NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT:Case Study: Ethnoracial Minority

The Present Focus and Approach Apart from propounding conjectures like those just described, social scientists have only begun to analyze the role the new immigration has played in shap- ing contemporary ethnoracial issues. Unanswered questions abound. On which side of the color line do the new immigrant groups fall? In the case of Mexican immigrants, is their experience more like that of immigrant ethnic groups or more like that of racial minority groups (Bean and Stevens 2003; Skerry 1993; Telles and Ortiz 2008)? Stated differently, do the incorporation experiences of the mainly Asian and Latino new immigrants more closely parallel those of earlier-arriving immigrant groups, such as Italians—who were rather completely incorporated by the end of the 1960s (Alba 1990, 2009)—or of African Americans, who are still substantially poorly incorporated (Bean and Bell-Rose 1999)? Is immigration loosening ethnoracial boundaries by increasing diver- sity, which in turn helps to foster mechanisms generating greater tolerance for all ethnoracial minority groups? Or has the rapid growth of nonwhite groups through immigration generally increased perceptions among majority whites that their superordinate position is threatened, leading to intensification of white efforts to maintain the divide between themselves and other groups?

We seek to answer such questions with considerable caution and humility for two reasons. First, perhaps no topic in American social science has com- manded more attention—or at least more fervent attention—than the coun- try’s ethnoracial issues. We realize that many of the arguments we introduce here as possible answers to such questions have previously been advanced by others, often in terms that are both eloquent and profound (see, for example, Alba and Nee 2003; Cornell and Hartmann 1998; Foner and Fredrickson 2004; Foner 2006; Gans 1999; Gerstle 2001; Itzigsohn 2009; Jaynes 2000; Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, and Waters 2002; Kasinitz et al. 2008; Lieberson 1980; Massey 2007; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008; Waldinger 1996; Waters 1999b). Here we draw and build on this rich body of work, seeking to synthesize previous findings and to organize and present in one place several new and relevant kinds of evidence. This offers the possibility of developing new insights by scrutinizing boundary-breaking behaviors and experiences, allowing us to discern the existence and strength of ethnoracial divides involving multiple, not just two, ethnoracial groups in early-twenty- first-century America. It also helps clarify the roles that immigration and diversity are playing in dissolving or maintaining such divides.