spirit of Horatio Alger that our country has been exporting for a 150 years but doesn't truly believe in itself. "The land of milk and honey" draws immigrants in search of wealth and a new life. They don't see "the streets of guns and poverty" until they touch down.

Undaunted, most of these new Americans manage to make a decent living. True, many send a sizable portion of their earnings back home (to be spent in foreign markets, as many nativists charge). But more often the money is saved so that the rest of the family can join their pioneering kin in America. Reunited, they begin to work as a unit -- working and spending together. And spending a lot. Citing figures from the 1990 census, Millman notes, "Immigrant families earn like the poor but spend like the middle class."

Millman argues that spending is crucial to economic revitalization. We live in a consumer economy: The more money spent in a certain community, the more jobs will be created with that money. The days of a producer-oriented economy, when the reverse was true -- more jobs meant more spending -- have been gone since the '50s, and possibly as long ago as the Roaring Twenties. Thus, the most effective way to renew our dilapidated inner cities would be an influx of fluidly spending individuals. And the most accessible, and most eager, to fill this role are immigrants.

But immigrant families give a community yet another advantage. Unlike nuclear families of decades past, even when they begin to prosper, they stay put. Having already spent the effort to bring to the country not only their spouses and children, but also parents and cousins as well, why would they leave? Through their collective diligence and perspiration, their families prosper just as they had predicted.

As time goes on, and more families join and stay, these renewing neighborhoods could become what they once were -- prosperous, middle-class, and full of young families. But there will be one major difference from 50 years ago: This time the communities almost definitely will not be white. With the renewal of enough of these neighborhoods, America will finally be forced to confront a large and prosperous (thus influential) non-white class. This country's track-record in the area of race relations is subpar, to say the least, and has far to go. The development of these prosperous non-white communities, integrated with other similar communities in what resembles a realization of Randolph Bourne's "trans-national" vision for America, could force resolutions for problems of race that no group has had the power to do in the past.