Immigration & the Color Line at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Bean, Frank D.; Lee, Jennifer; Bachmeier, James D.

doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00223

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July 01 2013

Immigration & the Color Line at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Frank D. Bean,

Frank D. Bean

FRANK D. BEAN is Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where he is also Director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy. His publications include The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in Twenty-First Century America (with Jennifer Lee, 2010), America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity (with Gillian Stevens, 2003), and Immigration and Opportunity: Race, Ethnicity, and Employment in the United States (edited with Stephanie Bell-Rose, 1999).

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Jennifer Lee,

Jennifer Lee

JENNIFER LEE is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her publications include The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in Twenty-First Century America (with Frank D. Bean, 2010), Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (edited with Min Zhou, 2004), and Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America (2002).

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James D. Bachmeier

JAMES D. BACHMEIER is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. His research focuses on Mexican migration to and within the United States, as well as the incorporation of second- and later-generation Mexican immigrants, especially in the areas of education, the labor market, and health. He has published articles in several journals, including Social Forces, Social Science Research, and International Migration Review.

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Author and Article Information

Frank D. Bean

FRANK D. BEAN is Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where he is also Director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy. His publications include The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in Twenty-First Century America (with Jennifer Lee, 2010), America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity (with Gillian Stevens, 2003), and Immigration and Opportunity: Race, Ethnicity, and Employment in the United States (edited with Stephanie Bell-Rose, 1999).

Jennifer Lee

JENNIFER LEE is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her publications include The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in Twenty-First Century America (with Frank D. Bean, 2010), Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (edited with Min Zhou, 2004), and Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America (2002).

James D. Bachmeier

JAMES D. BACHMEIER is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. His research focuses on Mexican migration to and within the United States, as well as the incorporation of second- and later-generation Mexican immigrants, especially in the areas of education, the labor market, and health. He has published articles in several journals, including Social Forces, Social Science Research, and International Migration Review.

Online ISSN: 1548-6192

Print ISSN: 0011-5266

2013

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits copying and redistributing the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode.

Daedalus (2013) 142 (3): 123–140.

https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00223

Abstract

The “color line” has long served as a metaphor for the starkness of black/white relations in the United States. Yet post-1965 increases in U.S. immigration have brought millions whose ethnoracial status seems neither black nor white, boosting ethnoracial diversity and potentially changing the color line. After reviewing past and current conceptualizations of America's racial divide(s), we ask what recent trends in intermarriage and multiracial identification – both indicators of ethnoracial boundary dissolution – reveal about ethnoracial color lines in today's immigrant America. We note that rises in intermarriage and multiracial identification have emerged more strongly among Asians and Latinos than blacks and in more diverse metropolitan areas. Moreover, these tendencies are larger than would be expected based solely on shifts in the relative sizes of ethnoracial groups, suggesting that immigrationgenerated diversity is associated with cultural change that is dissolving ethnoracial barriers – but more so for immigrant groups than blacks.

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2013

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits copying and redistributing the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode.

Immigration & the Color Line at the Beginning of the 21st Century

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