How Migration Is Reshaping Black America Today: The “Mainstreaming” of American Minorities, Part 5

One of the main purposes of these posts, sourced mostly from the three books whose covers are shown on the posts, is to help build a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of race in America today.  I also hope that many readers will find the posts to be less polarizing than so much of what we see on the subject from the media and politicians, which often is intended to rile us up and drive us further into our respective political corners. The goal of these posts, like most Lone Liberal Republican posts, is to work towards more sensible, pragmatic and consensus-oriented discussions about difficult issues that America faces today, like race.

Immigration and the Remaking of Black America (2019)

●     In Immigration and the Remaking of Black America, Hamilton highlights the growing demographic importance of black immigration to the U.S., illustrates the vast diversity of America’s black population in the twenty-first century, and dismisses existing scholarly and widespread assumptions of homogeneity. By cautioning against treating the black American population as a monolith, the author hopes changes and estimates will be accessed more accurately when measuring the social outcomes and progress of the population. Some interesting and thought-provoking material from the book follows:

●       “Since 1960 the number of black immigrants living in the United States has grown from around 125,000 to 4.1 million persons. Foreign born blacks now comprise about ten percent of the U.S. black population and their children make up sixteen percent of black births in the United States.”

●       “The people who depart the nation of their birth and relocate to a foreign country necessarily constitute a very select subset of the origin population… Voluntary migrants virtually by definition are selected on the basis of unobservable characteristics such as ambition, risk-taking, endurance, and willingness to work, as well as on the basis of observable characteristics such as age, gender, health and education.” [Note: This reality should help dispel notions that most immigrants are jobless and rely on U.S. government benefits.]

●       As stated in the book’s preface, "[Hamilton] argues that the overall African American population is not the proper reference group against which to compare the performance of black immigrants. Instead, he focuses on black internal migrants [those who move within the United States], who are similarly selected on the basis of observable and unobservable traits that promote movement. He shows that, like immigrants, native-born black movers display better labor market outcomes than nonmovers. Indeed, outcomes for black movers [within the United States] are quite similar to those observed for black immigrants, suggesting that it is migrant selectivity and not immigrant culture that accounts for immigrant-native performance differentials.” [Emphasis mine.]

●       “[Hamilton] concludes that reductions in racial discrimination enabled by civil rights policies were a necessary condition for the emergence of the immigrant-native differentials we observe today."

●       "With respect to health, black immigrants display a better profile upon arrival than either black movers or nonmovers. The health of both native black movers and native black nonmovers is always worse than that of whites, but the health of most black immigrant groups is similar to or better than that of white Americans, indicating strong positive selection [of who moves to the United States] on the basis of health.”

●       "With respect to rates of marriage, native blacks are less ‎likely to marry than whites irrespective of their mobility status. In contrast, black immigrants have much higher marriage rates compared to black natives; the marriage profile of African immigrants is similar to that observed for whites."

●       "Rates of intermarriage between native blacks and whites remain quite low compared with Hispanics and Asians, and black immigrants who were unmarried at the time of arrival have even lower intermarriage rates with whites than black natives. Instead, black immigrants tend to marry conationals, suggesting mate selection on the basis of ‎common culture and languages. Nonetheless, black immigrants are more likely to marry native black Americans than native white Americans, indicating that race continues to be a salient barrier to black-white marriage in the United States. Among black natives, movers are more likely to marry whites than nonmovers."

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If you find the subject matter in these The Mainstreaming of Minorities posts interesting, check out this link to the late Arthur Schlesinger’s book The Disuniting of America, foreshadowing the difficult place identity politics would lead us. (I used to get scolded for suggesting people read it.) All twelve of the posts can be found in the “For Those With More Academic Interests” section on the Lone Liberal Republican website.

As always, thanks for reading and sharing, and be well.