Ethnic Succession

In his brief and accessible piece, Herman lays out the framework for the “ethnic succession” model, in which one group comes into an area, competes with a former group for resources, and replaces the original group as the dominant racial/ethnic group. This is a broad flow of steps, left open for different points of entry. That is, this succession can happen in many different ways. Herman chooses to describe these in three categories: residential succession, political succession, and economic (job) succession. Ethnic succession may be manifested in any of these categories, exclusively one or a combination of two or three. One may precede the other, for instance as residential succession often leads to political succession; as a new demographic “invades” and takes over the residential niche of a given area, those with political power often shift to represent the current demographic.

In my area in particular, I’m not sure that the ethnic succession model would quite fit. But nor would its opposite, the ethnic assimilation model. I would consider the two main groups obvious groups in my community to be middle to upper-middle class white, and lower-middle class Hispanic. My community — originally dominated by the middle class white demographic — was never completely replaced by a flood of Latinos, nor were the various ethnic/racial groups totally blended together.

In my school district (Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow) in Westchester, the closing of a large GM plant and loss of workers to the area brought the migration of a large Latino (Dominican, Ecuadorian) population over the last couple decades. The loss GM workers to the area led to a gaping hole in the local economy to be filled by a new group. This hole was filled by the rapid arrival of the Hispanic population. According to a NYTimes article, “Since 1990, the Hispanic population has climbed 11 percentage points, to 45 percent of residents, white non-Hispanics account for 48 percent, according to the latest census figures.” Without the blue-collar sector of the GM plant, the two groups are the remaining white middle class (white collar) residents , and the more recently arrived Latinos. Rather than compete with the remaining white upper-middle class for jobs, the Hispanic population in Sleepy Hollow has found in own niche in lower-income jobs, and residentially occupies the area around the main commercial drag of Beekman Avenue, while the white middle class lies predominately in typical suburban neighborhoods clustered outside.

In this small village, residentially and economically, the two populations seem to occupy different, barely overlapping niches. While the younger generations of white and Hispanic populations interact in school, adults live in more separate spheres, going to different jobs, frequenting different businesses, and living in different areas. While there has been little to no tension, this separation of ethnic/racial classes shows a clear difference in cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic tendencies of these two groups and the inclination of both to remain clustered around those most like themselves. The disappearance of this industrial plant has created an interesting dichotomy in my Sleepy Hollow community that is not best explained by any one model.