USA Today
By Greg Toppo and Paul Overberg
October 21, 2014
From
a distance, the small group of Haitian immigrants at the public library
looks like a prayer meeting or political gathering. Dressed colorfully
but comfortably, the
women speak in heavily accented English and sit every day for hours
around a small wooden table studying to be nurses.
The
library sits at the heart of one of the most diverse counties in the
USA. More than 50 languages are spoken in the public schools, and this
is what more and more communities
across America will look like soon — very soon.
Racial
and ethnic diversity is spreading far beyond the coasts and into
surprising places across the USA, rapidly changing how Americans live,
learn, work and worship
together — and even who our neighbors are.
Cities
and towns far removed from traditional urban gateways such as New York,
Miami, Chicago and San Francisco are rapidly becoming some of the most
diverse places in
America, an analysis of demographic data by USA TODAY shows.
Small
metro areas such as Lumberton, N.C., and Yakima, Wash., and even remote
towns and counties — such as Finney County, Kan., or Buena Vista
County, Iowa — have seen
a stunning surge in immigrants, making those places far more diverse.
The
USA is experiencing a "great wave" of immigration - call it a "second
great wave." The first, which stretched from the 1880s to the 1920s,
coincided with the opening
of Ellis Island and the social and political transformation of the
nation.
The
people in this second wave, arriving roughly since 1970, are more
likely to be middle-class and, because of improved transportation and
technology, can assimilate
more quickly.
The
result: For the first time, the next person you meet in this country —
at work, in the library, at a coffee shop or a movie ticket line — will
probably be of a different
race or ethnic group than you.
USA
TODAY used Census data to calculate the chance that two random people
are different by race or ethnicity and came up with a Diversity Index to
place every county on
a scale of 0 to 100. The nationwide USA TODAY Diversity Index hit 55 in
2010, up sharply from 20 in 1960 and 40 as recently as 1990. In South
Orange, the index is 59.
This
is just the beginning. Barring catastrophe or a door-slam on
immigration, the Diversity Index is on track to top 70 by 2060,
according to a USA TODAY analysis of
population projections by ProximityOne of Alexandria, Va. That means
there will be less than a 1-in-3 chance that the next person you meet
will share your race or ethnicity, whatever it is: white, black,
American Indian, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Hispanic.
As
people from varying cultures and races come together or collide, local
governments and other institutions deal with a host of new issues, from
conflicts over spending
and diverse hiring to violence in the streets and language barriers.
This
month, health workers in Dallas going door-to-door at the 300-unit
apartment complex that housed the first U.S. patient with Ebola had to
translate leaflets about
the disease into eight languages. Among the tenants, the complex's
owner said, were many refugees being resettled.
Students
witness the changing face of the country firsthand: Public schools
began the 2014-15 school year with an unprecedented profile: For the
first time, non-Hispanic
white students are in the minority, according to Education Department
projections.
Almost
half of the Americans, 49%, polled by USA TODAY say the country will be
"better off" as communities diversify, racing toward a point where no
racial or ethnic group
has a majority; 25% say the country would be "worse off."
The
fastest change is happening in regions such as the upper Midwest, where
there was almost no diversity 30 years ago. Minnesota's Diversity Index
rose from 7 in 1980
to 31 in 2010. Diversity has sprouted in many places because of local
factors.
•
In Finney County, Kan., the Diversity Index rocketed from 46 to 60 from
1990 to 2010. Two big meatpacking plants that employ more than 2,500
drew immigrants. The county
is 47% Hispanic. The same pattern has made Buena Vista County, Iowa,
pop. 20,000, the most diverse in the state. Its Diversity Index soared
from 6 in 1990 to 49 in 2010.
•
In Monroe County, Pa., in the Pocono Mountains, the Diversity Index
jumped from 9 in 1990 to 48 in 2010 as minorities from Queens and
Brooklyn, N.Y., came looking for
a home they could afford to own.
Just
3% of counties had a Diversity Index that topped 50 in 1990, but today,
14% do. At the top end of the scale, hyper-diverse counties whose index
tops 67 have nearly
doubled since 2000, from 33 to 60. They, too, are spreading. They're
located in 17 states, up from 10 states in 2000.
An
inner-ring suburb of Newark, South Orange has consciously struggled for
decades to maintain its racial, ethnic and economic diversity, even as
rising housing prices
have squeezed moderate- and low-income families out of neighboring
suburbs. Here, the index was just 8 in 1970. It soared to 57 in 2000 and
59 in 2010.
Like
Newark, it's part of Essex County, where the index has hit 72, up from
69 in 2000. Librarians increasingly find themselves not just checking
out books but providing
space for groups of immigrants — as well as for a growing corps of
volunteers who tutor newcomers in English and run conversation groups.
Nearly a third of the library's patrons speak a language other than
English at home, and among the most requested products
is an online language tutoring program, library Director Melissa
Kopecky says.
"I've
always said that the public library is the living room of the
community," says Keisha Miller, who runs the library's teen programs.
"This is where you come — you
have conversations, you meet people, you see your neighbors, you make
new friends, you see old friends." Miller, 32, attended school here as
well. She's the daughter of immigrants from Trinidad and Jamaica.
For
decades, much of South Orange's diversity has been driven by effective
"fair housing" laws that opened up affordable housing beyond Newark city
limits. Activists have
also pushed to keep these suburban neighborhoods diverse, working with
Realtors to persuade them to show prospective families a broader swath
of houses for sale. In many cases, activists have taken newcomers on a
kind of "outsiders' real estate tour" o?f their
own.
"We
wanted to see if we could actually encourage people to live in all
parts of the community," says Nancy Gagnier, executive director of the
South Orange-Maplewood Community
Coalition on Race.
After
a commuter rail line directly connected the area with Manhattan in
1996, diverse families increasingly began settling here from Manhattan,
Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey
City and Hoboken, Gagnier says. "They're looking for that step out into
the suburbs that doesn't fully remove them from an urban feel and has a
level of diversity."
The
change had many locals worried about white flight to more far-flung
suburbs. The coalition hired the same consultant who helped Shaker
Heights, Ohio, stay integrated.
They offered home improvement loans in at-risk neighborhoods and
aggressively marketed South Orange and nearby Maplewood as appealing
places to live.
"I
guarantee you, you ask any person walking down the street, 'Why did you
move here?' or 'What's the community's best asset?' and they'll use the
term 'diversity,' "
Gagnier says.
In
addition to housing policy, much of the shift to suburbs by immigrant
groups can be traced to a subtle change in attitude, says David Dante
Troutt, the founding director
of the Rutgers Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity (CLiME). He's the
author of the 2014 book The Price of Paradise: The Costs of Inequality
and a Vision for a More Equitable America.
As
cities gentrified and urban housing grew more expensive, immigrants
whose forerunners had long settled in cities began to rethink that idea,
deciding "the city is no
longer the place to be," Troutt says. Add troubled urban schools to the
mix, he says, and the result is an explosion of ethnic enclaves,
comprised of new immigrants, outside central cities.
"It's
fascinating, and it holds all sorts of promise," he says. "It both
contradicts American ideas about immigration and demographics and
supports many long-standing
ideas about it, including the belief that the American dream is found
in the ownership of a single-family home in the suburbs."
He
says much of the diversity of places such as South Orange will depend
on how strongly local attitudes support diverse kinds of housing. "It's
still a delicate balance,"
he says. "Let's not kid ourselves. Even discussion of building
workforce housing in some of these progressive towns will meet with a
vitriol and an opposition that you can expect from the most affluent,
conservative places."
In
nearby Montclair, N.J., he says, residents fought to block four
lower-cost units from being built in one neighborhood. In another case,
in Marin County, Calif., in
2011, filmmaker George Lucas decided to sell some land to a developer
of affordable housing, but neighbors fought the move, saying they feared
the development would bring in "lowlifes," "drug dealers" and
"criminals."
At
the time, an annual household income up to $88,000 qualified buyers for
affordable housing, Troutt says. "The public commenters who came in and
railed against these
prospective tenants in these vitriolic terms were talking about people
who were making as much as assistant district attorneys, who were in
fact prosecuting criminals and lowlifes and drug dealers," he says.
"What it suggests to me is that people are much
more careful to either hide or overcome their racial animus — but what
they are much less reflective about is their class animus, that it is
almost OK to speak in hate-speech-like terms about people who we regard
as our economic inferiors."
Not
every corner of the country is changing rapidly, or even in the same
direction. Nearly 200 counties, or about 6%, saw their Diversity Index
fall in the past decade.
For
a glimpse of what the USA looked like in 1970 and still looks like in
some places, drive around Idaho, South Dakota or Wisconsin. If you want
to see what the USA might
look like in 2040, when the Diversity Index is projected to reach 65,
look at Denver, Albuquerque, Austin or Phoenix, which already have
reached that level.
The
changes are so widespread they have even reversed the trend in some
places. Counties along the Texas border — notably El Paso — have become
less diverse as Hispanics
have grown to make up more than 90% of the population.
The second wave of immigration is putting its own stamp on the makeup of communities across the country.
Access
to transportation and a wider geographical swath of jobs means
immigrants are not just showing up in big coastal cities and staying for
generations. They're moving
to "new destinations," as demographer Jacob Vigdor calls these places —
not just suburbs but rural parts of the South, Midwest and West.
The
black American experience, forged early on by slavery that brought
millions from Africa, also is diversifying. Almost 10% of blacks are new
immigrants from Caribbean
or African countries, especially Haiti, the Dominican Republic and
Jamaica. Some must learn English as a second language and face other
challenges typical of immigrants.
While
this second wave brings tensions and battles over school districts,
religion, public spaces, law enforcement and affordable housing, it also
brings new energy: The
immigrants have higher birth rates, ensuring a steady supply of workers
for future generations. They bring new role models, new foods and
traditions, new sports, a tremendous entrepreneurial energy and, perhaps
most significantly, intact, religiously devout
families that place a heavy emphasis on education.
In other words, true Americans.
"We should be really happy that we have this large minority growth in the United States," says Brookings Institution demographer
William Frey, author of the upcoming book Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.
Frey
says "new minorities" — Hispanics, Asians and multiracial Americans —
are arriving as the USA's white population is growing quite slowly and
actually declining for
the younger part of the population. "So it's in fact a tonic," he says.
"We're going to need this as we look ahead."
“We should be so thankful that they're here,” demographer
With
the new growth in diversity, Frey says, should come a new attitude
about ethnic and racial minorities. "This is everybody's business to
make sure we have a productive
multi-ethnic population in the United States," he says. "And we should
be so thankful that they're here, because if we didn't have the
immigration and the fertility of these groups in the last 20 years, we
would be in the same situation as Japan or a lot of
European countries, which are facing a declining labor force and an
aging population."
Frey
puts it rather bluntly, noting that Census projections show that in
about 10 years, the USA's white population will not only be crowded out —
it'll start to shrink.
"A lot of people don't realize this," he says. "It's the full-scale
demographic scope of all this that's really important for us to get our
arms around because it's really important for our future as a country."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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