The Associated Press reported last week that Asian-Americans are increasingly moving to the suburbs from the inner cities::
America’s historic Chinatowns, home for a century to immigrants seeking social support and refuge from racism, are fading as rising living costs, jobs elsewhere and a desire for wider spaces lure Asian-Americans more than ever to the suburbs.
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Nationwide, about 62% of Asian-Americans in the nation’s large metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, up from 54% in 1990 and the highest ever. Tied with Hispanics as the fastest-growing group, the nation’s 4.4 million Asians are more likely than other minorities to live in the suburbs; only whites, at 78%, are higher.
Since 2000, nearly three-fourths of Asian population growth in the U.S. occurred in suburbs, many of them in the South.
This all makes sense, right? We’ve noted before the trend for immigrants in general moving from the cities to the suburbs, so it’s not surprising that Asian-Americans are following the same path. Indeed, it’s kind of what happened in previous generations — my Italian grandparents settled in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but their four sons all ended up scattering to the suburbs of Dutchess, Rockland, Long Island, and Staten Island. That’s pretty much the American experience. Immigrants are initially attracted to urban centers, particularly those with a high concentration of fellow ex-patriates, but as they have kids, or as their kids have kids, they eventually find their way to the open spaces. So it’s no surprise that Asian-Americans are doing the same thing.
A hat tip to the 8asian.com blog, which commented on the AP piece and shared a more personal perspective on the trend. Unsurprisingly, as with most people who move to the suburbs, it’s all about the kids:
I later asked my parents why we moved to the suburbs in the first place. Why did my mother have to endure such a terrible commute? Why did we pick up and leave such a familiar community and move far away from our friends and relatives? For me, it was an uncomfortable experience. Besides having to make new friends, there were just so many cultural differences between the city and the suburbs.
My parents told me that they did it for the schools. More than anything else, they were worried that my sister and I wouldn’t get a good enough education in the city. What if we didn’t do well enough to qualify for entry into one of the specialized public schools? The schools we were zoned for were terrible. And not only were the schools in Great Neck strong, the neighborhoods were also quiet and safe. There, my parents wouldn’t have to worry quite as much about our safety and well-being.
Basically, my parents decided to move for the benefit of their children.
To me, that’s really the reason why so many APA families have migrated to the suburbs. It’s not merely to achieve some vague sense of the American Dream – a nice house, a front yard, and a prettier neighborhood.
It does seem like every time I come across someone writing about the difficult decision to move to the suburbs, they talk about the kids. It’s the same for hipster urban couples as it is for people recent immigrants living in Chinatown.
All that said, I still find the suburbs pretty white-bread. My wife and son are Asian, and it’s not unusual to look around when we’re out at a restaurant or a movie and find that they’re pretty much the only minorities in the place. But I know that in other areas of the suburbs you’ll find pretty high concentrations of ethnic residents, like the huge Korean-American population in Palisades Park and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
It’s a funny thing. We call the suburbs “white,” but only because we’re largely talking about second- and third-generation immigrants who migrated in droves 50 years ago. After all, I’m “white,” but my Sicilian grandfather was certainly not “white” back 75 years ago when he changed his name from “Miserandino” to Rand. (chop off some letters on each side, and become an Anglo!). We don’t think of Italian food as ethnic anymore, partly because of assimilation but also just because over time ethnicities weave themselves into the general fabric of society.
Now, when we talk about ethnic Americans, we’re talking about the Asian-American or Latino-American populations. But it might be that in 25 years we’ll be complaining about how the suburbs still lack diversity, but only because our understanding of diversity will have changed. As someone in a mixed-race family, I certainly would love to see an increase in ethnic diversity in my area, for all the obvious reasons.
Not the least of which is that hopefully, at some point, I’ll be able to get a decent bowl of soup without having to drive 25 miles into Manhattan.
