Race And Ethnicity

In 1986, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone remarked that the average American intellectual standard is lower than the average Japanese standard because of the blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. He has often said that the source of Japan's strength lies in its "racial homogeneity." Eleven years later, University of Texas Law School Professor Lino Graglia triggered a firestorm of criticism for his remarks that "Blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites in selective institutions. It is the result primarily of cultural effects. They have a culture that seems not to encourage achievement. Failure is not looked upon with disgrace."It has been said that race is the plague of civilization. In 1977, Andrew Young, at that time the chief U.S. representative to the United Nations, claimed that a race war in South Africa would inevitably precipitate racial conflict in the United States. Some countries, like Great Britain and Australia, eliminate the potential for conflict by simply denying or severely limiting entry.

However, American society has always been enriched by its waves of immigrants. John Kennedy observed how Alexis de Tocqueville saw the United States as "a society of immigrants, each of whom had begun life anew, on an equal footing. This was the secret of America: a nation of people with the fresh memory of old traditions who dared to explore new frontiers ..." In 2004, the Census Bureau predicted that in the year 2050 minority groups would comprise one-half of the total American population of 420 million. Hispanics will comprise roughly one-quarter of the population, blacks 15%, and Asians 8%.

As the proportion of Americans increasingly becomes Hispanic, black and Asian, inequalities grow. According to the Pew Hispanic Center's 2004 "The Wealth of Hispanic Households: 1996 to 2002" study, "the median net worth of Hispanic households in