A Portrait of Race and Ethnicity in California


Book Description

This document examines differences in socioeconomic status by racial and ethnic groups in California, exploring changing patterns over time. It analyzes trends and outcomes in demography, geographic distribution, health, education, crime, labor markets, economic status, and political participation. Data on educational outcomes include: education of mothers; English language ability; preschool activities of children ages 3 and 4; reading and math proficiency for grade 4 and 8 public school students; high school completion rates; college completion rates; and measures of basic skills in the adult population. The educational outcomes of Hispanics and African Americans are the lowest among all racial and ethnic groups. Most recent population growth has occurred among Hispanics and Asians. Most counties were predominantly White in 1970, but between 1970-98, the share of Whites declined in all but one county. African Americans have the worst health status of any group. Hispanics often have less access to health care and lower health status than Whites. Health indicators for Asians are similar to those for Whites. Nonwhites generally have lower earnings than whites. Hispanics and African Americans have particularly high unemployment rates. Asian and White family incomes are substantially higher than those for African Americans and Hispanics. The ethnic distribution of those arrested and incarcerated has shifted dramatically. The proportion of Hispanics incarcerated has risen at a faster rate than has the Hispanic proportion of the general population. African Americans experience the highest risk of arrest and incarceration and are most likely to experience violence. Whites are over-represented in the voting population. Asians and Hispanics have the lowest participation rates. An appendix presents additional sources of information. (Contains 103 bibliographic references.) (SM)







Racial Fault Lines


Book Description

"An excellent summary and interpretation of race relations in nineteenth-century California. Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, it is the last and best word on the historical origins of the racial hierarchy that contemporary multiculturalists are struggling to overcome."--George Fredrickson, Stanford University "Sometime soon in the 21st century, all of California's peoples will belong to minorities, and Almaguer's pathbreaking comparative history is indispensable for understanding how and why this society became so racially diverse. His study expands the borders of multicultural scholarship."--Ronald Takaki, University of California, Berkeley "Evocatively written and theoretically compelling, "Racial Fault Lines represents a benchmark in the writing of U.S. history. Almaguer blends sociological paradigms with rich historical narratives in his perspicacious examination of racial and class formation among nineteenth-century Californians. Me




Fit to be Citizens?


Book Description

Shows how science and public health shaped the meaning of race in the early twentieth century. Examining the experiences of Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, this book illustrates the ways health officials used complexly constructed concerns about public health to demean, diminish, discipline, and define racial groups.




The New Race Question


Book Description

The change in the way the federal government asked for information about race in the 2000 census marked an important turning point in the way Americans measure race. By allowing respondents to choose more than one racial category for the first time, the Census Bureau challenged strongly held beliefs about the nature and definition of race in our society. The New Race Question is a wide-ranging examination of what we know about racial enumeration, the likely effects of the census change, and possible policy implications for the future. The growing incidence of interracial marriage and childrearing led to the change in the census race question. Yet this reality conflicts with the need for clear racial categories required by anti-discrimination and voting rights laws and affirmative action policies. How will racial combinations be aggregated under the Census's new race question? Who will decide how a respondent who lists more than one race will be counted? How will the change affect established policies for documenting and redressing discrimination? The New Race Question opens with an exploration of what the attempt to count multiracials has shown in previous censuses and other large surveys. Contributor Reynolds Farley reviews the way in which the census has traditionally measured race, and shows that although the numbers of people choosing more than one race are not high at the national level, they can make a real difference in population totals at the county level. The book then takes up the debate over how the change in measurement will affect national policy in areas that rely on race counts, especially in civil rights law, but also in health, education, and income reporting. How do we relate data on poverty, graduation rates, and disease collected in 2000 to the rates calculated under the old race question? A technical appendix provides a useful manual for bridging old census data to new. The book concludes with a discussion of the politics of racial enumeration. Hugh Davis Graham examines recent history to ask why some groups were determined to be worthy of special government protections and programs, while others were not. Posing the volume's ultimate question, Jennifer Hochschild asks whether the official recognition of multiracials marks the beginning of the end of federal use of race data, and whether that is a good or a bad thing for society? The New Race Question brings to light the many ways in which a seemingly small change in surveying and categorizing race can have far reaching effects and expose deep fissures in our society. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series Copublished with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College










Finding Common Ground


Book Description




Ethnicities


Book Description

The contributors to this volume probe systematically and in depth the adaptation patterns and trajectories of concrete ethnic groups. They provide a close look at this rising second generation by focusing on youth of diverse national origins—Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Filipino, Vietnamese, Haitian, Jamaican and other West Indian—coming of age in immigrant families on both coasts of the United States. Their analyses draw on the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, the largest research project of its kind to date. Ethnicities demonstrates that, while some of the ethnic groups being created by the new immigration are in a clear upward path, moving into society's mainstream in record time, others are headed toward a path of blocked aspirations and downward mobility. The book concludes with an essay summarizing the main findings, discussing their implications, and identifying specific lessons for theory and policy.




Collisions at the Crossroads


Book Description

There are few places where mobility has shaped identity as widely as the American West, but some locations and populations sit at its major crossroads, maintaining control over place and mobility, labor and race. In Collisions at the Crossroads, Genevieve Carpio argues that mobility, both permission to move freely and prohibitions on movement, helped shape racial formation in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining policies and forces as different as historical societies, Indian boarding schools, bicycle ordinances, immigration policy, incarceration, traffic checkpoints, and Route 66 heritage, she shows how local authorities constructed a racial hierarchy by allowing some people to move freely while placing limits on the mobility of others. Highlighting the ways people of color have negotiated their place within these systems, Carpio reveals a compelling and perceptive analysis of spatial mobility through physical movement and residence.