I found this week’s articles particularly interesting because of how they tie in to our general class discussions. Having already spoken about the reality of certain states becoming “majority-minority” as a class, and touching upon the possibility of America [as a whole] transitioning towards this demographic, I was glad to have read Sanjek’s article address this concept with with quantifiable projections (he says, according to one projection, only 49% of children under 18 will be white by 2035).
Sanjek then goes on to discuss this transition in neighborhoods like Elmurst-Corona, and how the multi-ethnic exchanges in these communities are a result of both individual choices and government policies. Perhaps it is just in our progressive nature to move past pre-conceived racial notions, and we will continue to do so until America is almost wholly integrated. A debatably important objection to this, which Crowder points out in his article, is the dilemma of maintaining ethnic identity (not the only objection we have seen, others which have been language and job related), something which is much harder to do in an ethnically “open” environment where there is less cultural uniformity. In the case where the latter idea of separated communities prevails, which Sanjek calls “the worst [case],” society seems to be doomed to fall apart, or at least become much more ineffective, simply because we would be politically and economically divided. What’s really interesting about this argument is that Sanjek associates government intervention with successful integration, implying that by individual choice people would choose to be separate, which I personally think undermines the progressive, optimistic attitude of the rest of the article. In any case, it is difficult to predict which direction we will head in, especially on a national scale, in terms of integration and ethnic demographics. Hopefully, it will be “color-full” as opposed to “color-blind.”
