NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT:Sociocultural and Economic Incorporation

On which side of the black-white color line do these new nonwhites fall? If there were convincing reasons that the old black-white divide has largely disappeared, then the question of where the new immigrant groups fall would be largely moot, and the forces driving the color line’s dissolution would also probably work to enhance the sociocultural and economic incorporation of the new immigrant groups. Their successful integration would not constitute a signif- icant societal or public-policy challenge resulting from substantial discrimina- tion against them. If, on the other hand, the historic black-white color line continues to exist, then the question of which side of the divide Latino and Asian immigrants fall on matters a great deal.

In this volume we examine today’s color lines through the intermarriage and multiracial experiences of both blacks and the major, new immigrant groups. We look at these phenomena from a number of different angles. If our inquiries lead us to conclude that Asian and Latino newcomers are positioned on the black side of the line, then it is likely that their sizable numbers over the past thirty years, together with their continuing high rates of current entry, are probably exacerbating long-standing problems in U.S. race relations (Bean et al. 2009). But if Asians and Hispanics (we use the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably here) are falling largely on the white side of the line, it would imply that successful incorporation among the new immigrants is not only