teamosil
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2009
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- Location
- San Francisco
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- Political Leaning
- Liberal
Arizona has been undergoing a simply massive demographic change over the past 30 years or so. In late 70s only about 16% of the state was hispanic. Today 30% of the state is hispanic. The hispanic population of the state has increased by about 1.2 million in the last 30 years. The vast majority of whom are here legally. That is a HUGE number of people for a state of just 6.5 million in total.
It is easy to look at how AZ is handling things recently with regards to hispanics (english only laws, racial profiliing, banning cultural studies courses, firing teachers for having hispanic accents, etc) and just denounce AZ as racist. But, I think that is a pretty shallow way to look at it. The truth is that adapting to a massive cultural change IS hard. It's easy to sit in a state that either hasn't dealt with much demographic change in it's history, or in a state that dealt with it a long time ago and has already adapted, and judge, but the reality is that it really is not easy. The truth is that most states that have had to deal with a big demographic change have had at least some phase of that process where they turned to some pretty racist policies before they finally came around to a better way. Change is hard for people. They're used to things being done one way and they feel like demographic change is forcing them to adapt out of their comfort zone. Cultural paranoia sets in and people make all kinds of nasty assumptions about the new cultural group. Communication across cultural and linguistic barriers is tough and leads to a lot of misunderstandings. People scapegoat the new cultural group for problems they're experiencing. And so on.
This isn't a new story, it has happened over and over and over in US history. New York went through convulsions when the Irish and Italian immigrants came. California passed all kinds of laws designed to harrass Asians when they first moved here in large numbers. Chicago tried to segregate blacks into large, self contained, ghettos when the black population there shot up. There are a dozen similar examples.
The good news is that in the long run, it always ends up as a positive thing. Many of the most economically successful places in the country are also amongst the most diverse, but generally, they're places that have been highly diverse for a long time. Making it over that hump from reacting to a recent demographic change to thriving on it is no easy thing.
So, I think we should talk about what lessons have been learned in US history about how to, and how not to, deal with that kind of demographic change. We shouldn't keep repeating our mistakes, we should learn from them. So, I'm interested to hear what people think. Some lessons I think we've learned:
You can't stop it. Most states or cities that have experienced a massive demographic change have initially tried to prevent that change from happening, but it has never worked once in the whole history of the country. The reasons people move to a new place run far deeper than anything that can really be controlled. No amount of laws attempting to persecute a demographic group will outweigh those factors, it will just cause the whole process to involve a lot more suffering for everybody.
Segregation just multiplies the problems. Cities that have tried to keep the members of the new demographic group separate have universally come to regret that decision. Concentrating the problems related to cultural adaptation just causes them to spiral. Chicago is a great example of this. They designed the whole freeway system around the premise that they would separate out large chunks of the city with few or no roads connecting them to the rest so that they would not "spill over" into the white areas. The result was abject ghettos where the people living in them never really stood a chance of getting out of poverty and it caused the cultural conflict to linger for decades.
Embracing diversity reduces conflict. Cities and states that have fixated on assimilation- in the sense of the new group being expected to drop their culture and assume the culture of the group already there- have always just managed to increase the resentment between the cultures. Understanding and appreciation of the other culture, in both directions, is the key to harmony, not oppression of one culture by another. And, frankly, it is just a whole lot more interesting that way. Diversity of all sorts is the spice of life. Learning to appreciate that rather than to fear it is the way to go.
Leverage the advantages of diversity. This is one thing California does incredibly well. California is incredibly diverse, and not just racially diverse, but we have a huge percentage of the population here that grew up in just about every country in the world. Second only to New York in that regard. And it has turned out to be a massive asset for us in the long run. For example, tech companies thrive on being able to pull in the best talent from all around the world. It is really tough for somebody to travel half way around the world to live somewhere for a job if there isn't anything they are familiar with there culturally. California has a huge variety of Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, middle eastern, South American, and African communities. We have restaurants from all those communities everywhere in the state, we have bi-lingual schools covering dozens of languages, etc. As a result, we've become the perfect place to locate a tech company. You can recruit from anywhere in the world and the people you're recruiting will be comfortable here. Not to mention, we have some of the best restaurants, art, music, etc, in the world because we're able to draw on such a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Looking for ways like that to benefit from demographic change is a far superior way to deal with the change than trying to fight it. Like they say, when the fool sees a wind coming he builds a wind block. When the wise man sees a wind coming he builds a windmill.
It is easy to look at how AZ is handling things recently with regards to hispanics (english only laws, racial profiliing, banning cultural studies courses, firing teachers for having hispanic accents, etc) and just denounce AZ as racist. But, I think that is a pretty shallow way to look at it. The truth is that adapting to a massive cultural change IS hard. It's easy to sit in a state that either hasn't dealt with much demographic change in it's history, or in a state that dealt with it a long time ago and has already adapted, and judge, but the reality is that it really is not easy. The truth is that most states that have had to deal with a big demographic change have had at least some phase of that process where they turned to some pretty racist policies before they finally came around to a better way. Change is hard for people. They're used to things being done one way and they feel like demographic change is forcing them to adapt out of their comfort zone. Cultural paranoia sets in and people make all kinds of nasty assumptions about the new cultural group. Communication across cultural and linguistic barriers is tough and leads to a lot of misunderstandings. People scapegoat the new cultural group for problems they're experiencing. And so on.
This isn't a new story, it has happened over and over and over in US history. New York went through convulsions when the Irish and Italian immigrants came. California passed all kinds of laws designed to harrass Asians when they first moved here in large numbers. Chicago tried to segregate blacks into large, self contained, ghettos when the black population there shot up. There are a dozen similar examples.
The good news is that in the long run, it always ends up as a positive thing. Many of the most economically successful places in the country are also amongst the most diverse, but generally, they're places that have been highly diverse for a long time. Making it over that hump from reacting to a recent demographic change to thriving on it is no easy thing.
So, I think we should talk about what lessons have been learned in US history about how to, and how not to, deal with that kind of demographic change. We shouldn't keep repeating our mistakes, we should learn from them. So, I'm interested to hear what people think. Some lessons I think we've learned:
You can't stop it. Most states or cities that have experienced a massive demographic change have initially tried to prevent that change from happening, but it has never worked once in the whole history of the country. The reasons people move to a new place run far deeper than anything that can really be controlled. No amount of laws attempting to persecute a demographic group will outweigh those factors, it will just cause the whole process to involve a lot more suffering for everybody.
Segregation just multiplies the problems. Cities that have tried to keep the members of the new demographic group separate have universally come to regret that decision. Concentrating the problems related to cultural adaptation just causes them to spiral. Chicago is a great example of this. They designed the whole freeway system around the premise that they would separate out large chunks of the city with few or no roads connecting them to the rest so that they would not "spill over" into the white areas. The result was abject ghettos where the people living in them never really stood a chance of getting out of poverty and it caused the cultural conflict to linger for decades.
Embracing diversity reduces conflict. Cities and states that have fixated on assimilation- in the sense of the new group being expected to drop their culture and assume the culture of the group already there- have always just managed to increase the resentment between the cultures. Understanding and appreciation of the other culture, in both directions, is the key to harmony, not oppression of one culture by another. And, frankly, it is just a whole lot more interesting that way. Diversity of all sorts is the spice of life. Learning to appreciate that rather than to fear it is the way to go.
Leverage the advantages of diversity. This is one thing California does incredibly well. California is incredibly diverse, and not just racially diverse, but we have a huge percentage of the population here that grew up in just about every country in the world. Second only to New York in that regard. And it has turned out to be a massive asset for us in the long run. For example, tech companies thrive on being able to pull in the best talent from all around the world. It is really tough for somebody to travel half way around the world to live somewhere for a job if there isn't anything they are familiar with there culturally. California has a huge variety of Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, middle eastern, South American, and African communities. We have restaurants from all those communities everywhere in the state, we have bi-lingual schools covering dozens of languages, etc. As a result, we've become the perfect place to locate a tech company. You can recruit from anywhere in the world and the people you're recruiting will be comfortable here. Not to mention, we have some of the best restaurants, art, music, etc, in the world because we're able to draw on such a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Looking for ways like that to benefit from demographic change is a far superior way to deal with the change than trying to fight it. Like they say, when the fool sees a wind coming he builds a wind block. When the wise man sees a wind coming he builds a windmill.