"In this volume Douglas Massey has brought together some of the best of the first wave scholarship on these 'new destinations.' With an eclectic mix of demography, quantitative analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnography New Faces in New Places provides the best overview we have so far of what is happening in these communities"
-CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

"The historically unprecedented geographic dispersal of U.S. immigrants is redefining inter-group relations and labor markets. Using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods, Douglas S. Massey and his collaborators address myriad aspects of this unfolding social narrative to identify its causes and consequences for the newcomers, for their host communities, for their employers, and for their families. This volume should be required reading for state and local officials in the new immigrant destinations, for political pundits obsessed with enforcement, and U.S. representatives who will reform future immigration laws. New Faces in New Places is another home run!"
-MARTA TIENDA, Maurice P. During '22 Professor in Demographic Studies and professor of sociology and public affairs, Princeton University

"This enlightening volume aims to explain the dramatic shift in the geography of immigrant settlement since the 1990s, and to explore its wide-ranging consequences for new receiving communities in the South and Midwest-from changed intergroup relations to the responses of local institutions and the immigrants themselves. New Faces in New Places is essential reading to grasp this historic transformation of American communal and national life."
-RUBEN G. RUMBAUT, professor of sociology, University of California, Irvine

"The rapid dispersion of immigrants to rural areas, big cities, towns and suburbs in every region of the United States is one of the most important sociological and demographic developments of the turn of the century. As immigrants arrive and begin to change the face of their newly found gateways, local residents react and often resist the sudden transformation of familiar landscapes. The essays brought together by Douglas Massey in this volume show that whether in the nation's capital, in vibrant Nashville, or in the meatpacking towns of the Midwest, the sinuous path that lies ahead will provide many surprises. Aptly balancing macro and micro perspectives and quantitative and qualitative approaches, New Faces in New Places maps out the complex route of settlement, incorporation, and inter-group relations in new immigrant destinations, and is bound to become a necessary point of reference in this burgeoning field."
-RUBÉN HERNÁNDEZ-LEÓN, assistant professor of sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Beginning in the 1990s, immigrants to the United States increasingly bypassed traditional gateway cites such as Los Angeles and New York to settle in smaller towns and cities throughout the nation. With immigrant communities popping up in so many new places, questions about ethnic diversity and immigrant assimilation confront more and more Americans. New Faces in New Places, edited by distinguished sociologist Douglas Massey, explores today’s geography of immigration and examines the ways in which native-born Americans are dealing with their new neighbors.

Using the latest census data and other population surveys, New Faces in New Places examines the causes and consequences of the shift toward new immigrant destinations. Contributors Mark Leach and Frank Bean examine the growing demand for low-wage labor and lower housing costs that have attracted many immigrants to move beyond the larger cities. Katharine Donato, Charles Tolbert, Alfred Nucci, and Yukio Kawano report that the majority of Mexican immigrants are no longer single male workers but entire families, who are settling in small towns and creating a surge among some rural populations long in decline. Katherine Fennelly shows how opinions about the growing immigrant population in a small Minnesota town are divided along socioeconomic lines among the local inhabitants. The town’s leadership and professional elites focus on immigrant contributions to the economic development and the diversification of the community, while working class residents fear new immigrants will bring crime and an increased tax burden to their communities. Helen Marrow reports that many African Americans in the rural south object to Hispanic immigrants benefiting from affirmative action even though they have just arrived in the United States and never experienced historical discrimination. As Douglas Massey argues in his conclusion, many of the towns profiled in this volume are not equipped with the social and economic institutions to help assimilate new immigrants that are available in the traditional immigrant gateways of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. And the continual replenishment of the flow of immigrants may adversely affect the nation’s perception of how today’s newcomers are assimilating relative to previous waves of immigrants.

New Faces in New Places illustrates the many ways that communities across the nation are reacting to the arrival of immigrant newcomers, and suggests that patterns and processes of assimilation in the twenty-first century may be quite different from those of the past. Enriched by perspectives from sociology, anthropology, and geography New Faces in New Places is essential reading for scholars of immigration and all those interested in learning the facts about new faces in new places in America.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.

CONTRIBUTORS: Carl L. Bankston III, Frank D. Bean, Chiara Capoferro, Katharine M. Donato, Katherine Fennelly, David Griffith, Charles Hirschman, Michael Jones-Correa, William Kandel, Yukio Kawano, Mark A. Leach, Helen B. Marrow, Alfred Nucci, Emilio A. Parrado, Debra Lattanzi Shutika, Charles Tolbert, Jamie Winders. 

"Steady Gains and Stalled Progress is an important collection and a worthy successor to Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips' classic The Black-White Test-Score Gap. It offers new evidence that highlights the complexities of racial inequality and provides a basis for cautious optimism for the future."
-ADAM GAMORAN, professor of sociology and educational policy studies and director, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"The black-white gap in test scores is one of the most stubborn and mystifying challenges facing the United States. And while it is hard to separate fact from statistical artifact and personal belief, Katherine Magnuson and Jane Waldfogel have produced a thorough and insightful volume that accomplishes just that. Even experts in education policy will come away having learned something new."
-CECILIA E. ROUSE, Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

"Few trends have tested the optimism of the Civil Rights era more than the stubborn persistence of the black-white achievement gap. Steady Gains and Stalled Progress assembles a major league team of social scientists to examine possible explanations for the puzzling career of this gap. Their penetrating analysis will be essential reading for anyone interested in education, social equity, or the future of the American workforce."
-CHARLES T. CLOTFELTER, professor of public policy studies, economics, and law, Duke University

Addressing the disparity in test scores between black and white children remains one of the greatest social challenges of our time. Between the 1960s and 1980s, tremendous strides were made in closing the achievement gap, but that remarkable progress halted abruptly in the mid 1980s, and stagnated throughout the 1990s. How can we understand these shifting trends and their relation to escalating economic inequality? In Steady Gains and Stalled Progress, interdisciplinary experts present a groundbreaking analysis of the multifaceted reasons behind the test score gap—and the policies that hold the greatest promise for renewed progress in the future.

Steady Gains and Stalled Progress shows that while income inequality does not directly lead to racial differences in test scores, it creates and exacerbates disparities in schools, families, and communities—which do affect test scores. Jens Ludwig and Jacob Vigdor demonstrate that the period of greatest progress in closing the gap coincided with the historic push for school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Stagnation came after efforts to integrate schools slowed down. Today, the test score gap is nearly 50 percent larger in states with the highest levels of school segregation.  Katherine Magnuson, Dan Rosenbaum, and Jane Waldfogel show how parents’ level of education affects children’s academic performance: as educational attainment for black parents increased in the 1970s and 1980s, the gap in children’s test scores narrowed. Sean Corcoran and William Evans present evidence that teachers of black students have less experience and are less satisfied in their careers than teachers of white students. David Grissmer and Elizabeth Eiseman find that the effects of economic deprivation on cognitive and emotional development in early childhood lead to a racial divide in school readiness on the very first day of kindergarten. Looking ahead, Helen Ladd stresses that the task of narrowing the divide is not one that can or should be left to schools alone. Progress will resume only when policymakers address the larger social and economic forces behind the problem. Ronald Ferguson masterfully interweaves the volume’s chief findings to highlight the fact that the achievement gap is the cumulative effect of many different processes operating in different contexts.

The gap in black and white test scores is one of the most salient features of racial inequality today. Steady Gains and Stalled Progress provides the detailed information and powerful insight we need to understand a complicated past and design a better future.

KATHERINE MAGNUSON is assistant professor of social work and a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

JANE WALDFOGEL is professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Berends, Mary E. Campbell, Sean P. Corcoran, Elizabeth Eiseman, William N. Evans, Ronald F. Ferguson,  David Grissmer,  Robert Haveman,  Helen F. Ladd,  Jens Ludwig, Roberto V. Penaloza,  Meredith Phillips,  Dan T. Rosenbaum,  Jacob L. Vigdor, Tina Wildhagen, Barbara L. Wolfe.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

"How to inform the judicial mind," Justice Frankfurter remarked during the school desegregation cases, "is one of the most complicated problems." Social research is a potential source of such information. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, with activist courts at the forefront of social reform, the field of law and social science came of age. But for all the recent activity and scholarship in this area, few books have attempted to create an intellectual framework, a systematic introduction to applied social-legal research.

Social Research in the Judicial Process addresses this need for a broader picture. Designed for use by both law students and social science students, it constructs a conceptual bridge between social research (the realm of social facts) and judicial decision making (the realm of social values). Its unique casebook format weaves together judicial opinions, empirical studies, and original text. It is a process-oriented book that teaches skills and perspectives, cultivating an informed sensitivity to the use and misuse of psychology, social psychology, and sociology in apellate and trial adjudication. Among the social-legal topics explored are school desegregation, capital punishment, jury impartiality, and eyewitness identification.

This casebook is remarkable for its scope, its accessibility, and the intelligence of its conceptual integration. It provides the kind of interdisciplinary teaching framework that should eventually help lawyers to make knowledgeable use of social research, and social scientists to conduct useful research within a legally sophisticated context.

WALLACE D. LOH is professor of law and adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Washington.

"In The Colors of Poverty Ann Chih Lin and David Harris bring together a stellar roster of scholars to argue that racial inequality does not stem from a single powerful socioeconomic disadvantage, but from multiple disadvantages that accumulate over time to undermine decisively the life chances of poor minorities. Attempts to find one underlying cause of poverty and eliminate it with a magic policy bullet, they argue, are doomed to failure. This insight should guide all future research and policy on poverty in the United States."
-DOUGLAS S. MASSEY, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

"The Colors of Poverty has it all–theory, data, and policy. It treats a wide range of substantive topics and is inclusive of the full 'color' spectrum in the United States, not just blacks and whites. Ann Chih Lin and David R. Harris, and the chapter authors, bring a fresh perspective to the vexing problem of race-based disadvantage. You may not need any other book on your syllabus."
-MARY PATTILLO, professor of sociology and African American studies, Northwestern University

"The Colors of Poverty, the product of an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars, explores the key issues at the intersection of race, poverty, and public policy. The book's eleven chapters are sophisticated, comprehensive, and well-balanced. Anyone who wants to understand the multiple and overlapping causes of the persistence of racial disadvantage in the United States could not do better than to study this book."
-PAUL A. JARGOWSKY, professor of public policy, University of Texas at Dallas

Given the increasing diversity of the nation—particularly with respect to its growing Hispanic and Asian populations—why does racial and ethnic difference so often lead to disadvantage? In The Colors of Poverty, a multidisciplinary group of experts provides a breakthrough analysis of the complex mechanisms that connect poverty and race.

The Colors of Poverty reframes the debate over the causes of minority poverty by emphasizing the cumulative effects of disadvantage in perpetuating poverty across generations. The contributors consider a kaleidoscope of factors that contribute to widening racial gaps, including education, racial discrimination, social capital, immigration, and incarceration. Michèle Lamont and Mario Small grapple with the theoretical ambiguities of existing cultural explanations for poverty disparities.  They argue that culture and structure are not competing explanations for poverty, but rather collaborate to produce disparities. Looking at how attitudes and beliefs exacerbate racial stratification, social psychologist Heather Bullock links the rise of inequality in the United States to an increase in public tolerance for disparity. She suggests that the American ethos of rugged individualism and meritocracy erodes support for antipoverty programs and reinforces the belief that people are responsible for their own poverty. Sociologists Darren Wheelock and Christopher Uggen focus on the collateral consequences of incarceration in exacerbating racial disparities and are the first to propose a link between legislation that blocks former drug felons from obtaining federal aid for higher education and the black/white educational attainment gap. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram argue that the increasingly decentralized and discretionary nature of state welfare programs allows for different treatment of racial groups, even when such policies are touted as “race-neutral.” They find that states with more blacks and Hispanics on welfare rolls are consistently more likely to impose lifetime limits, caps on benefits for mothers with children, and stricter sanctions.

The Colors of Poverty is a comprehensive and evocative introduction to the dynamics of race and inequality. The research in this landmark volume moves scholarship on inequality beyond a simple black-white paradigm, beyond the search for a single cause of poverty, and beyond the promise of one “magic bullet” solution.

ANN CHIH LIN is associate professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan.

DAVID R. HARRIS is professor of sociology and deputy provost at Cornell University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Scott W. Allard, Heather E. Bullock, George Farkas, David R. Harris, Michèle Lamont, Ann Chih Lin, Selina A. Mohammed, Devah Pager, Lincoln Quillian, Rozlyn Reed, Sanford F. Schram, Mario Luis Small, Joe Soss, Michael A. Stoll, Christopher Uggen, Darren Wheelock, and David R. Williams

A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

Winner of the 2008 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

"Ivan Light's Deflecting Immigration makes a valuable contribution, one that illuminates various trends either overlooked or left unaddressed in the standard scholarship about immigration in the United States."
-SCIENCE MAGAZINE

"Ivan Light offers a bold thesis of how local policies shape immigrant incorporation in middle-class America ... Deflecting Immigration argues immigration policy in America is implemented at the municipal, not federal level."
-DOWELL MYERS, professor of urban planning and demography, University of Southern California

"Ivan Light's Deflecting Immigration is a book of multiple and long overdue contributions to immigration research at a time when existing paradigms are reaching exhaustion ... [T]his book has filled a gap in the emerging literature on new immigrant destinations, showing that in order to explain what is happening in uncharted areas of settlement, we need to understand what is unfolding in America's premier immigrant gateway."
-RUBÉN HERNÁNDEZ-LEÓN, assistant professor of sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

"Deflecting Immigration provides a new and insightful interpretation of the reason for the growing immigrant diaspora from the coastal gateway cites of the United States ... The book is an important contribution to the debate about immigration, its intersection with local communities, and the long-term implications for the spatial redistribution of immigrants."
-WILLIAM A. V. CLARK, professor of geography, University of California, Los Angeles

As international travel became cheaper and national economies grew more connected over the past thirty years, millions of people from the Third World emigrated to richer countries. A tenth of the population of Mexico relocated to the United States between 1980 and 2000. Globalization theorists claimed that reception cities could do nothing about this trend, since nations make immigration policy, not cities. In Deflecting Immigration, sociologist Ivan Light shows how Los Angeles reduced the sustained, high-volume influx of poor Latinos who settled there by deflecting a portion of the migration to other cities in the United States. In this manner, Los Angeles tamed globalization’s local impact, and helped to nationalize what had been a regional immigration issue.

Los Angeles deflected immigration elsewhere in two ways. First, the protracted network-driven settlement of Mexicans naturally drove up rents in Mexican neighborhoods while reducing immigrants’ wages, rendering Los Angeles a less attractive place to settle. Second, as migration outstripped the city’s capacity to absorb newcomers, Los Angeles gradually became poverty-intolerant. By enforcing existing industrial, occupational, and housing ordinances, Los Angeles shut down some unwanted sweatshops and reduced slums. Their loss reduced the metropolitan region’s accessibility to poor immigrants without reducing its attractiveness to wealthier immigrants. Additionally, ordinances mandating that homes be built on minimum-sized plots of land with attached garages made home ownership in L.A.’s suburbs unaffordable for poor immigrants and prevented low-cost rental housing from being built. Local rules concerning home occupancy and yard maintenance also prevented poor immigrants from crowding together to share housing costs. Unable to find affordable housing or low-wage jobs, approximately one million Latinos were deflected from Los Angeles between 1980 and 2000.

The realities of a new global economy are still unfolding, with uncertain consequences for the future of advanced societies, but mass migration from the Third World is unlikely to stop in the next generation. Deflecting Immigration offers a shrewd analysis of how America’s largest immigrant destination independently managed the challenges posed by millions of poor immigrants and, in the process, helped focus attention on immigration as an issue of national importance.

IVAN LIGHT is professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"[T]his is a valuable guide to the current state of transnational research and theory, and as such should be considered essential
reading for immigration scholars."
-JOURNAL OF AMERICAN ETHNIC HISTORY

"Levitt and Waters have assembled, in this book, engaging, provocative approaches to transnationalism and the second generation that should be read by all scholars in these fields."
- CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

"In The Changing Face of Home, leading scholars integrate diverse methodologies and theoretical positions to investigate the extent to which the children of immigrants will retain ties to their families' countries of origin. Offering the best definition of the concept of transnationalism available, and drawing upon evidence collected from a wide array of brilliant case studies, it contributes significantly to our understanding of contemporary migrants' identities and behaviors. It is a must read for those who wish to keep abreast of the ways by which human movement continues to transform social life."
- STEVEN J. GOLD, Michigan State University

"This is one of these rare books that clears a wide and exciting path for future scholarship. By putting together such an impressive collection of insightful articles, Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters add considerable knowledge and precision to a disorderly interdisciplinary field that has attracted, and can only continue to attract, enormous interest. They and their coauthors are particularly sensitive to how transnationalism shapes definitions of personal and collective identities and imagined communities. As such, they help push the field of immigration toward a truly multidimensional understanding of the transnational lives of the second generation."
- MICHÈLE LAMONT, Princeton University

"A treasure trove anthology that includes chapters on a wide array of different immigrant groups, this book breaks new ground through comparative, nuanced analysis and searing research questions that offer readers a state-of-the-art summary while setting the stage for a new generation of scholarship. Provocative and pioneering, The Changing Face of Home shifts research on second generation immigrants in a critical new direction that will keenly interest policy makers, planners and academics alike."
- SARAH J. MAHLER, Florida International University

The children of immigrants account for the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population under eighteen years old—one out of every five children in the United States. Will this generation of immigrant children follow the path of earlier waves of immigrants and gradually assimilate into mainstream American life, or does the global nature of the contemporary world mean that the trajectory of today's immigrants will be fundamentally different? Rather than severing their ties to their home countries, many immigrants today sustain economic, political, and religious ties to their homelands, even as they work, vote, and pray in the countries that receive them. The Changing Face of Home is the first book to examine the extent to which the children of immigrants engage in such transnational practices.

Because most second generation immigrants are still young, there is much debate among immigration scholars about the extent to which these children will engage in transnational practices in the future. While the contributors to this volume find some evidence of transnationalism among the children of immigrants, they disagree over whether these activities will have any long-term effects. Part I of the volume explores how the practice and consequences of transnationalism vary among different groups. Contributors Philip Kasinitz, Mary Waters, and John Mollenkopf use findings from their large study of immigrant communities in New York City to show how both distance and politics play important roles in determining levels of transnational activity. For example, many Latin American and Caribbean immigrants are "circular migrants" spending much time in both their home countries and the United States, while Russian Jews and Chinese immigrants have far less contact of any kind with their homelands.

In Part II, the contributors comment on these findings, offering suggestions for reconceptualizing the issue and bridging analytical differences. In her chapter, Nancy Foner makes valuable comparisons with past waves of immigrants as a way of understanding the conditions that may foster or mitigate transnationalism among today's immigrants. The final set of chapters examines how home and host country value systems shape how second generation immigrants construct their identities, and the economic, social, and political communities to which they ultimately express allegiance.

The Changing Face of Home presents an important first round of research and dialogue on the activities and identities of the second generation vis-a-vis their ancestral homelands, and raises important questions for future research.

PEGGY LEVITT is assistant professor of sociology, Wellesley College.

MARY C. WATERS is professor of sociology, Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Merih Anil, Susan Eckstein, Yen Le Espiritu, Nancy Foner, Georges E. Fouron, Nina Glick-Schiller, Michael Jones-Correa, Philip Kasinitz, Nazli Kibria, Peggy Levitt, Andrea Louie, John H. Mollenkopf, Joel Perlmann, Ruben G. Rumbaut, Robert C. Smith, Thom Tran, Reed Ueda, Milton Vickerman, Mary C. Waters, and Diane L. Wolf.

As the United States wages war on terrorism, the country's attention is riveted on the Muslim world as never before. While many cursory press accounts dealing with Muslims in the United States have been published since 9/11, few people are aware of the wealth of scholarly research already available on the American Islamic population. In Muslims in the United States: The State of Research, Karen Isaksen Leonard mines this rich vein of research to provide a fascinating overview of the history and contemporary situation of American Muslim communities.

Leonard describes how Islam, never a monolithic religion, has inevitably been shaped by its experience on American soil. American Muslims are a religious minority, and arbiters of Islamic cultural values and jurisprudence must operate within the framework of America's secular social and legal codes, while coping with the ethnic differences among Muslim groups that have long divided their communities. Arab Muslims tend to dominate mosque functions and teaching Arabic and the Qur'an, whereas South Asian Muslims have often focused on the regional and national mobilization of Muslims around religious and political issues. By the end of the 20th century, however, many Muslim immigrants had become American citizens, prompting greater interchange among these groups and bridging some cultural differences.

African American Muslims remain the most isolated group—a minority within a minority. Many African American men have converted to Islam while in prison, leading to a special concern among African American Muslims for civil and religious rights within the prison system. Leonard highlights the need to expand our knowledge of African American Muslim movements, which are often not regarded as legitimate by immigrant Muslims. Leonard explores the construction of contemporary American Muslim identities, examining such factors as gender, sexuality, race, class, and generational differences within the many smaller national origin and sectarian Muslim communities, including secular Muslims, Sufis, and fundamentalists.

Muslims in the United States provides a thorough account of the impact of September 11th on the Muslim community. Before the terrorist attacks, Muslim leaders had been mostly optimistic, envisioning a growing role for Muslims in U.S. society. Afterward, despite a brave show of unity and support for the nation, Muslim organizations became more open in showing their own conflicts and divisions and more vocal in opposing militant Islamic ideologies.

By providing a concise summary of significant historical and contemporary research on Muslims in the United States, this volume will become an essential resource for both the scholar and the general reader interested in understanding the diverse communities that constitute Muslim America.

KAREN ISAKSEN LEONARD is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

Winner of the 2011 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography

“The Diversity Paradox provides much needed clarity on the complex issues of the new (and old) diversity in American society. . . . Lee and Bean provide a thorough documentation of recent demographic changes and a clear and compelling synthesis of the research literature on the new American diversity.”
–CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY 

“Using an impressive arsenal of quantitative and qualitative data, Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean offer an authoritative analysis of the color line in American society, revealing a remarkable paradox at the heart of contemporary intergroup relations. . . . Their careful analysis challenges both glib assertions of a post-racial order as well as pronouncements about the immutability of America’s racial categories.”
–DOUGLAS S. MASSEY, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, the Woodrow Wilson School 

“The study of multiracial identification is both timely and theoretically significant. Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean combine their distinct sensibility and nuanced sociological imagination with rigorous application of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to make a seminal contribution to research on interracial dynamics that will forever challenge our understanding of race in twenty-first century America.”
–MIN ZHOU, professor of sociology and Asian American studies, UCLA 

“Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean have produced a penetrating analysis of how the new immigration and a rapidly growing multiracial population have complicated America’s racial and ethnic hierarchies. Through a combination of demographic analysis and in-depth interviews, they reveal a remarkable blurring of racialized boundaries for some groups in many places, while they also detect the stubborn persistence of a color line. The Diversity Paradox challenges old notions of race and ethnicity and brings unusual clarity to understanding a changing America.”
–EDWARD TELLES, professor of sociology, Princeton University 

“Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean’s comprehensive, data-filled, and insightful analysis adds considerably to our understanding of multiracial life in America. The Diversity Paradox is a very welcome and greatly needed book, for the study of multiracials will be high on immigration, race, and ethnicity research agendas in the coming years. The book’s report about the country’s ethnoracial present and future should be of special interest to students. They will be spending their adult lives in an America marked by the paradoxical treatment of diverse nonwhite people about which Lee and Bean write.”
–HERBERT J. GANS, Robert S. Lynd Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Columbia University

African Americans grappled with Jim Crow segregation until it was legally overturned in the 1960s. In subsequent decades, the country witnessed a new wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America—forever changing the face of American society and making it more racially diverse than ever before. In The Diversity Paradox, authors Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean take these two poles of American collective identity—the legacy of slavery and immigration—and ask if today’s immigrants are destined to become racialized minorities akin to African Americans or if their incorporation into U.S. society will more closely resemble that of their European predecessors. They also tackle the vexing question of whether America’s new racial diversity is helping to erode the tenacious black/white color line.

The Diversity Paradox uses population-based analyses and in-depth interviews to examine patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification among Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. Lee and Bean analyze where the color line—and the economic and social advantage it demarcates—is drawn today and on what side these new arrivals fall. They show that Asians and Latinos with mixed ancestry are not constrained by strict racial categories. Racial status often shifts according to situation. Individuals can choose to identify along ethnic lines or as white, and their decisions are rarely questioned by outsiders or institutions. These groups also intermarry at higher rates, which is viewed as part of the process of becoming “American” and a form of upward social mobility. African Americans, in contrast, intermarry at significantly lower rates than Asians and Latinos. Further, multiracial blacks often choose not to identify as such and are typically perceived as being black only—underscoring the stigma attached to being African American and the entrenchment of the “one-drop” rule. Asians and Latinos are successfully disengaging their national origins from the concept of race—like European immigrants before them—and these patterns are most evident in racially diverse parts of the country.

For the first time in 2000, the U.S. Census enabled multiracial Americans to identify themselves as belonging to more than one race. Eight years later, multiracial Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. For many, these events give credibility to the claim that the death knell has been sounded for institutionalized racial exclusion. The Diversity Paradox is an extensive and eloquent examination of how contemporary immigration and the country’s new diversity are redefining the boundaries of race. The book also lays bare the powerful reality that as the old black/white color line fades a new one may well be emerging—with many African Americans still on the other side.

JENNIFER LEE is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

FRANK D. BEAN is Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology and Economics and director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine.

"Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley have brought together an outstanding group of scholars who have written thoughtful and original articles on conceptions of social class as applied to education, politics, health, identity, family, gender inequality, and urban life. Social Class is an important book that will become a standard reference for those interested in a more sophisticated understanding of the workings of social class in daily life."
-WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Harvard University

"In a time of large income inequalities and high college tuitions, it is natural to ask whether social class is becoming an increasingly important feature in American life. Social Class: How Does It Work? provides the theory, data, and range of scholarly views needed to address this question."
- FRANK LEVY, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"For years to come, Social Class will feed an as of yet too infrequent dialogue between experts who draw on qualitative and quantitative data to advance the study of inequality. In their frontier research, contributors develop an empirically-based definition of class, study new manifestations of class inequality, analyze how it intersects racial and gender inequality, specify mechanisms of class reproduction, and definitely put to rest the view that class does not matter. In doing so, this first-rate collection moves us toward a more integrated under- standing of the cultural and structural determinants and manifestations of inequality."
-MICHÈLE LAMONT, Harvard University

Class differences permeate the neighborhoods, classrooms, and workplaces where we lead our daily lives. But little is known about how class really works, and its importance is often downplayed or denied. In this important new volume, leading sociologists systematically examine how social class operates in the United States today. Social Class argues against the view that we are becoming a classless society. The authors show instead the decisive ways social class matters—from how long people live, to how they raise their children, to how they vote.

The distinguished contributors to Social Class examine how class works in a variety of domains including politics, health, education, gender, and the family. Michael Hout shows that class membership remains an integral part of identity in the U.S.—in two large national surveys, over 97 percent of Americans, when prompted, identify themselves with a particular class. Dalton Conley identifies an intangible but crucial source of class difference that he calls the “opportunity horizon”—children form aspirations based on what they have seen is possible. The best predictor of earning a college degree isn’t race, income, or even parental occupation—it is, rather, the level of education that one’s parents achieved. Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger find that parental involvement in the college application process, which significantly contributes to student success, is overwhelmingly a middle-class phenomenon. David Grusky and Kim Weeden introduce a new model for measuring inequality that allows researchers to assess not just the extent of inequality, but also whether it is taking on a more polarized, class-based form. John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson examine the academic careers of students in three social classes and find that poorly performing students from high-status families do much better in many instances than talented students from less-advantaged families. Erik Olin Wright critically assesses the emphasis on individual life chances in many studies of class and calls for a more structural conception of class. In an epilogue, journalists Ray Suarez, Janny Scott, and Roger Hodge reflect on the media’s failure to report hardening class lines in the United States, even when images on the nightly news—such as those involving health, crime, or immigration—are profoundly shaped by issues of class.

Until now, class scholarship has been highly specialized, with researchers working on only one part of a larger puzzle. Social Class gathers the most current research in one volume, and persuasively illustrates that class remains a powerful force in American society.

ANNETTE LAREAU is professor of sociology at University of Maryland, College Park.

DALTON CONLEY is University Professor at New York University.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Clem Brooks, Richard M. Carpiano, John Goldthorpe, David B. Grusky,  Angel L. Harris, Roger D. Hodge,  Michael Hout,  Michelle Jackson,  Kathryn Lacy, Bruce G. Link,  Jeff Manza,  Leslie McCall,  Mary Pattillo,  Jo C. Phelan,  Janny Scott,  Ray Suarez,  Kim A. Weeden, Elliot B. Weininger, Erik Olin Wright.

"Anyone who wants to gain an authoritative understanding of what race and ethnicity mean in the contemporary United States should read this book. The facts are here, along with some theoretical perspectives that will help us to interpret them. A recurrent theme of the essays is that racism has not died and been replaced by genuine color-blindness, as some recently have claimed, but has taken on insidious new forms. The authors demonstrate statistically and in other ways that 'structural' or 'systemic' inequality based on race or color has not only persisted but in some respects gotten worse in the last two or three decades. The issues raised by the distinguished sociologists and other scholars who have contributed to this volume require the urgent attention of all Americans who aspire to create a more just and equal society."
-GEORGE M. FREDRICKSON, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of History Emeritus, Stanford University

"A collection of remarkably well-integrated research articles and theoretical essays on how the meanings, uses, and practices of race are constantly evolving. Highly recommended."
-TROY DUSTER, professor of sociology, New York University, and president, American Sociological Association

The legal institutions of overt racism in the United States have been eliminated, but social surveys and investigations of social institutions confirm the continuing significance of race and the enduring presence of negative racial attitudes. This shift from codified and explicit racism to more subtle forms comes at a time when the very boundaries of race and ethnicity are being reshaped by immigration and a rising recognition that old systems of racial classification inadequately capture a diverse America. In The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, editors Maria Krysan and Amanda Lewis bring together leading scholars of racial dynamics to study the evolution of America’s racial problem and its consequences for race relations in the future.

The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity opens by attempting to answer a puzzling question: how is it that so many whites think racism is no longer a problem but so many nonwhites disagree? Sociologist Lawrence Bobo contends that whites exhibit what he calls “laissez faire racism,” which ignores historical and structural contributions to racial inequality and does nothing to remedy the injustices of the status quo. Tyrone Forman makes a similar case in his chapter, contending that an emphasis on “color blindness” allows whites to be comforted by the idea that all races are on a level playing field, while not recognizing the advantages they themselves have reaped from years of inequality. The book then moves to a discussion of the new ways that Americans view race. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Karen Glover argue that the United States is moving from a black-white divide to a tripartite system, where certain light-skinned, non-threatening minority groups are considered “honorary whites.” The book’s final section reexamines the theoretical underpinnings of scholarship on race and ethnicity. Joe Feagin argues that research on racism focuses too heavily on how racial boundaries are formed and needs to concentrate more on how those boundaries are used to maintain privileges for certain groups at the expense of others. Manning Marable contends that racism should be addressed at an institutional level to see the prevalence of “structural racism”—deeply entrenched patterns of inequality that are coded by race and justified by stereotypes.

The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity provides an in-depth view of racism in modern America, which may be less conspicuous but not necessarily less destructive than its predecessor, Jim Crow. The book’s rich analysis and theoretical insight shed light on how, despite many efforts to end America’s historic racial problem, it has evolved and persisted into the 21st century.
 

MARIA KRYSAN is associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology. She is a fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois, Chicago.

AMANDA E. LEWIS is assistant professor in the Departments of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois, Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: Lawrence D. Bobo, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Sharon M. Collins, Korie Edwards, Reynolds Farley, Joe R. Feagin, Tyrone A. Forman, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Karen S. Glover, Nakisha Harris, Maria Krysan, Amanda E. Lewis, Manning Marable, Charles W. Mills, and Geoff Ward.