THE GREAT DEMOGRAPHIC ILLUSION

A sociologist offers an optimistic, densely argued text about why ethno-racial assimilation will continue to be a part of the American future—and why it’s beneficial and important for the nation.

Few readers will fail to find themselves in this deeply informed book. Alba’s core argument, based on deep demographic research and sociological and historical knowledge, is that the U.S. is not splitting into two distinct populations. Instead, with the exception of African Americans, the integration of new groups into old continues without the loss of groups’ and individuals’ ethno-racial identifications—all very much in the American tradition. Yet even here, black Americans, who identify themselves more with the minority than majority, are making progress. The result is the “prospect of a new kind of societal majority,” one in which, as happened with Catholics and Jews after World War II, the ever broadening mainstream accepts “a visible degree of racial diversity.” From this fact, Alba offers a new narrative “of immigrant-group assimilation,” and he assesses the validity of current controversies over immigration and amalgamation. In arriving at his conclusions, the author sharply criticizes Census Bureau demographic data and statistical analyses for folding the children of mixed marriages into the “non-white” category when many of them consider themselves “white.” This error, he argues, embodies a rigid, outmoded classification of race and ethnicity. It also undermeasures the degree and pace of these changes because “a substantial fraction of these ‘minority’ children will have a white parent.” Yet for all Alba’s optimism, he knows that the process of assimilation now under way won’t be completed until equality and inclusion increase. To that end, he proposes clear social policies that he believes will hasten the process, most of them focusing on directly addressing racism, economic inequality, and educational opportunity.

A heartening, wise, and profoundly important counternarrative to hysteria.