The Multicultural Myth

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Hispanic pioneers are making some inroads into Nebraska, Iowa, and the Rocky Mountain states. And Asian professionals are showing up in Dallas, Washington, Omaha, and Minneapolis. Yet minority migration away from the coasts and borders remains small. Even as the melting pot bubbles away, the majority of U.S. counties are still at least 90 percent white.

The dividing lines of the future, though, may have less to do with race than with class and age. Included among the nation's most racially integrated neighborhoods are some middle-class suburban developments built since 1980, according to demographer Reynolds Farley. These new neighborhoods have no established patterns of race or ethnicity. Minority homeowners there are likely to have the same kinds of jobs, children the same age, and the same political views as their white neighbors.

And as older Americans keep their distance from immigrants, younger Americans seem to be drawing closer to them. Sixty-three percent of college freshmen say they socialize frequently with someone from a different racial or ethnic group, according to the University of California's annual American Freshman Survey.

Despite the new white flight of the 1990s, Americans still worship youth, and youth equals diversity.

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