Esperanza Spalding,
winner of the best new
artist award at this
year’s Grammies,
personifies the ethnic
trends reshaping
America. She is a
fresh-faced 27-year old
jazz bassist whose very
name portrays her mixed
ethnic and racial
heritage as the daughter
of an African-American
father and a Hispanic,
Welsh, Native American
mother. Spalding first
gained her deep interest
in music watching
French-born Chinese
American classical
cellist Yo Yo Ma on
“Sesame Street,” a TV
program that has perhaps
contributed to ethnic
acculturation in the
U.S. as much as any
other institution.
Spalding’s formal
musical training was
originally classical,
but at age 15 she
decided that her passion
was jazz, itself a
quintessentially
American 20th Century
fusion of black rhythms
and the melodies of
European immigrants.
The United States has
gradually been becoming
more diverse for
decades, but Esperanza
Spalding’s Millennial
Generation (born
1982-2003) is most
radically altering the
nature of that
diversity. The entirely
senior citizen Silent
Generation (born
1925-1945) is 90% white.
Baby Boomers (born
1946-1964) and
Generation X (born
1965-1981) are a bit
more diverse: 17% and
25% non-white
respectively. In
contrast, four in ten
adult Millennials are
either African-American,
Hispanic, Asian, or of
mixed race. Among all
Millennials of high
school age or younger,
about half now come from
what was once called a
minority group.
Moreover, according to
the
2009
Census population
estimates, the under
18 population of
Arizona, California,
Hawaii, Maryland,
Nevada, New Mexico, and
Texas is
majority-minority with
Florida, Georgia,
Mississippi, New Jersey,
and New York poised on
the brink of that
benchmark.
In 2008 the Census
Bureau made these
demographic trends
“official” by
forecasting that the
United States will
become a
majority-minority
country around 2040. By
2050, with an estimated
46% of the population,
non-Hispanic whites will
still remain the
country’s single largest
racial group, but
Hispanics (30%),
African-Americans (15%)
and Asians (9%) will
together comprise a
majority of the U.S.
population.
Generational theory,
first developed by
William
Strauss and Neil Howe,
offers important
historical insights on
what this new
majority-minority
America might look like.
As we point out in our
forthcoming book,
Millennial Momentum: How
a New Generation is
Remaking America,
we are in the midst of
what Strauss and Howe
have defined as a
“fourth turning.” These
periods have invariably
been associated with the
most intense social and
political stress in US
history: the American
Revolution, the Civil
War, and the Great
Depression. Civic
generations, heavily
populated by the
children of large waves
of immigrants, are more
ethnically diverse than
older generations,
contributing to the
ethnic and racial
tensions that have
existed during each of
these time periods. At
the same time, because
civic generations are
comprised of group- and
team-oriented,
conventional and
institution building
individuals, ethnic
absorption and
acculturation also
increases during and
just after fourth
turnings as each civic
generation matures. This
is in sharp contrast to
“idealist” generations,
such as the Baby
Boomers, that reject the
mainstream culture and
often form movements
promoting ethnic
separatism.
Ethnic tensions during
previous similar
generational changes
rivaled those the
country is experiencing
today. In the run-up to
the Civil War, the
rabidly anti-immigrant
and anti-Catholic
American or Know-Nothing
Party captured close to
a quarter of the
national popular vote in
the 1856 presidential
election,and more than a
third of the vote that
year in all of the
states that eventually
comprised the
Confederacy. In the
1930s, as the civic GI
Generation children of
the Eastern, Central,
and Southern Europeans
who comprised America’s
last previous great wave
of immigrants came of
age to help elect
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
his most virulent
opponents claimed that
the president was really
a Jew named “Rosenfeld”
and derided his program
as the “Jew Deal.”
We see similar language
in today’s discourse, at
least on the fringes.
Some extreme opponents
of President Barack
Obama accuse him of
being foreign-born and a
crypto-Muslim. In a more
obscure way, if one
searches Google for the
seemingly innocuous
phrase, “US majority
nonwhite 2040,” two of
the first three listings
are from racist groups
decrying this change and
the third is from a
liberal group advising
the need to “understand”
the fears of white
people in a rapidly
changing America.
Fortunately civic
generation Millennials
have many
characteristics that
lead to ethnic
acculturation and
absorption The Civil War
generation was critical
to absorbing the Irish
into the American
mainstream, in part
through the role played
by Irish detachments in
the Union Army,
something that helped
the Irish overcome the
charge that they were an
alien Papist force set
on undermining a free
Protestant nation.
Similarly, the GI
Generation’s Poles,
Italians, and Jews
became acculturated
during and after World
War II, in part through
their service in the
armed forces or in the
domestic war effort. In
sharp contrast to the
anti-Semitic charges
leveled
against FDR,
commentators on all
sides of the political
spectrum describe
America as a
“Judeo-Christian
Nation.” Foods like
bagels and pizza, once
available only in urban
ethnic enclaves, became
commonplace, sold by
pizza chains started by
Irishmen and Greeks, or
bagels marketed by
brands such as
Pepperidge Farm.
In the current fourth
turning, America’s
newest ethnic minorities
will also become
acculturated and, in
turn, shape the nation’s
culture. A 2007 Pew
survey indicates that
while only 23% of first
generation Hispanics
speaks
English “very well,”
that percentage rises to
88% among those in the
second generation and
94% within the third. At
the same time,
researchers at the
University of
California-Irvine and
Princeton found that
Latinos tend to “lose”
their Spanish the longer
they are in this
country. This
research
indicates that
although first
generation Hispanics
bring Spanish with them,
by the second generation
only a third of Latinos
speak Spanish “very
well.” By the third
generation, that number
drops to 17% among those
with three or four
foreign-born
grandparents and to only
5% among those with just
one or two foreign-born
grandparents.
And, so as the United
States endures the
tensions and rancor of
another generational
fourth turning, it is
important to realize
that this too shall
pass. Millennials
will, as have other
civic generations before
them, redefine what it
means to be an American
in ways both more
diverse and inclusive
than older generations
may be able to imagine
or appreciate.
