Beyond the Melting Pot

Bing Crosby paved the way for JFK.

By
21

With Jonah off on a clandestine mission to Turkey, Chris Stirewalt takes his place in the Remnant captain’s chair for a wonktastic dive into American demography. His guest is Dr. Richard Alba, a sociologist and the author of The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream, which explores America’s changing racial makeup and the increasing prevalence of Americans born from mixed families. Their discussion touches on a number of pressing questions. Can we rely on Census data? What does assimilation mean in America today? And how can we create more opportunities for young Americans to move into? 

Show Notes:

– Dr. Alba’s page at CUNY

– Dr. Alba’s The Great Demographic Illusion

– Chris: “America’s No-Majority Future Is Going to be Delicious”

– Dr. Alba: “The Truth About White America”

– Dr. Alba: “The Myth of a Majority-Minority America”

– The Remnant with Ruy Teixeira

By
Comments (21)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Hartzlk

    Hi, Chris. Mere hours after listening to this podcast today, I read your name in the Jan 6 committee final report. Classic "Hey! I was just listening to that guy!" moment.
    That was you, right? Not a name double?

    Collapse
  2. Rodbean

    :-)

    Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    It was time for another Stirewalt episode. I, too, love this country very much. I, too, love the diversity of Washington DC.

    Collapse
  4. Mary Stine

    Loved this! I read a quote once by Tom Clancy about his shock at discovering Scotsmen and Irishmen, Catholic and Protestant, all sharing a tall glass and friendship in a NY bar in the late 1950's.
    Now in 2022 I have a beautiful and charming daughter-in-law of Belizean ancestry (Mayan, African, French) married to my son with 99% Celtic ancestry. Their two children are so beautiful people stop their cars on the street to ask questions! (At least that's their grandma's interpretation!). My entire family is thrilled about this marriage and love my daughter-in-law and her wonderful family. Thanks to this union we are slowly beginning to understand the constant strife people of color face in this country. What many of us do not realize, because we have tried very hard to be polite, kind and color blind, is that a significant loud minority of Americans are trying to be just the opposite: rude, hateful and bigoted, not to mention very loud.
    One of the answers to this sorry behavior was brought out by your excellent guest, Dr. Alba. "Race alone does not tell us everything.." People of color are not monolithically Democrat..many are actually quite conservative and would prefer to vote for a conservative candidate. I've lived in Brazoria county and it is true that most people there are conservative and Republican, regardless of their ethnicity.

    Collapse
  5. Paulkempf

    Fascinating guest; thanks, Chris. As an urban person born during WW2 & raised in the Northeast (NJ, RI), so much of what he describes matches my own recollections of how race and ethnicity has evolved, even though our contrasting political philosophies (he sees inequality as a scourge to be expunged, I gather, instead of inspiring, & a reflection of freedom, opportunity, & dynamism.)

    A thing that has struck me is how Old Country distinctions (Sicilians vs Neapolitans vs Pugliese vs ?) dissolve in the spirit of "I against my brother; I & my brother against my cousins; I, my brother, & my cousins against the world." Creating an Italian-American (or Irish-American, or...) identity is a step toward becoming American. Newly-arrived Sephardics would learn Yiddish before they learned English. Just as newly arrived Guatemalans, who may have grown up speaking an indigenous language, learn Spanish to assimilate into the local Central American community. There are also external political pressures: the awkward Hispanic designation created artificially in hopes of forming a political bloc, modeled I believe on the creation of a Black identity. (I don't see it discussed today, but the adoption of the term Black, originally popularized by Marcus Garvey and others of similar persuasion, was chosen to create a more inclusive identity for Americans of African descent, since those with roots in the West Indies rejected the term Negro, which they argued should only apply to the descendants of American slaves. I have the impression that an Asian identity is being similarly forged, especially in the universities, among those of disparate (and often antagonistic) backgrounds.

    The emerging Asian identity is reminiscent of how in midcentury people of assimilated English-Scots Irish--even German--heritage began to refer to themselves as WASPs, in order to create an ethnicity for themselves. (By contrast, I see the Hispanic identity as imposed externally, though I'm open to being corrected.)

    What troubles me is there seems to be a desire within MAGA to synthesize a white identity that didn't exist midcentury (at least in the Northeast; nobody called himself white, not even the WASPs) and that seems designed to lay claim to being an oppressed minority. Strong "where's mine" energy.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      CynthiaW

      "(By contrast, I see the Hispanic identity as imposed externally, though I'm open to being corrected.)"

      I agree that this is the case historically. However, "Hispanic" is useful in some contexts. My church congregation includes people from all "races" and 15 to 20 countries, but it's not unusual to hear anyone say "nosotros Hispanos" when the subject is what members of the congregation have in common or ways in which the group differs from the "American" congregation. This is not to say that "Hispanics" don't think of themselves as "American," both as residents or citizens of the United States and as people with origins in "the Americas." It's complicated!

      When it comes to futbol, the group splits between South Americans and Mexican/Central American/ Caribbean, as long as there is more than one team from Latin America playing. If there's only one left, like Argentina, then everyone roots for them. Some years ago, Mexico played Colombia on a Sunday afternoon, and there was nobody at church except the Puerto Ricans and my family. Our deacon was in a fuss, but we told him there was no point telling us: we were the ones at church!

      Collapse
      1. Seth

        Great story!

        Reminds me of living in Nebraska, where anyone who knew the locals understood you couldn't schedule weddings or funerals on a Husker game day.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          CynthiaW

          We used to go to church at the University of Oklahoma parish. All the charitable groups made tons of money renting the parking lot for Sooners games, and the youth group made enough to go to Rome doing parking for the Rolling Stones concert. 1998/9? The concert rattled the windows at our house, three miles away.

          Collapse
  6. Mwupton

    This was the most Remnant-y guest hosted Remnant episode I can recall. Despite Stirewalt's throat clearing in the beginning about doing what he wanted with Jonah on vacation, he had a conversation that fell right in the sweet spot of politics and wonkery the show does best.

    No one should be disappointed with Jonah's absence for this one.

    Collapse
  7. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    At about 26 minutes in (in the Google Podcasts version), Dr. Alba says that in 2020, the Census Bureau unilaterally changed respondents' racial self-categorization based on information the respondents included about their ancestry. Only in one direction, of course: to reduce the number of "white" people.

    This is outrageous. Is it any wonder that trust in our government is at a nadir?

    If anyone would like to explain why a reasonable person should not believe that our government intentionally divides the country into competing "race" categories and intentionally sets them against one another for sordid gain, I'm listening.

    Collapse
    1. Mary Stine

      We just completed two in-person interviews with the Census Bureau and that was not our impression at all. It seemed to my hubby, myself and the interviewer that the government was simply striving for greater accuracy. In the past many people, especially those who might be suspected of illegal immigration, were reluctant to disclose their true ancestry. The interviewer was careful to emphasize that the census bureau was not informing ICE.
      He was also careful to point out that we could also state "unknown".
      We didn't do that, thanks to Ancestry.com we know that 100% of our ancestors going back over 500 years are all Celt, Scandinavian, British Isles and Germanic Europe. So, "white" would be the correct colloquial descriptor, however, that leaves out a lot.
      One of the things the census is looking at is the overall health of different groups of citizens. Ethnic background would be one group, financial means might be another, grouping by age was another consideration for health.
      Now that we have a far greater number of gene markers related to DNA, we have deeper information on what diseases may be more prevalent in certain groups. The highest levels of cystic fibrosis, for example, might be found in those of Irish descent. Better census information on ethnic backgrounds can help
      government health groups plan and budget, especially for diseases of childhood that might be prevented or eliminated with early intervention.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        CynthiaW

        Dr. Alba wasn't talking about a Census interviewer. He was talking about surveys that had already been collected and were at the Bureau's data center.

        Although the uses mentioned are not irrational, I find it, at best, improbable that the government is using reports of Irish ancestry to target help to possible Cystic Fibrosis carriers in the population and at worst, totalitarian.

        Collapse
        1. Mary Stine

          Who collected that data? I was assuming most of it came from Census Bureau records? I'll go back and listen again more carefully and try not to bang dishes.
          Also, totalitarian governments don't give a damn about the health of their citizens unless Dear Leader is inconvenienced.
          I don't feel it is wrong for a government of a large, diverse country like ours to have an accurate account of citizen group numbers. At the very least this might. ameliorate the constant disinformation from the fringes.
          On the other hand, of course reports and statistics can always be used badly. That's happened before, but I'm not at all sure that is what is happening here.
          We've just lived through a deadly pandemic, that just might come back and kill more of us. I, for one, would like all the information possible on who survived and why. And that will require looking at our ethnicity as well as our lifestyle choices.

          Collapse
          1. Avatar photo
            CynthiaW

            Totalitarian means "involved in every aspect of life," and that's what we're talking about, including changing individuals' identification of their own "race" to what the government thinks it should be.

            I have no faith in their goodwill or their competence. This is not a statement of partisanship, because I don't care what party affiliation either the elected officials or the bureau employees claim. I have no faith in them because the institutions have no motivation to care about the outcomes of what they do. There are no consequences for doing harm. In this, they are like the media institutions with which they interact so closely.

            If anything beneficial is going to be done regarding the correlation of health risks, lifestyle choices, and ethnicity, individuals and their own families and communities are going to have to do it for themselves.

            Collapse
    2. Mwupton

      This stuck out to me too. What should overall be a positive trend--members of different ethnicities are marrying and/or having children with each other--instead becomes talking point for the worst rhetoric on both sides. The Anti-Racist left gloats over "whites" becoming deposed as the majority, freeing POC from centuries of oppression. The crank xenophobes on the right wring their hands over immigrants taking over the country. Neither actually understand the demographic changes at place, because the government is deliberately obscuring what is taking place.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        CynthiaW

        People will never get on with one another if the government sorts them into "race" boxes and then intentionally favors some at the expense of others.

        Collapse
  8. Lemerk65

    Hey Chris! You pronounced Brazoria exactly right!

    Collapse
  9. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    Oh, good. I love Mr. Stirewalt.

    Collapse