Click here to view the recorded event(Passcode: d!bk=.Z7 )_________________________________________________________ CSDA Virtual Colloquium Series
CSDA 40th Anniversary Colloquium on:The Great Demographic Illusion:Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American MainstreamFriday, October 22, 20213:00 PM – 4:30 PMKEYNOTE SPEAKER
ABOUT: Americans are under the spell of a distorted and polarizing story about their country’s future—the majority-minority narrative—which contends that inevitable demographic changes will create a society with a majority made up of minorities for the first time in the United States’ history. The Great Demographic Illusion reveals 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. Examining the unprecedented significance of mixed parentage in the twenty-first-century United States, Richard Alba looks at how young Americans with this background will play pivotal roles in the country’s demographic future. Countering rigid demographic beliefs and predictions, The Great Demographic Illusion offers a new way of understanding American society and its coming transformation. (Overview from Princeton University Press).
Please contact Dr. Samantha Friedman at samfriedman@albany.edu if you have any questions regarding this event. |
Our keynote speaker is Richard D. Alba, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology, at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Richard Alba has devoted his scholarly career to understanding the impacts of immigration on the groups involved and on the societies that receive them. He 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.