Do different groups have a fair shot at the American dream?
One question lingers amid all the debates about critical race theory: How racist is this land? Anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows about the oppression of the Native Americans, about slavery and Jim Crow. But does that mean that America is even now a white supremacist nation, that whiteness is a cancer that leads to oppression for other groups? Or is racism mostly a part of America’s past, something we’ve largely overcome?
There are many ways to answer these questions. The most important is by having honest conversations with the people directly affected. But another is by asking: How high are the barriers to opportunity for different groups? Do different groups have a fair shot at the American dream? This approach isn’t perfect, but at least it points us to empirical data rather than just theory and supposition.
When we apply this lens to the African American experience, we see that barriers to opportunity are still very high. The income gap separating white and Black families was basically as big in 2016 as it was in 1968. The wealth gap separating white and Black households grew even bigger between those years. Black adults are more than 16 times more likely to be in families with three generations of poverty than white adults.
Research shows the role racism plays in perpetuating these disparities. When, in 2004, researchers sent equally qualified white and Black applicants to job interviews in New York City, dressed them similarly and gave them similar things to say, Black applicants got half as many callbacks or job offers as whites.
When you look at the data about African Americans, the legacies of slavery and segregation and the effects of racism are everywhere. The phrase “systemic racism” aptly fits the reality you see — a set of structures, like redlining, that have a devastating effect on Black wealth and opportunities. Racism is not something we are gently moving past; it’s pervasive. It seems obvious that this reality should be taught in every school.
Does this mean that America is white supremacist, a shameful nation, that the American dream is just white privilege? Well, let’s take a look at the data for different immigrant groups. When you turn your gaze here, the barriers don’t seem as high. For example, as Bloomberg’s Noah Smith pointed out recently on his Substack page, Hispanic American incomes rose faster in recent years than those of any other major group in America. Forty-five percent of Hispanics who grew up in poverty made it to the middle class or higher, comparable to the mobility rate for whites.
Hispanics have lately made astounding gains in education. In 2000, more than 30% of Hispanics dropped out of high school. By 2016, only 10% did. In 1999, a third of Hispanics ages 18-24 were in college; now nearly half are. Hispanic college enrollment rates surpassed white enrollment rates in 2012.
The Hispanic experience in America is beginning to look similar to the experience of Irish Americans or Italian Americans or other past immigrant groups — a period of struggle followed by integration into the middle class.
Economic progress is one thing. What about cultural integration?
A landmark 2015 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that the lives of immigrants and their children are converging with those of their native-born neighbors, in good ways and bad. This pattern applies to how well educated they are, where they live, what language they speak, how their health is and how they organize their families. A study by a Brown University sociologist, for example, found that Mexican immigrants are learning English at increasingly higher rates and growing less isolated from non-Mexican Americans.
Rising intermarriage rates are one product of this integration. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center report, about 29% of Asian American newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, along with 27% of Hispanic newlyweds. The intermarriage rates for white and Black people have roughly tripled since 1980. More than 35% of Americans say that one of their “close” kin is of a different race.
The reality of America encompasses both the truth about structural racism and the truth that America is a land of opportunity for an astounding diversity of groups from around the world. There’s no way to simplify that complexity.
Last week I saw a young Black woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” I took her message as a statement of defiance, pride, determination and hope. If you can keep discordant emotions like that in your head, you can get a feel for this discordant land.
David Brooks is a New York Times columnist.
