EDITORIAL: Diversity is one of America’s great strengths
In the last several years, the Pittsburgh metropolitan area has regularly ranked as one of the least diverse in the nation, with cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Houston and Atlanta far surpassing it when it comes to heterogeneity.
It wasn’t always this way. A visit to the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh’s Strip District reveals the wide range of immigrants who were drawn to the region when coal was pouring out of its mines and its steel mills were operating around the clock. Recent arrivals from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland, Syria and scores of other spots around the globe clustered in neighborhoods and maintained the traditions they brought with them from their homelands.
If the Pittsburgh region has become more monochromatic over the last century or so, the rest of the country has most decidedly not. Figures from the Census Bureau indicate in 2017 the number of United States residents who were born elsewhere reached its highest point since 1910. The Brookings Institution further combed through the data and found 41 percent of those who have come to the United States in this decade have hailed from Asia, with 39 percent coming from Latin America.
In addition, 45 percent of those who immigrated to America had college degrees, a 15 percent increase over the new arrivals from 2000 to 2009.
William H. Frey, a senior demographer with the Brookings Institution, told The New York Times, “This is quite different from what we had thought. We think of immigrants as being low-skilled workers from Latin America, but for recent arrivals that’s much less the case. People from Asia have overtaken Latin America.”
While it’s places where jobs are abundant that have attracted the most immigrants, the Brookings Institution also found locales that have not traditionally been magnets for migrants are starting to see an uptick in their foreign-born populations. It increased by 20 percent in Kentucky and 12 percent in Ohio, to cite two examples. Emmanuel D’Souza, an Indian-born nurse practitioner now living in Dayton, Ohio, noted in an interview with The New York Times that two mosques, four temples and two grocery stores that specialize in Indian fare have opened within the vicinity of his house.
Now, for some, this is a cause for dismay. They believe that something uniquely, ineffably American is being leeched away by this country’s newest residents. But go to the Heinz History Center and see that the United States’ melting pot is what makes it so distinctive. That was the case at the beginning of the 20th century, and that’s still the case at the beginning of the 21st.
Diversity also makes economic sense. Several studies have shown that diverse places enjoy high levels of economic development, while more homogeneous areas tend to grow at much slower rates. Richard Florida, the urban studies theorist who used to teach at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, made his reputation with the idea that a key to building thriving communities is openness and tolerance. These places draw the kind of “creative class” knowledge workers who bring new ideas and energy.
Sure, not every community can be an Austin, Texas, Ann Arbor, Mich., or Cambridge, Mass. But a little bit of acceptance of those who were not born here can go a long way.