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Lately, it seems every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program, experts are crunching numbers: four of 10 residents in New York City speak a language other than English at home; by the year 2010, 69 percent of Miamians will be foreign-born; by 2025, native-born whites will no longer be the majority in eight states, including California and Texas; by 2050, native-born whites will comprise only 53 percent of the total U.S. population.
Terms such as "the browning of America" and "white flight" have entered the daily lexicon with subtle, yet clear connotations of rising anxiousness. If one assumes that the U.S. Census Bureau and demographers are reporting these figures in response to growing concern from lawmakers over the implications of this accelerating diversity, then ground-zero for researching the successful management of this phenomenon may be Florida International University's Immigration and Ethnicity Institute (IEI).
"I really think Miami is a harbinger of what is going to happen and is happening in many other places in the United States," says Alex Stepick, director of the institute and professor of Sociology and Anthropology. "Because of the number of minorities, it is a wonderful social laboratory, an opportunity to study the political, economic, and social relationships that are changing America in many ways. Trying to understand what is going on in Miami will not only be a good lesson for the people of Miami, but for all of the United States."
Stepick's orderly office belies the sheer volume of dynamic research the institute is currently conducting. His desktop is uncluttered, save for a neat stack of documents and the remnants of a lunch hurriedly consumed between appointments. A child's drawing (his daughter's) hangs behind him on the mostly unadorned, freshly painted white wall. Stepick's eyes flash with the enthusiasm of someone who thoroughly enjoys his life's work. He is quick to let out an infectious laugh, especially when he explains the improbable, yet equally logical path his career has followed, leading him to the front lines of immigration scholarship.
"The original research for my dissertation was in Mexico. Once I finished, I had an opportunity for a congressional fellowship in Washington, D.C. working with Mickey Leland, a senator from Texas. This was 1980, and, of course, Miami was a hot topic: 125,000 refugees arrived from Mariel, Cuba. Around that time, 25,000 Haitians also arrived. It was an interesting, fascinating time because there was a dramatic contrast between the welcome the Cubans were receiving and the rejection the Haitians were getting. In Washington, the Black Caucus was the only group speaking out in favor of the Haitians. My employer, Leland, had an interest, but no one working on the topic. In typical Washington fashion, since I had worked in Mexico - that was Latin America - (they figured) I should know about Haitians! Right? (laughs) Basically, I was told, `You know Haitians.'"
Advocating equality for Haitians, Stepick met with President Carter and key congressional leaders. "That was fun and fascinating," he recalls. "It was also intellectually interesting trying to figure out why these two groups were being treated unequally."
Stepick felt a gnawing desire to really know what he was talking about, instead of being one of the "typical instant experts that happens in Washington." Fortunately, after his congressional fellowship ended, he was awarded a yearlong fellowship at Duke University as part of a special immigration program headed by Alejandro Portes, current president of the American Sociological Association and professor of Sociology at Princeton.
Stepick took advantage of the opportunity to read about Haitian culture, Haitian refugees, refugee law and immigration in general, gradually filling in his evolving perspective on the uniqueness of the Haitian exile experience. The fellowship allowed him "to read everything that, by my standards, I should've read before I began working with Haitians." The association with Portes led to future collaborations as co-investigators.
At the end of that year, FIU had an opening in the Sociology Department and Stepick reasoned, "If I was going to be an expert on Haitian refugees, that was the place to be. Anthropologists normally have to travel halfway around the world to do their work; FIU provided the unique opportunity to work where I lived.
"I learned Haitian Creole, lived in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami and worked with all the Haitian organizations. I started conducting true anthropological research because one of the things I learned early on in Washington was that people were making claims - specifically like `Haitians are economic refugees, not political refugees as the Cubans' - without bringing any data at all. No one had done any serious research at all. The claims on both sides were very ideological, superficial. On the one hand, some were arguing, `Haiti is a poor country - they must be economic (refugees). While those on the other side, the ones I was working for, were equally outrageous, saying, `They're political (refugees) because the Duvalier regime is horribly repressive.' And they were both right. But no one had actually gone out and talked with the refugees to find out what was really going on from their perspective."
Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, the cyclical nature of the immigration crisis kept the plight of Haitian refugees in the media spotlight, albeit not necessarily in a positive light, and solidified Stepick's standing as the "Haitian expert." As Stepick became more fluent in Haitian Creole and culturally savvy in Haitian customs, he immersed himself deeper into the community, conducting surveys and becoming familiar with individuals as well as working extensively with organizations. His expertise grew, coinciding with a national shift in refugee and immigration consciousness. The scholar, who had been inadvertently thrust into the Haitian situation because he had conducted research in Mexico, never looked back.
"I was in the right place at the right time," he smiles and says.
But the dramatic contrast between the treatment of Cubans and Haitians still confounded Stepick. Along with Portes, he initiated a project to compare the experiences of Haitian refugees and Mariel Cubans for economical and sociological conclusions. Through this work, his research focus expanded from Haitian immigrants to encompass a broader Miami context.
As immigration and subsequent racial tensions continued to alter the landscape of Miami through the '80s and into the '90s, the national media again turned its attention south. This time, though, changing Miami seemed to signal a social upheaval of which the first stirrings were being sensed across the country. National organizations and foundations became more interested. Since Stepick had developed a reputation as an anthropologist conducting ethnographic work, he and other FIU researchers attracted the attention of organizations funding immigration and assimilation studies.
At that time, in the early 1990s, the Ford Foundation was creating a national project on interethnic relations named Changing Relations Between Newcomers and Established Residents, a three-year anthropological study that concentrated on observing how people worked together and interacted in a number of environments. In Miami, these included a high school with Haitian and African-American students, construction sites, garment factories, restaurants and motels employing members from these two groups along with Hispanics. Research assistants worked as actual employees in these settings for one- or two-year periods as they conducted observations. One researcher even participated on a chamber of commerce committee, observing and taking notes. To implement the Miami phase of the project, Stepick assembled a "dream team" of immigrant and refugee experts that included: Guillermo Grenier, currently director of FIU's Center for Labor Research and Studies; Marvin Dunn, associate professor of Psychology at FIU; and Max Castro, currently senior research associate at the University of Miami's Dante B. Fascell North-South Center. The research generated reports, and a book will be published on the Miami findings.
Next, the Carnegie Corporation funded $175,000 for a three-year project titled Interaction Among Immigrant and Native-Born Minority Adolescents. About five years ago, when Stepick was on an assignment with the Russell Sage Foundation, he produced a research proposal prompted by a needs assessment he had conducted within the Haitian community. An interesting finding emerged from that assessment: Whereas in the 1980s, Haitian refugees cited immigration status and employment opportunities as their chief concerns, in the mid-90s, their children also became a priority.
"Throughout the `80s Haitian children had been the `good kids' in school, the model minorities," Stepick explains. "But now, not everyone obviously, but more and more youths were involved with drugs, Haitian gangs emerged, teenage pregnancies - all those things that other communities face, but the Haitians had been (previously) relatively immune to. Not surprisingly, Haitian leaders were concerned."
Stepick found there were similar issues in other Miami immigrant communities. He and his wife, Carol, designed a project to explore a key question: Why do adolescents from comparable backgrounds develop different attitudes toward education?
"These are kids who ostensibly have the same social conditions, same neighborhoods, same high schools, same socioeconomic status," explains Stepick. "Yet some of them become valedictorians or academic stars or at least view education as the way to prove themselves, while others give up on education and think it's a waste. By standard sociological thought they should be the same. So what is it that distinguishes one from the other?"
The Stepicks set out to investigate some of the different groups in their laboratory home of Miami. They initially decided to focus on Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, West Indians and Mexicans. They subsequently broadened the study to include African Americans, a crucial decision that added more depth and scope - and, consequently, much greater national significance to their study.
The research proposal evolved into a project titled Academic Orientations of Immigrant and Native Minority Adolescents, which was first submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF responded with the largest grant for cultural anthropology they had ever awarded: $395,000 over five years. The Andrew Mellon Foundation awarded $130,000 over three years, and the Spencer Foundation granted $35,000 for the same study. The project has become the IEI's most consuming endeavor, employing between 10-15 graduate students. In all, over 300 students were studied.
The initial research focus, which identified factors that distinguish successful kids, revealed interesting results. Not surprisingly, the single most important factor in an adolescent's academic orientation is the existence of a trusting relationship with an adult.
"It could be a parent, but not necessarily. Sometimes an older sibling, an aunt or uncle. It varies individually and by ethnic group, due to family structure. For instance, West Indians had high incidences of living in households where an older sibling or relative was the primary adult. These kids are sent to the U.S. for an education while their parents remain in their homeland."
The more assimilated Cuban adolescents were most likely to trust in a cousin or uncle. They were more concerned with parties, cars and how they were perceived by their friends. Conversely, the groups that American society most negatively stereotypes - blacks, Haitians, West Indians, Mexicans - were the ones most focused on the future. "Even the ones not doing well in school worried about it. The Cubans most clearly resembled the native-born American white kids. Other than the fact that they were bilingual, they could've been right out of `American Graffiti,' or all of those other adolescent American culture movies," Stepick adds with a laugh.
Of even greater relevance were the disturbing findings on prejudice and discrimination experienced by the subjects. From his Washington days, Stepick learned that that race is a large and fundamental issue. His work with adolescents has strengthened his conviction. "We wanted to address the issue of ethnic identity. For those just entering high school, ethnic identity is trivial, not as important as rockers, rappers and social groups within the high school. Their grandmother may speak Spanish and talk about Cuba, but it means nothing to them. As they progress through high school, they gradually begin to get an understanding of what those words mean and how they apply to them.
"Specifically, black kids get a much keener understanding of how important it is that you are, or are not, black in the U.S. And it is especially poignant and difficult for the
Haitians. There's such strong anti-Haitian prejudice in Miami - `boat people,' jokes, HIV rumors, etc. If a Haitian attempts to `cover-up' - that's the actual term within the community - all they can do is become African American. Then they must deal with all the negative stereotypes of young black males. It's a difficult position and amazing that any of them ever rise above it. And some do, indeed, rise above it and become proud of being Haitian and also proud of being black." Stepick feels that these findings indicate further research is needed to evaluate how some people could shed layers of negative racial stereotypes in certain contexts.
The work also revealed possible strategies for managing discrimination. According to the study, Cubans reported no discrimination; Nicaraguans and Mexicans reported some, but much lower levels than black youths. Although there were instances of solidarity between Haitians and African Americans, cases of discrimination between those two groups were also reported.
"We found that in the high school setting the most likely place to find positive interethnic relations is on sports teams. Obviously, there everybody is after the same goal, and they must cooperate if they want to win. We also found it to occur in Advanced Placement Classes, which is consistent with the general sociology finding that proposes the more education a person has, the less prejudiced they are likely to be.
"We also found these results outside the high school setting; in unionized construction and the chamber of commerce. This supports what is known as `the contact hypothesis,' which is that people develop positive feelings, beliefs, relationships with other groups if they come in contact with them while on equal status. The main point is that while race is the most fundamental dividing issue, it can be overcome in the right circumstances."
The volume of data gathered from the study will grow exponentially within the next few years as Stepick's researchers continue to track those original ninth-grade students of five years ago through their high school years. Over the past year, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and others have expressed interest in information regarding these adolescents' transition to adulthood.
"There is concern about a general, widespread American problem of kids caring less about politics, religion and institutions in general. There is also interest in addressing these institutions' ability to act as positive influences during the difficult ages of transition," Stepick explains. In the funding stage is the next large, critical project of the institution: Religion, Immigration and Civic Life in Miami.
Yet another project attempts to research and document what is happening to the minority welfare population of Miami-Dade County. This study tracks 30 minority women in their efforts to progress out of welfare dependency. Key findings have revealed that the state of Florida has good policies that are not adequately implemented. Most of the consultation periods, where caseworkers could be assessing the real needs of these women, are consumed by paperwork.
"Once again, there is failure - not out someone's malice, but out of inadequacies in the system," Stepick laments. He specifically mentions the case of a woman who had to request a day off from her new job so she could apply for child-care benefits. Lack of information about transitional benefits and low levels of provision of these benefits have thwarted attempts of most of the sample population to successfully progress from welfare to work.
The research experience has also enriched Alex Stepick, the teacher. "One of the neatest things about being at FIU is the people I study are also my students. We've had graduate students from Haiti, the West Indies, African Americans, Nicaraguans, Cubans. After I discuss a particular finding or theory, I like to ask my students, `How does that resonate with your personal experience?'(He employed this technique numerous times on this writer during the course of this interview).
"I've had a fascinating thing occur often in my classroom where someone from a particular group will explain an experience or feeling they believe to be unique to their group, only to have students from other groups say, `Wow, you've felt that also?' This opportunity has given me the unique experience of teaching things that are part of the daily experiences of the students, as opposed to talking about exotic people where the students feel, `This is happening somewhere, but it is not part of my daily life.' Teaching became like research."
Although the institute's findings have produced important scientific papers and been widely published in academic and foundation journals, Stepick realizes the issues he studies should not only fall into the realm of academic writing. His books, such as the edited volume Miami Now! and City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami attempt to reach a broader audience. When asked about other effective methods to share his findings so that other communities might benefit from the hard-earned experiences of Miami, he answers, "I'm very concerned about this frequently and, to be honest, don't feel that I've adequately found the answer."
The increasing frequency of Stepick's glances to the stack of papers on his desk and the buzz of graduate students hovering outside the office door signify that the interview must draw to a close. Outside the antiseptic walls of the institute, Miami's hot pavement sizzles in the sun and reverberates beneath different rhythms and diverse footsteps. The repercussions echo not only in places like Miami, Los Angeles and New York City, but increasingly on Main Street U.S.A. Like triage physicians, the researchers must scramble out to wrap fingers around the different pulses and record the fluctuating temperatures. As the Immigration and Ethnicity Institute monitors the vital signs of a changing America, Florida International University is on the cutting edge in providing effective strategies for healing the wounds of the cultural divide.
Carlos Maza is a freelance writer and is pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at FIU. Currently, he is completing his thesis, a memoir of his bicultural childhood.