Sometime in the next three years, California will become the third state in which whites are a minority. But today, just 20 percent of the state's voters are nonwhite. They are younger, politically disorganized and more likely not to be citizens. As such, nonwhites-- blacks, Latinos, Asians--have yet to exert political power that matches their numbers. White voters, meanwhile, keep passing ballot measures aimed at holding onto public resources for themselves.
This is the volatile starting point for Dale Maharidge's engrossing story of contemporary California, The Coming White Minority: California's Eruptions and the Nation's Future (Times Books, 1996; $25). Maharidge, a journalism lecturer at Stanford, brings the state's conflicts and growing pains to life through the eyes of four Californians: Martha Escutia, a Latina assemblywoman from Los Angeles; Bill Shepherd, the white owner of a small business in Orange county; Don Northcross, a black police officer from Sacramento County; and Maria Ha, a Vietnamese student of Chinese descent at UC-Berkeley.
Maharidge has purposely chosen this quartet for its mainstream values and centrist politics. All are immigrants to California and all have internalized the California dream. They believe in individual responsibility and hard work. Ha, the student, summarizes the ethic: "You work hard, you don't cheat, you do everything right, get a good education," she says. "I hope I keep some of that stuff."
If these four moderates shared a common race, they might agree on most political issues. But through their own ethnic prisms, each sees a very different California. "I don't mind that we have Mexicans here," says Shepherd, the businessman. "But whites are being taken over by a culture that is not assimilating. The dominant culture does not want graffiti everywhere. . . . It does not want laundry hanging out windows."
Assemblywoman Escutia has another perspective. "You've got to realize that the only way whites will come into the picture is if they see an economic self-interest with blacks and Latinos and Chinese working together," she says. "The security of the country is at risk if you do not train a viable segment of the labor pool who's going to be the bulk of the labor force in the future."
The different perceptions of what California is--and what it should become--arise as much from the state's past as from its high-tech, sprawling present. The virtue of this book lies in showing that each of these views is valid.
Maharidge makes the portrait richer through interviews with academics and political activists. He lays bare the conflicting brands of "multiculturalism" emerging from Latino, Asian-American and black groups, and he dissects the complexities of white politics. He includes a description of the "nationalist" visions growing in each minority community, from Aztlàn among Latinos to Afrocentrism among blacks. He also dissects the split in white politics between "politically correct" liberals and right-wingers hankering for an earlier California run by and for white settlers.
Maharidge is evenhanded, but that doesn't mean he has no opinions of his own. He is disdainful of the ballot measures that state voters have rammed through in recent years. He argues that Proposition 13, a 1978 initiative that slashed property taxes, set the stage for massive education cuts that hit minorities especially hard. Such policies-- along with the "three strikes" law and the dismantling of affirmative action--will blow up in the face of the state's white population, Maharidge contends.
The author also blasts the state's politicians for exploiting white fears rather than providing leadership on questions of immigration, poverty, crime and ethnic diversity. "Pete Wilson and other conservative torch-bearers . . . offer nothing positive about where society should be heading," he writes. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist also criticizes the news media for being unwilling or unable to deal with the subject of race.
Of course, social conflicts across racial and ethnic lines are nothing new in the United States. The only difference between those earlier battles and today's confrontations over multiculturalism, UC-Berkeley sociologist Troy Duster tells Maharidge, is that fast-growing, traditionally excluded groups now look like they might have a say about where resources go. Not a revolution; just a shift in political and economic power.
The author is reluctant to make predictions, but his analysis seems to point toward a much more evenly balanced California society in which calm heads and compromise are likely to prevail. Maharidge's "thoughtful middle" seems more dominant in minority communities straining to define their Americanhood than among whites facing a future where their voice--and ultimately their power--will become diluted. By underscoring the emerging centrism, the book's ultimate message could be that polyethnic politics may be a lot duller than we think.
Martin Carnoy, professor of education, is the author of Faded Dreams: The Politics and Economics of Race in America.
