Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, & The Expanding American Mainstream

Some Americans believe that inevitable demographic changes will create a society with a majority made up of minorities for the first time in the United States’ history.

Richard Alba argues that this narrative obscures a more transformative development: the rising numbers of young Americans from ethno-racially mixed families, consisting of one white and one nonwhite parent. He believes young Americans with mixed parentage will play pivotal roles in the country’s demographic future.

Examining the unprecedented significance of mixed parentage in the twenty-first-century United States, Alba will counter the popular demographic beliefs and predictions during a virtual colloquium, “The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream,” on Friday, October 22nd.

This free and open to the public program, presented by the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at UAlbany, will take place from 3 to 4:30 pm, and will be held via Zoom.  Registration is required and can be completed online.

Richard D. Alba, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has devoted his scholarly career to understanding the impacts of immigration on the groups involved and on the societies that receive them.  Alba began by investigating the assimilation of white ethnic groups, in Italian Americans: Into the Twilight of Ethnicity (1985) and Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (1990). He then pioneered neo-assimilation theory, developed with Victor Nee and presented in their award-winning 2003 book, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. In Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More Integrated America (2009), he argued that in 21st century America a demographic dynamic was promoting assimilation.