2
Race to the Top?
New Immigrants and the Politics of Education in Suburbia
Michael Jones-Correa
In 2000, 52 percent of immigrants resided in suburbs.
1
Thanks in large part to the
suburbanization of immigrants, the percentages of minorities in suburbs has increased
dramatically as well: in 2000 33 percent of blacks, 45 percent of Latinos and 51 percent
of Asian-Americans lived in suburbs.
2
These figures indicate that the suburbanization of
immigrants and minorities is approaching that of the population as a whole. Nonetheless,
suburbs, like the nation as a whole, are still largely white:
3
54 percent of whites live in
suburbs, making up 75 percent of the suburban population.
4
Other racial and racial
groups moving to suburbia are entering a context where they are, for the most part, and
for the moment, clearly minorities.
The question addressed in this paper is how do suburban institutions react to
increasing ethnic and racial diversity (much of it driven by immigration), in the context
of white domination of these institutions? With the Washington suburbs of Fairfax and
Montgomery counties as its case studies, this paper looks at the interplay between
demographic shifts, intermediary internal, external and contextual variables, and the
resulting changes in bureaucratic policies and structures. To simplify things, this paper
examines this interplay in one key suburban policy arena—education—to untangle what
variables explain why change occurs, and when and what kind of change takes place in
local policies and structures in response to demographic shifts.
1
Census 2000 Summary File 1, 100 Percent Data. Versus 48 percent in 1999; see A. Dianne Schmidley
and Campbell Gibson, Profile of the Foreign Born Population in the United States. Current Population
Reports, U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1999).
2
Census 2000 Summary File 1, 100 Percent Data. Jesse McKinnon and Karen Humes, Black Population in
the United States, March 1999 Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Government Printing
Office, Washington D.C., 2000); Karen Humes and Jesse McKinnon, Asian and Pacific Islander Population
in the United States, March 1999 Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington D.C. 2000);
www.census.gov/populationsocdemo/hispanic/cps99/tab16-1.txt
3
Meaning ‘non-Hispanic’ white; ‘black’ in this paper refers to ‘non-Hispanic black,’ and ‘Asian’ to ‘non-
Hispanic’ Asian.
4
That 75 percent is greater than the 69 percent whites make up in the general population, meaning whites
are somewhat over-represented in suburbia.
Convention