I really must read Derb’s book:
Similarly, to demonstrate his experience that “the single major factor determining house prices in the suburbs, we quickly discovered, was proximity to a good school; and ‘good school’ was universally understood … to mean ‘school with … not too many black or Hispanic students’.”
He asks: “Am I telling you something you don’t know?”
He goes on to point out: “This illustrates the emerging demographic split in the United States: whites and East Asians on one side, African Americans and Hispanics on the other.”
In his immigration chapter, Derb unloads on “Kumbaya conservatives” whose thinking about immigration goes no farther than “rhapsodize, moralize, demonize”.
He then coins a neologism that, tragically, has become even more apposite in the few weeks since its publication:
“Many immigrants of course assimilate to American society. I think I have. I hope I have; I’ve tried to. Many others, however, especially in the second and following generations, absimilate. …”
