RESIDENTIAL DISPERSION, MOBILITY, AND ASSIMILATION

Huntington claims that residential dispersion is essential to assimilation, and he observes that Hispanics, unlike the earlier European immigrants, concentrate in certain regions: Mexicans in southern California, Cubans in Miami, and Dominicans in New York City. Huntington argues that Hispanics choose to cluster rather than disperse, pointing to cities like Miami and Los Angeles (and areas in the Southwest more generally) as illustrative examples of the “Hispanization” that is transforming these regions. The process of “Hispanization” is a cause for concern, Huntington reasons, because it retards the progression of assimilation by reducing the incentives to learn English and adopt the cultural norms of the United States. Furthermore, these ethnic communities foster and celebrate the retention of a distinct Hispanic identity separate from and even disdainful of the American national identity.

However, a closer look at those who actually reside in ethnic communities reveals that only the most recent newcomers live predominantly in immigrant enclaves (Zhou and Logan, 1991). With time spent in the United States, today's Latino immigrants leave immigrant enclaves in the traditional gateway communities of the Southwest and integrate into the population as a whole (Bean et al., 2005; White and Glick, 1999). Moreover, Huntington simply ignores the recent research showing that Mexican migration is no longer a regional phenomenon confined to traditional destinations in the Southwest (Leach and Bean, 2005; Massey et al., 2002; Passel and Zimmerman, 2001; Suro and Passel, 2003). In fact, eight of the ten states with the fastest growing Latino populations are in the South, not the Southwest (North Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Nevada, South Carolina, Alabama, and Kentucky), and the percentage of Mexican immigrants residing outside of the Southwest has doubled from 10% in 1990 to 21% in 1996, indicating a pattern of dispersion rather than regional concentration (Saenz 2004).

What is particularly noteworthy about the development of these new immigrant communities is that the pioneers who move to these regions are usually married Mexican couples who have been in the United States for some time, and have chosen to leave the overcrowded and impoverished urban communities in the Southwest for the same reasons that native-born Americans often choose to leave poor, urban neighborhoods: to seek more affordable housing, safer communities, and better educational opportunities for their children (Hernández-León and Zúñiga, 2000; Leach and Bean, 2005). In short, as Mexicans number among the pioneers to these new destinations across the country, the story of Mexican immigrant dispersion is also one of mobility. Thus, not only are Mexican immigrants evincing patterns of residential integration, they are also demonstrating patterns of intra-generational mobility (Leach and Bean, 2005). Moreover, the children of immigrants (the U.S.-born second generation) evince even higher rates of residential integration compared to their parents, illustrating patterns of inter-generational residential mobility (Bean et al., 2005).

The contemporary pattern of Mexican immigrant residential integration is certainly not new. As Mae Ngai notes in Impossible Subjects, her carefully documented historical account of immigration patterns and policies between 1924 and 1965, even in the 1930s, the longer Mexican immigrants stayed in the United States, the more likely they were to move away from the border and settle in northern cities like Detroit and Chicago. Ngai shows that Mexican immigrants settled permanently in new cities and rural towns, illustrating that these immigrants were more than just labor migrants. Mexican immigrants today demonstrate residential assimilation patterns along the lines of the earlier waves of European immigrants.

LINGUISTIC ASSIMILATION

Language is more than simply a means of communication. Through a common language, individuals draw boundaries that mark national, ethnic, and cultural communities and identities (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). Having a common language in a high immigration country like the United States is particularly important because of the sheer diversity of its population. Hence, the English language becomes an instrumental means of unifying its heterogeneous population and creating a strong American national identity. Because of the power of language to function as a unifying mechanism, Americans have come to believe and expect that immigrants should learn English—a sentiment reflected in a statement made by the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (1994):

Like most Americans, Mexican Americans support this view, with more than 90% agreeing that U.S. citizens and residents should learn English (de la Garza et al., 1992).

The general pattern of linguistic assimilation in the United States has been one in which English becomes the favored language through successive generations (Alba and Nee, 2003). While the first generation may prefer to speak in their native language, the second generation often exhibits high degrees of bilingualism, preferring English outside the home. By the third generation, however, bilingualism is extremely rare, and much more common is the pattern of English monolingualism. Marshalling the evidence on patterns of linguistic assimilation among today's immigrants, Huntington acknowledges that “English language use and fluency for first- and second-generation Mexicans thus seems to follow the usual pattern” (2004b, p. 231).

While he concedes that Mexican immigrants and their children are following the time-honored path of linguistic assimilation, Huntington still fears that the continued influx of immigrants and the rapid expansion of Mexican communities will give Mexican-origin Americans little incentive to become fluent in English. Recent research on language patterns clearly indicates that Huntington has no cause for fear. For example, Frank Bean and Gillian Stevens (2003) show that English language proficiency among today's immigrants is just as high as, if not higher than, the rate among earlier waves of European immigrants, and by the second generation English language fluency is near universal. In addition, in the longitudinal study by Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut (2001) of more than 5000 children of immigrants in Miami and San Diego, 98% of respondents report that they speak English “well” or “very well.” In fact, so strong is the pressure to privilege English that, by the time these children reach high school, 88% prefer to speak English over their parents' native language, and a mere 30% report themselves as fluent in a foreign language. Analysis of the 2000 U.S. Census data reveals similar patterns. As Richard Alba (2004) shows, among second-generation Hispanics, 92% speak English “well” or “very well,” and among second-generation Asians the figure has reached 96%.

But what about the third generation? Huntington asks. Will they, too, follow the classic pattern of English monolingualism, or will they retain the pattern of second-generation bilingualism? Alba's analysis of the 2000 U.S. Census data reveals that in the third and later generations, the predominant pattern is English monolingualism. A full 92% of third- and higher-generation Asian children speak only English, and the corresponding figure for Hispanics is 72%. The higher levels of bilingualism among third- and higher-generation Hispanics is largely a result of the Mexican-origin population that resides close to the border. Among third- and later-generation Mexicans who do not live close to the Mexican border, English monolingualism is the norm. Clearly, Huntington's fear of a nation divided by two languages is unfounded, as the pattern of linguistic assimilation is one that overwhelmingly favors English monolingualism by the third generation.

For all the fear that Huntington strikes up about the failure of immigrants to assimilate linguistically, he fails to explain why he finds bilingualism so threatening, especially given that he himself points to evidence that today's second generation actually favors English over their parents' native language. His fears seem especially provincial in the light of the fact that people from other regions of the globe, such as Europe, are fluently bilingual, if not multilingual. Moreover, if bilingualism is such a grave threat, then why do many American high schools and colleges offer foreign language courses? The great irony here is that, while we encourage the native-born to adopt a second language, we fail to encourage immigrants to retain their native tongue while they learn English.

Even more vexing about Huntington's disdain for bilingualism is that social science research has consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development. As early as 1962, Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert found that, controlling for social class, ten-year-old children in Canada who spoke both French and English scored higher on a variety of cognitive and intelligence tests. They concluded that bilingual children demonstrated greater cognitive flexibility and a greater ability to engage with abstract concepts than their counterparts who spoke only one language. Among today's children of immigrants, the benefits of bilingualism are unequivocal: controlling for social class, bilinguals among all ethnic groups tend to have higher grade point averages, higher standardized test scores, higher math scores, higher levels of self-esteem, and a more positive orientation toward higher education (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Zhou and Bankston, 1998). In short, bilingualism has a positive effect on academic achievement.

But the benefits of bilingualism go far beyond the classroom. The economic and social forces behind globalization make bilingualism an invaluable resource (Bean and Stevens, 2003; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). Other countries around the globe such as Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany, China, Japan, and Korea, among others, support bilingualism, yet the United States—an industrialized, first-world, cosmopolitan country—remains unparalleled in its support for English monolingualism. Rather than regarding bilingualism as a sign of cultural bifurcation, perhaps we should view it as do most countries around the globe, that is, as an intellectual and cultural resource.

SOCIOECONOMIC MOBILITY: EDUCATIONAL AND OCCUPATIONAL ASSIMILATION

Earlier studies have often painted a dismal portrait of socioeonomic mobility among Mexicans in the United States, pointing to their persistently low levels of education and income across generations (Grogger and Trejo, 2002). These studies show that there is only a small gain in the number of years of education between the first and second generation, and an even smaller gain between the second and third generation, suggesting that Mexicans appear to gain less than one year of education across three generations. A similarly pessimistic portrait emerges in earlier studies that focus on patterns of intragenerational mobility with respect to earnings. Previous research highlighted that, although Mexicans narrowed the wage gap with native-born Whites between the first and second generation, by the third generation they not only lost this advantage, but actually widened the income gap. Hence, these earlier studies concluded that the pattern of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility among Latinos—and Mexicans in particular—appeared to be painfully slow and grim, raising doubts about the realistic possibility of socioeconomic incorporation and mobility in the foreseeable future.

However, those earlier studies analyzed intergenerational mobility using cross-sectional data, that is, data that examines different generations from a single snapshot in time. By relying on cross-sectional data, researchers compared first-, second-, and third-generation Mexicans of the same age in the same year, and drew unwarranted conclusions about intergenerational mobility. Recognizing this methodological flaw, James P. Smith (2003) corrected the error by pooling together information from a number of studies to realign the sons and grandsons of Mexican immigrants. In so doing, Smith measured intergenerational mobility longitudinally rather than cross-sectionally, and his findings offer a far more optimistic picture. For instance, Smith shows that the average length of education for a first-generation Mexican male born between 1905 and 1909 was only 4.3 years. His second-generation son more than doubled his years of schooling with 9.3 years, and his third-generation grandson completed high school, with an average of 12.2 years of education. Thus, within three generations, Mexican males gained an average of eight years of schooling and completed high school.

Smith finds similar gains in income across the generations among Mexican males, with each succeeding generation narrowing the wage gap between themselves and their native-born White counterparts. For instance, over the course of his lifetime, a first-generation Mexican male born between 1895 and 1899 earned on average about 55% as much as his native-born White male counterpart, but by the second generation the wage gap narrowed to 25%, and by the third generation the gap had narrowed even further, reaching 16%. Moreover, when Smith adjusted for skills differences caused by education, the wage disparity declined to only 10%. In short, Smith's more recent findings reveal that, with each successive generation, Mexicans have narrowed the educational and income gap with native-born Whites, thus suggesting that how we measure intergenerational mobility profoundly colors our results. Furthermore, Smith's findings debunk Huntington's fears that Mexicans are not following the time-honored path of socioeconomic incorporation: not only are they are committed to assimilating into America's educational and occupational structure, but they are also demonstrating impressive signs of intergenerational mobility.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Perhaps no other topic in U.S. immigration is as contentious as the issue of illegal immigration, particularly from Mexico. As Huntington notes, the size of the undocumented population in the United States is not trivial. In the year 2001, social scientists estimated the total number of undocumented migrants at about 7.8 million, with 4.5 million coming from Mexico (Bean et al., 2001). Among recent Mexican arrivals who came to the United States between 1995 and 2000, more than 80% are estimated to be here illegally (Passel et al., 2004). These numbers have seared into the American consciousness that most Mexicans have entered the country illegally, by surreptitiously crossing the U.S. border. Some policy makers have responded that the most effective way to reduce illegal immigration is to employ stronger border control and enforcement policies that will effectively keep this undeserving and undesirable lot of Mexicans out of the country.

Here, Mae Ngai's book provides enormous insight into the way in which we have come to understand illegal immigration. Ngai forcefully argues that illegal status is not a natural or fixed concept but, instead, a construct of legal policies that have changed over time and have favored some national origin groups over others. Beginning with the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act (the nation's first comprehensive immigration restriction law) and ending with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, Ngai charts the historical origins of illegal immigrants as well as the emergence of illegal immigration as a central problem for U.S. immigration policy.

Prior to the 1920s, immigration to the United States was numerically unrestricted, but in the 1920s, for the first time in U.S. history, the United States created a legal barrier between the United States and Mexico where none had existed before. The border between Mexico and the United States had long been the site of informal crossings, but the restrictive policies of the new immigration laws essentially gave birth to the concept of “undocumented” Mexican migrants. Because Mexican migrants crossed the border without going through the new—and previously unheard of—formal channels of entry and inspection, they came to be classified as “undocumented” and, hence, defined as “illegal aliens.”

Using the U.S. Bracero Program as an illustrative example, Ngai carefully depicts how legal and illegal immigration often went hand in hand. Between 1948 and 1964, the United States imported on average 200,000 braceros a year to work as migratory farm workers. Yet because more Mexicans wanted to become braceros than the Mexican government could accommodate, and because there was more demand for braceros in the United States—especially in states like Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, where employers were ineligible to use them—employers increasingly turned to undocumented Mexicans as a cheap source of labor. The fact that the bracero program and undocumented migration worked in tandem illustrates that the boundary between “legal” and “illegal” is little more than a construct of U.S. immigration policies, not a reflection of a difference in the character of the migrants themselves. When the bracero program came to an end in 1964, illegal immigration from Mexico increased yearly, which Ngai emphasizes is the result of policy makers who chose to focus exclusively on the problem of labor supply while turning a blind eye to labor demand.

Illegal immigration may be a social construct of U.S. immigration policies, but Ngai shows that the construct has very real consequences. White Americans came to view Mexicans—regardless of U.S. citizenship—as “foreigners” and “wetbacks” with dangerous criminal tendencies. Furthermore, the social construction of the Mexican “wetback” was diametrically opposed to the legal European immigrant, as Ngai explains: “The ‘wetback’ stood at the nation's back door, as a foil for the putatively legal, desirable, and freedom-loving European seeking entrance through the main gate” (p. 247). This construction essentially codified European immigrants as “assimilable,” and Mexicans as “unassimilable.”

When the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act finally repealed the system of national origins quotas and introduced a preference system based on family reunification and occupationally based skills, a principle of formal equality in immigration was established. The new policy instituted a quota of 20,000 per country, and a quota of 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere (without country-specific limits or preferences). However, in 1976 Congress extended the logic of formal equality for all nations by imposing a quota of 20,000 per country on the Western Hemisphere, thus placing the greatest pressure on Mexico and Canada, the largest sending countries in the hemisphere. By drastically reducing the legal migration flow from Mexico, the country witnessed a rise in undocumented immigrants, which led in turn to a skyrocketing rise in the number of deportations. For instance, in 1968 the number of deportations to Mexico increased 40% to 151,000, and in 1976 deportations increased more than five-fold to 781,000, revealing again that changes in immigration policies generate increases in undocumented migration.

As a result of rising deportations, “undocumented immigrants” became increasingly synonymous with “Mexican immigrants.” Consequently, the problem of undocumented immigration could be blamed on the Mexican migrant rather than the policy makers who created such restrictive immigration policies, and the solution to the problem would therefore be stricter border enforcement. Douglas Massey and his colleagues advance a similar argument to explain the rise in the growth of the undocumented Mexican population in the 1990s (Massey et al., 2002). They establish that the militarization of the border transformed what had previously been a circular flow of Mexican male migrant workers into a settled population of families. Thus, their findings underscore Ngai's thesis that the rise in undocumented immigration reflects not a change in the aspirations or character of the Mexican migrants, but in U.S. immigration and border-control policies.

POLITICAL INCORPORATION

Many social scientists, including Huntington, regard naturalization as the single most important dimension of political incorporation. Historically, Mexican immigrants have exhibited a comparatively low rate of naturalization, in part because many arrive as undocumented migrants. Yet Huntington claims that the low rates reflect their lack of overriding desire to naturalize and that when immigrants do become citizens, they do so mainly to take advantage of government programs such as welfare benefits and affirmative action rather than to fulfill a desire to become American citizens.

Because naturalization is the most significant indicator of political incorporation, the question of whether Mexican immigrants (especially those who enter the United States as undocumented migrants) naturalize is a critical one. Until recently, longitudinal data about the transitions in migration status was non-existent. However, a new study, “Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA),” sheds light on this important question.¹

In addition, the IIMMLA study reveals that fathers' naturalization translates into increased gains in human capital among the children of immigrants. Having a father who naturalized increases the likelihood that his children will complete high school and college. In contrast, fathers' continued unauthorized status severely truncates the educational attainment among his children. These divergent patterns suggest that immigrants' motivation to naturalize derives from their desire to provide better opportunities for mobility for themselves and their children, not to take advantage of social welfare benefits. In sum, not only do the majority of fathers who enter the United States as undocumented migrants eventually change their legal status, but the change in status also translates into greater educational mobility patterns among their children.

These findings point to an optimistic portrait of political incorporation among today's immigrants, even among those who face the greatest obstacles to naturalization. Hence, along many of the major dimensions of incorporation—residential, linguistic, socioeconomic, and political—today's immigrants are following the time-honored path of assimilation into their host society, much as their European predecessors did at the turn of the twentieth century.

THE NEW SECOND GENERATION

While most immigration research focuses on the incorporation processes of the first generation, far fewer studies center on the “new second generation,” that is, the children of the post-1965 wave of immigrants. However, now that the children of immigrants are reaching adulthood, social scientists are increasingly turning their attention to this group, for they represent the most consequential and lasting legacy of the new immigration (Lee and Zhou, 2004; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Waters 1999; Zhou and Bankston, 1998). Becoming New Yorkers, the volume edited by Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters, is the newest addition to the growing body of research that focuses on this dynamic population.

Born out of a larger study on the second generation in metropolitan New York, Becoming New Yorkers focuses on second-generation Latinos, Asians, Whites, and Blacks, examining their experiences of straddling different cultures and growing up American. Each of the authors in the volume employs a qualitative lens, using in-depth interviews and/or observation, to investigate questions about education, work, politics, and identity. Becoming New Yorkers provides rich and textured data that gives voice to the members of the second generation, and allows us to understand their experiences from their own perspectives. While the volume would have benefited from an introductory chapter offering some general descriptive statistics about the larger sample of respondents to help place the qualitative studies within a broader context, the illustrative examples and layered descriptions provided by the authors more than compensate for this shortcoming.

What makes the second-generation group unique is that they are growing up in one of the most diverse places in the United States, New York City. More than half of the city's population is of immigrant stock, and 29% of New Yorkers between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two are the children of immigrants. While growing up in an immigrant household may not be unusual in multiethnic New York, this does not imply that the process of becoming American is necessarily a smooth one. A central theme resonating throughout the chapters is that class and gender shape the incorporation processes among the second generation at least as much as ethnicity, underscoring the heterogeneity that lies within these broad ethnic categories. Hence, when we think about assimilation processes, we need to keep in mind that differences abound with respect to ethnicity, class, and gender, and the way that these variables interact in a multicultural setting such as New York.

In the chapters on education, the authors find that women generally outperform men. The gender gap is particularly glaring among second-generation Dominicans, a group with relatively low levels of academic achievement. The gender difference is attributable in part to the stronger social control that parents exert over their daughters in order to shield them from the lure of the streets, which has the positive—if unintended—consequence of allowing them to devote more time and attention to their school work. In contrast, because parents tend to give their sons more leeway to go out, this greater freedom translates into less time spent on homework and consequently, lower levels of academic achievement.

Yet parental practices do not alone suffice to explain the gender differences in academic performance among Dominican youth. Females also perform better in school than males because they are less stigmatized because of their race. While teachers appreciate and reward traditional female behavior, they often perceive young Dominican males as threatening, aggressive, and rebellious. These perceptions go well beyond the classroom, for society perceives and treats Dominican young men like potential criminals, hoodlums, and drug dealers. In turn, Dominican males respond with cynicism about the value of education in a society that seems to limit the upward mobility of dark-skinned males. In other words, Dominican males' outlook on education results from their cumulative experiences with racialization in the school context and beyond.

At the opposite end of the education spectrum are some second-generation Asian ethnic groups such as the Chinese and Koreans, whose parents expect their children to attain the minimum of a bachelor's degree, preferably from an Ivy League university. These groups have been touted as “model minorities,” having succeeded in getting ahead through a simple formula of hard work, perseverance, and determination. Not only do second-generation Asians excel in school, many of them, especially Koreans, are quickly moving out of the ethnic economy in just one generation—a rate that is unprecedented and particularly remarkable given that it took European immigrants two or three generations to do the same (Lee 2002). Armed with their college educations and White middle-class speech patterns and mannerisms, the majority of Korean youth leave the ethnic economy in favor of professional employment in the mainstream labor market. In stark contrast to Dominican males, who have become cynical about their prospects for mobility, this highly successful group of middle-class Koreans embraces the American Dream and the ideals embodied in the American Creed.

However, it would be a mistake to characterize all second-generation Asians as fitting the “model minority” stereotype. Chapters of Becoming New Yorkers also clearly depict the class cleavages within these ethnic groups. For example, the “downtown” Chinese who attend Hunter College pale in comparison to the successful “uptown” Chinese who attend Columbia University. In addition, working-class Korean youth who do not fit the “model minority” stereotype—those who do not attend an elite university, have not graduated from college, or have not secured high-salaried, professional jobs—feel constrained by the stereotype, are embarrassed by their “failure,” and do not feel authentically “Korean American.” Consequently, working-class Koreans limit their interaction with coethnics and disassociate themselves from the Korean American community because, compared to their more “successful” counterparts, they feel like underachieving anomalies who do not belong in the ethnic community. Consequently, in a remarkable inversion of the classic assimilation model, the less successful working-class second-generation Koreans prefer to date and marry across racial and ethnic lines (Lee 2004).

Another chapter examines the identity processes among second-generation West Indian youth, who often find that their immigrant and ethnic identities are irrelevant in a society that recognizes “Blackness” on sight and little else. What is remarkable about the context in which second-generation West Indian youth form their identities is that they grow up in a city in which West Indian immigrants and their children now outnumber African Americans. In 2000, 54% of Blacks in New York City were West Indian. In a city in which Black is hardly a monolithic category, West Indians recognize that an African American racial identity carries with it a social stigma, so they go to great lengths to distance themselves from African Americans. However, the second-generation West Indian youth find this increasingly difficult when they are “raced” in school, and defined and treated as Black American.

Yet the West Indians are hardly a homogeneous group, and class divisions abound as middle-class West Indians draw sharp boundaries between “us” and “them,” the latter being working-class and poor coethnics. The middle-class “us” consider themselves well-educated, well-mannered, church-attending, and are conscious of their presentation of self and their property. In contrast, their poorer counterparts are just the opposite. Overall, Becoming New Yorkers vividly illustrates that the story of assimilation among the new second generation is one shaped not only by ethnicity, but also, and just as importantly, by class and gender.

COLOR LINES OLD AND NEW

As each of the books under review explains, most of today's immigrants are neither exclusively Black nor exclusively White. Hence, today's newcomers may be moving the nation far beyond the traditional and relatively persistent Black-White color line that has long divided the country—a demarcation reflecting the practice of slavery, its legacy of discrimination, and a history of Black social and economic disadvantage (Bobo 1997; Drake and Cayton, 1945[1993]; Massey and Denton, 1993; Myrdal 1944; Patterson 1998; Smelser et al., 2001; Wilson 1987). This fault line was of course famously prophesied more than a century ago by W. E. B. Du Bois when he proclaimed that the “problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line” (1903[1997], p. 45). But in a society that is no longer captured by the categories of Black and White alone, how relevant is the color line? And where do today's newest immigrants fit along the bipolar divide?

Chapter 11 of Huntington's Who Are We? is his most thought-provoking and theoretically interesting. Here, he raises the question of whether the historically enduring Black-White fault line will be replaced by a new cultural divide that separates Hispanics from other Americans. Pointing to the rise in intermarriage and multiracial identification, Huntington argues that racial boundaries are fading, and racial identities becoming less salient. Huntington stresses that, while race is declining in significance for all groups, Hispanic culture is intensifying, as evidenced by the growing Hispanic community and the persistence of bilingualism. Together, these trends threaten to solidify the cultural bifurcation of the country so that “the cultural division between Hispanics and Anglos will replace the racial division between Blacks and Whites as the most serious cleavage in American society” (2004b, p. 324).

While I have argued that Huntington's fears about persistent bilingualism and residential concentration among Hispanics are unfounded, he raises an interesting question about the future of America's fault line. Is the Black-White divide narrowing more quickly than the Latino-White divide? Drawing on the sociocultural indicators that he himself employs—intermarriage and multiracial identification—Huntington appears to be wrong on two counts. First, he erroneously concludes that the Black-White racial divide is quickly vanishing. Second, he prematurely presumes that the gulf between Latinos and Whites will soon become wider than that between Blacks and Whites.

The trends in intermarriage and patterns of multiracial identification support these points. Not only are Latinos more likely to intermarry than Blacks, they are also more likely to claim a multiracial identification. For instance, in 2000 only 12.6% of Black marriages were exogamous, compared to 29.3% of Latino marriages (Lee and Bean, 2004; Lee et al., 2004). While more than one out of every four married Latinos has a partner of a different racial background, the figure for Blacks is only one in eight. When we examine the intermarriage rates among U.S.-born Latinos, the rate is even higher: in 2000, 41.5% of marriages containing a native-born Latino were exogamous, typically involving a White partner (Lee et al., 2004). The comparatively higher rate of intermarriage among native-born Latinos indicates that, as they incorporate into the United States, not only do Latinos become receptive to intermarriage, but Whites also perceive Latinos as suitable marriage partners. Hence, the trends in intermarriage point to a narrowing, not a widening, divide between Whites and Latinos. In contrast, while the rate of Black-White intermarriage more than doubled in the 1970s and 1980s, the intermarriage rate for Blacks remains relatively low, indicating that the Black-White divide is narrowing much more slowly than the Latino-White divide (Kalmijn 1993; Lee and Bean, 2004; Perlmann 2000).

The rise in intermarriage has resulted in the growth of the multiracial population in the United States. This population became especially visible when for the first time in the nation's history the 2000 U.S. Census allowed Americans to select “one or more races” to indicate their racial identification. In 2000, 6.8 million Americans, or 2.4% of the population, identified themselves as multiracial, translating into one out of every forty Americans. Although this figure may not appear large, a recent National Academy of Science study reported that, given the trends in intermarriage, the multiracial population could soar to 21% by the year 2050 (Smith and Edmonston, 1997). Along with trends in intermarriage, the rate of multiracial reporting provides yet another barometer of declining social distance and fading boundaries between groups.

Huntington posits that multiracialism has become so “chic” in the twenty-first century that White and Black Americans readily acknowledge their multiracial heritage. However, analyses of the 2000 Census suggest otherwise: Whites and Blacks have the lowest rates of multiracial reporting, accounting for only 2.3% and 4.2% of the total White and Black populations, respectively. In contrast, the rates of multiracial reporting among Latinos and Asians are considerably higher, at 16.4% and 12.4%, respectively (Lee and Bean, 2004).

What is particularly vexing about the low rate of multiracial reporting among Blacks is that the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that at least three-quarters of the Black population in the United States are ancestrally multiracial, though just over 4% choose to claim a multiracial background. The tendency of Black Americans not to report a multiracial identification undoubtedly owes to the legacy of slavery, including the legal invocation of the “one-drop” rule of hypodescent, by which all people with any trace of Black ancestry were considered racially Black (Davis 1991). However, in the absence of the legal invocation of the one-drop rule, ideational, institutional, and cultural factors continue to operate to keep the Black rate of multiracial identification relatively low, thereby prolonging the salience of the Black-White color line (Lee and Bean, 2005).

The different rates of intermarriage and multiracial identification speak volumes about where the country's boundaries are dissolving most rapidly. Based on these patterns, the fault line appears to be fading more quickly for Latinos than for Blacks, indicating that the traditionally persistent Black-White color line remains more salient than the Latino-White cultural divide. Huntington provides evidence of this himself, noting that three-quarters of White Americans think of themselves in racial terms such as “White” or “Caucasian” as opposed to cultural terms such as “European American” or “Anglo.” Because identities are socially and dialectically constructed, how White Americans choose to identify themselves has important implications for how they view “the other.” That an overwhelming majority of Whites identify racially rather than culturally would seem to signal that “the other” is Black, not Hispanic. Hence, rather than sounding the alarm about the emergence of a Latino-White cultural divide, we should be far more concerned about the persistence of the racial divide that continues to separate Blacks from other groups.

In fact, what seems to be emerging is the birth of a new “Black/non-Black” divide, which places many Blacks in a position of disadvantage similar to that of the traditional Black-White divide (Gans 1999; Lee and Bean, 2004; Waters 1999; Yancey 2003). Such a divide could have disastrous consequences for Blacks in the United States. Accordingly, rather than raising unwarranted fears about the “unassimilability” of today's Latino immigrants, we should continue to uncover and eradicate the mechanisms that effectively reinforce the boundary between Blacks and other groups. Only when boundary dissolution has become uniform and unconditional will we as a nation be able to claim that we are truly living up to the ideals and values embodied in the American Dream and the American Creed.