Today there’s an interesting article in the New York Times about the generation gap over immigration. Those who are younger are less forgiving of the tough Arizona law, while those who are older favor such draconian measures. This is attributed to the fact that young people today are growing up in a far more diverse and multicultural world, whereas their parents–many of them aging baby boomers–were shaped by a more segregated, ‘white’ world.
This accords with what I’ve seen and noticed both among my students and living in the suburbs. The suburbs may ‘look’ the same–the sweet little orange buses rolling through leafy streets; the baseball and soccer games filling the green parks every weekend–but they have fundamentally changed. Children of different backgrounds and races are tipping their hat visors as they take the pitcher mound or ringing your doorbell to sell Girl Scout cookies. Even the most insular of suburbs have begun to give way to ethnic and racial demographics that look like what the cities suspiciously used to look like. Continue reading
