Race

With the first-ever election of an African-American president, a debate began immediately about what this signaled in terms of American racial progress, and whether or not a “post-racial” society might be closer to realization. To test attitudes about the meaning of this event in real time, researchers at the University of Michigan surveyed the same random representative sample of the population directly before and after President Obama’s election.

Many take for granted the idea that, in all cases, an influx of new immigrants to an area will appear threatening to established residents and such close contact helps explain racial tensions. Though this notion of “racial threat” helped explained previous chapters in American history, it remains an open question whether or not this theory applies to newer situations, with other ethnic dynamics. The most salient such situation now in American life relates to the movement of Latinos into many new areas.

Though migration from Mexico to the United States has slowed considerably in recent years, one persistent point of controversy embedded in the immigration reform debate relates to the use of Spanish in communities across America — and some new arrivals’ alleged unwillingness to learn and use English.

Minorities vote at lower rates in the United States, but the precise reasons are the subject of debate. Differences in education levels and resources — which are both correlated with turnout levels across racial groups — help explain varying turnout rates to some extent, but scholars are also studying other subtle factors.