Tag Archives: minorities

Chinese purchase “monster homes” in New Zealand

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McMansion type homes are not just restricted to the United States. This article describes what Chinese buyers are moving into in New Zealand:

When veteran architect Ron Sang drives around the outer fringes of Auckland near Albany or Botany, he can always spot a house built for a Chinese buyer.

“Generally it has a high portico on the outside – a big, high, ostentatious-looking porch, usually double height,” he says.

“Generally above the door you have a window and through the window you can see chandeliers. Inside the door you’ll see a big, ostentatiously curved stairway. They like to show wealth.”

These grand mansions on small suburban sections – what sociologist Paul Spoonley, adopting a Canadian term, calls “monster houses” – have become the stereotypical Chinese footprints in our cityscape.

While the homes described here are called “monster homes,” this sounds very similar to what Americans would call McMansions with the traits of a big entryway, garish appointments, the goal of impressing a buyer or visitor, and large homes on relatively small lots in suburban neighborhoods.

There is an interesting discussion later in the article about Chinese immigration to and residential patterns of Chinese residents in New Zealand.

Daily Herald highlights “immigrants moving to suburbs”

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Focusing primarily on population growth in Aurora (read here about how Aurora is now the second largest city in Illinois), the Daily Herald says more immigrants are moving to the suburbs:

The trend of immigrants heading directly to American suburbs instead of starting in a major city intensified from 2000 to 2010 — and was one factor in Illinois’ 32.5 percent increase in Hispanic population in that period, according to recently released U.S. Census data.

Demographers say they aren’t just seeing it around Chicago. The same thing is happening around other major cities that have long been entry points for immigrants, such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

For many Hispanics in northern Illinois, Aurora supplanted Chicago as a cultural hub, and the growth has transformed smaller and smaller towns.

As I’ve noted before (see here as an example), this is quite a change for many American suburbs. In the coming years, it will be interesting to see how the residents already living in these suburbs respond. Additionally, community leaders will have to respond as well. Based on some of the comments regarding this news story, it appears that there might be some people who are unhappy with these changes.

The problems of classifying Hispanics in the Census

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A sociology professor talks about the different ways in which the Census has classified Hispanics:

Professor RUBEN RUMBAUT (University of California at Irvine): Race is one of three questions that has been asked in every census since 1790. So for 220 years, that person’s age, sex and race have been asked in a census. Age and sex have been measured in the same way for 220 years. Race has pretty much never been measured in the same way from one census to the next, suggesting this is not a biological given category but a social and legal and political construction whose meaning changes over time…From census to census, there are slight changes in wording, in instructions, and that end up making a significant difference in the actual responses that people gave.

The sociologist goes on to explain studies he has been a part of that show how immigrant groups differ in identifying themselves as white:

A colleague of mine and I since 1991 have directed the largest study of children of immigrants in the United States over time, looking at 77 different nationalities, including all of the ones from Latin America. And over time we have asked them separate questions about their ethnic identity and also a question about race. We also independently interviewed their parents.

Cuban parents, 93 percent of them, thought that they were white, but only 41 percent of their own children thought they were white; 69 percent of Nicaraguans, Salvadoran and Guatemalan parents thought they were white, but only 19 percent of their own children thought they were white.

These are quite wide differences. The Census is supposed to offer reliable and valid data over time but in this particular category, the Census has had difficulty.

Interestingly, the sociologist suggests there were experiments embedded in the 2010 Census in order to help solve these issues for the next Census:

Already in the year 2010, there were four experiments embedded in the 2010 census looking ahead at how to make changes for the year 2020. One of the things that are being considered, for example, is trying to create a single question that combines both Hispanic ethnicity and race into a single question.

I hadn’t heard anything about these experiments and I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this turns out. Whatever is decided, sociologists and others will have to find ways to put together the various measurements over the decades.

Sugrue: “It’s not clear that this new [black] migration [to the suburbs] is a positive step”

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Recent figures suggest more minorities are moving to the suburbs (see here and here). But looking at evidence from Detroit (see a related story here), historian Thomas Sugrue suggests blacks moving to the suburbs may encounter a lot of the same issues they faced in the city:

So far, Detroit’s black suburbanization has followed a well-trodden path. Those blacks heading outward from Detroit aren’t moving to all suburbs equally. Rather, they move into places with older houses, rundown shopping districts and declining tax revenues. Such towns also typically have poorer services and fewer job opportunities than wealthier suburbs — where, despite strong antidiscrimination laws, it is still harder for blacks to find housing.

It’s not clear that this new migration is a positive step, even if it allows blacks to escape the city and its troubles. For whites, suburbs have often been a big step up — but as long as most blacks find themselves in secondhand suburbia, the American dream of security, prosperity and opportunity will remain harder to achieve.

This term “secondhand suburbia” is an interesting one. Perhaps this term lines up with the concept of “inner-ring suburbs.” A number of commentators, notably Myron Orfield (in texts like American Metropolitics), have discussed how inner-ring suburbs, those closest to the big city, have many of the same issues of the city: large and growing minority populations, declining white populations, limited tax bases, crowded conditions and an older housing stock, crime, and more. Sugrue’s phrase, however, seems to emphasize the racial transition these suburbs, probably classifiable as “inner-ring suburbs,” are experiencing as he describes how these “second-hand” places are changing over from white to black. The implication is that these places are hand-me-downs: the whites used them up and are now using their wealth to move further from the city.

In the long run, if these suburbs don’t offer suburban opportunities but simply reproduce problems like residential segregation, has anything been gained?

2010 Census director on suburbanization of minorities

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Sociologist Robert M. Groves spoke earlier this week “at an Advertising Research Foundation event.” In his comments, Groves noted one of the major demographic trends in America: more minorities are now in the suburbs.

Of course, if Groves — with a Ph.D. in sociology and a long-time Michigan professor — were to put out a “for hire” sign for TV networks, a bidding war could heat up between Univision and Telemundo. The story of the 2010 Census, which could have been written in 2005 (or 1995, for that matter), is the boom in Hispanic America…

Last year left Groves well-armed with figures about the Hispanic population, such as the prevalence of those speaking Spanish at home and English elsewhere. And he has much to say about a dispersal trend in the Hispanic community, the departure from cities. In the Atlanta area, for example, the number of Hispanic residents spreading to the collar counties is soaring.

“The suburbanization of the minority population is a phenomenon over the past decade,” Groves said.

While the American suburbs have typically been seen as places where whites attempted to escape the city and minority populations (“white flight”), the number of minorities in the suburbs has been on the rise (read about this on a national scale here and in the Chicago region here and here).

The article goes on to consider how Groves might also be in demand as businesses look to utilize this kind of demographic knowledge:

Broadly, Groves has some cred if he were to become a network ambassador to Madison Avenue. At some level, he’s overseen a massive campaign — stretching from a Super Bowl spot to targeted marketing in 28 languages — as with the Census spent $300 million to $400 million in advertising last year.

As the Bureau sought to get more Americans to return their questionnaires, it figured that for every 1% increase it produced, that would save $85 million in the costs associated with knocking on doors later.

“The message got through and it changed behavior,” Groves said.

The director can also say he can manage a budget. The Bureau returned $1.6 billion to the government last year as it completed its work.

Before becoming director of the 2010 Census, Groves was well known in sociology for his work with surveys. This article suggests that he could parlay this Census experience plus his prior research into a lucrative corporate position.

New Census figures on Hispanics in US: over 50 million

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Data from the 2010 US Census continues to trickle out (see stories on the shifting US mean population center, the growth in the multiracial population, and the population changes in places like Chicago). With almost all states accounted for, demographers expect that the Hispanic population in the United States has exceeded 50 million for the first time. The Hispanic population growth was also higher than expected for the last decade:

In a surprising show of growth, Hispanics accounted for more than half of the U.S. population increase over the last decade, exceeding estimates in most states…

Racial and ethnic minorities are expected to make up an unprecedented 90 percent of the total U.S. growth since 2000, due to immigration and higher birth rates for Latinos…

“This really is a transformational decade for the nation,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution who has analyzed most of the 2010 data. “The 2010 census shows vividly how these new minorities are both leading growth in the nation’s most dynamic regions and stemming decline in others.”

Currently the fastest growing group, Hispanics now comprise 1 in 6 Americans; among U.S. children, Hispanics are roughly 1 in 4.

With relatively low birth rates for whites (though these rates are not as low as other industrialized nations such as Western Europe or Japan), most of the recent population growth in the United States is non-white.

I would really like to hear more experts comment on this sort of data. What do they expect America to be within a few decades? How will these figures affect social life, politics, work, culture, and more?

Number of multiracial Americans grows in 2010 Census

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In the 2000 Census, respondents were able to indicate for the first time that they are multiracial. The latest figures from the 2010 Census suggest that the multiracial population is growing at higher than expected rates:

In the first comprehensive accounting of multiracial Americans since statistics were first collected about them in 2000, reporting from the 2010 census, made public in recent days, shows that the nation’s mixed-race population is growing far more quickly than many demographers had estimated, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest. That conclusion is based on the bureau’s analysis of 42 states; the data from the remaining eight states will be released this week.

In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it expanded by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70 percent.

“Anything over 50 percent is impressive,” said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution…

Census officials were expecting a national multiracial growth rate of about 35 percent since 2000, when seven million people — 2.4 percent of the population — chose more than one race. Officials have not yet announced a national growth rate, but it seems sure to be closer to 50 percent.

This is interesting data, particularly since these figures exceed expectations. There are several issues to note with the data. First, some of the largest growth is taking places in states like Mississippi where there is a large percentage increase because there were so few interracial people in the 2000 Census. A second question we could ask about this data is whether this is primarily an increase in multiracial relationships or is it simply a reflection of changing measurements from the US Census? One sociologist suggests the second option could be plausible:

“The reality is that there has been a long history of black and white relationships — they just weren’t public,” said Prof. Matthew Snipp, a demographer in the sociology department at Stanford University. Speaking about the mixed-race offspring of some of those relationships, he added: “People have had an entire decade to think about this since it was first a choice in 2000. Some of these figures are not so much changes as corrections. In a sense, they’re rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed.”

So then perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by these large increases in percentages; rather, we have better instruments by which to collect this data.

This Census data does seems to line up with changing attitudes about interracial relationships. In a recent story from Pew Research about what 90% of Americans can agree about, Pew showed how the approval of interracial relationships has grown a lot in the last several decades:

It is remarkable how this has jumped from 48% in 1987 to 83% approval in 2009. But if there is more approval for interracial relationships, then there is likely to be more relationships, marriages, and eventually children who identify as multiracial.

Considering whether whites are the new minority

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A CNN article takes a look at the question of whether  “whites [are] racially oppressed.” A sociologist in the story summarizes why whites may be feeling like a minority group and acting accordingly:

For many decades, white people saw themselves as individuals, not as members of a race, says Matt Wray, a sociologist at Temple University in Pennsylvania, who writes books about white studies.

“We are often offended if someone calls attention to our race as shaping how we view the world,” says Wray, author of “Not Quite White.” “We don’t like to be pigeon-holed that way. Non-white Americans are seldom afforded this luxury of seeing themselves as individuals, disconnected from any race.”

This threatened-status argument seems to be gathering steam as more sociologists (and others) look for explanations for the persistence and/or growth of right-wing movements. With the changing demographics in America (whether in kindergarten or the suburbs), this is not something that will go away.

What might happen in the long run? Another sociologist offers a prediction:

Gallagher points out that the United States has accommodated massive change before. Women were once thought too emotional to vote, interracial couples were outlawed, blacks enslaved.

He says his children won’t see race the same way that he or other generations did. They won’t see diversity as a weakness.

It’ll just be a way of life.

I would love to hear more about this: how exactly will the view of and effects of race change in the coming generations? A number of sociologists have written about the changes in the past 100 years as America moved from more overt forms of discrimination to move covert forms. I haven’t seen too many predictions about this.

More minorities in the Chicago suburbs leads to new issues

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The Chicago Tribune discusses some of the growth in minority population in the Chicago suburbs as well as the challenges this poses to these communities:

“Immigration is coming right to the suburbs because of jobs and because there are networks that have been established in the suburbs,” said Chicago-based demographer Rob Paral.

The greatest number of new suburbanites were Hispanics. More than 62,000 Latino residents settled in Will County, many in Aurora, Joliet and Bolingbrook.

Bolingbrook also saw its Asian population more than double, with a surge of Indian, Pakistani, Filipino and Chinese residents, village officials said. In Naperville, the black, Hispanic and Asian populations were each up by 70 percent or more, while the still much larger non-Hispanic white population dipped slightly…

“When you talk about the challenges of integration, part of the problem is that some of these communities were not built to sustain or increase by 150 percent, let alone by people whose language is from a different country,” said Sylvia Zaldivar-Sykes, executive director of the Lake County Community Foundation.

This will pose some interesting challenges to many suburban communities. Having new residents in the community might lead to reconsidering the characters of these suburbs: how will residents and other communities view themselves and other suburbs? New programs or services will require more money, something in short supply in our current era of suburban budget shortfalls. And in the long run, what will the white residents in these communities do – move to other suburbs, as many whites have done in the past, or stay within their changing communities?

The role of residential segregation in lawsuit over Elgin school district

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The Chicago suburb of Elgin has long been a satellite city with more diversity and manufacturing than the average suburb. The city’s school district, U-46, is the second-largest district in the state and is the plaintiff in a long-running civil suit that is continuing in federal court this week:

The two sides in a long, bitter fight over boundary lines in an Elgin-area school district met in federal District Court in Chicago on Monday, six years after a class-action suit sought to improve learning conditions for minority students.

The students and the families who were part of the original case filed in 2005 have long since left School District U-46, a racially and culturally diverse district of 40,000 students in the northwest suburbs. But the conditions that sparked that initial outrage — overcrowding and poor classroom conditions — continue to persist and are putting minority students at a disadvantage, attorney Stewart Weltman told the judge in his opening remarks.

“U-46 served the needs of white students first, and the needs of minority students second,” Weltman told U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman. “The district knew it had thousands of empty seats in white schools, and yet it forced more and more minority students into overcrowded schools and portable classrooms without running water.”

Attorneys for the school district say race never played a role in the redrawing of attendance boundaries for the district’s 55 elementary, middle and high schools. Instead, they say, the changes were part of a reorganization plan by the district in 2004 to allow more students to attend schools closer to home.

I don’t know the particulars of the case. What the district did sounds like what a lot of American parents might desire: let my children go to schools close to home rather than busing or driving them to schools across the city. Closeness is one issue but the idea of local control or rule of nearby schools is important, even in a large school district.

But as I read this, I am struck by an idea: with the district letting students “attend schools closer to home,” U-46 was letting the wealthier kids go to the nearby nicer schools and the minority kids go to nearby worse-off schools. And if you look at the map of the U-46 boundaries, there is quite an economic range, from Elgin (median household income in 2009: $57,009) to wealthier Bartlett (median household income in 2009: $91,863) and Wayne (less than 2,000 people in the village but a 2009 median household income of $142,321). Therefore, it may appear that the district is not spreading the wealth (in money or children) around the district in a way that benefits everyone. The residential segregation patterns in suburbia, where the wealthier tend to live with the wealthier and the poorer live with the poorer, then get reinforced.

It will be interesting to see how the case turns out. On one hand, I’m sure the district has an interest in keeping wealthier families and areas within the district, something that may have been aided by this 2004 decision. On the other hand, the larger school district is supposed to be providing the same opportunities for all students.