Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early Twenty-first Century (review)

Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders addresses the impact of post-1965 immigration on the efforts of ethnoracial minority "outsiders" (Asian Americans, blacks and Latinos) to become political "insiders." Schmidt, Alex-Assenoh, Aoki and Hero use four benchmarks to assess this process — participation, representation, membership in governing coalitions and passage of egalitarian public policies — and they rely on these benchmarks to plot four alternative trajectories for the future of political incorporation: individual assimilation, political pluralism, biracial hierarchy and multiracial hierarchy. The authors find support for all four scenarios, the evidence of which is offered in Part 3, the "analytical heart" of the book.

Up to Part 3, readers will encounter a survey of previous research on post-1965 immigration, the history of racialization and its effects on the three ethnoracial minority groups, and extant studies on ongoing school and residential segregation. Graduate students in particular would appreciate this review, for it provides a straightforward discussion of how ethnoracial inequality persists despite increasing diversity. Part 3 offers an original assessment of the political incorporation of Asian Americans, blacks and Latinos in the past four decades. The authors continue to rely on summaries of significant studies to evaluate the progress of the three groups, but they utilize prior research purposefully. Among their insights, the authors illustrate how the descriptive representation of Latinos has increased in gateway states (for example, California, Florida and Texas) through congressional redistricting. They also show that various forms of nonelectoral political participation provide the best avenues for political incorporation, especially for Latinos. For example, although the influence of labor unions has diminished in recent years, Latino participation has revitalized unions in some regions, which has led the AFL-CIO to reverse its historical anti-immigrant positions and even support immigrant amnesty. Finally, the authors provide an insightful discussion on the median voter hypothesis — that legislators are resistant to egalitarian public policies precisely because the median voter does not support said policies.

The brevity of the main analysis — the evaluation of the political incorporation of three ethnoracial minority groups — leads to an inconclusive and terse culmination with the authors finding evidence of all four trajectories for the future of ethnoracial politics in the United States. It is not surprising that they would find support for all four scenarios, but the authors clearly presented more evidence for some (multiracial hierarchy) than others (individual assimilation), and the book would have benefited from a more definitive and thorough discussion of the future prospects for political incorporation. For example, their central inquiry examines how immigrants have (re)shaped the political goals of ethnoracial minority groups. Specifically, the authors look at black immigrants' role in influencing native-born blacks, Latino immigrants on Latino political goals, and Asian immigrants on Asian Americans. This is no easy task, but the authors might have come to different conclusions had they further examined the impact of immigration between the ethnoracial groups.

Ultimately, this book provides an excellent foundation for continuing studies on immigration and ethnoracial politics, and it inspires multiple lines of inquiry. For example, future researchers could further investigate the causes and consequences of why Asian Americans, as a group, have not incorporated into the political realm, despite their successful incorporation into other spheres of social life. Furthermore, due to the stigmatization of racism, whites have shifted strategies for resisting minority political incorporation. But how and in what ways have whites changed, and how have ethnoracial minorities responded to the growing public demand to be more colorblind in political maneuvering? Another line of inquiry, which the authors acknowledge, relates to transnationalism. The possibility remains that transnationalism could have interesting effects on the political incorporation of different national origin groups. Those groups that maintain political ties to their countries of origin have the potential to become politically active in the United States, depending...