Rise of the Ethnoburbs
31st March 2011
Asians, who faced openly racist exclusion laws for nearly 80 years, huddled in Chinatowns, most of them on the West Coast. One was in Washington State, where the grandson of a house-servant would be named the first Chinese-American ambassador to China — Gary Locke. But his story is already one for the textbooks, the old route to the Asian-American Dream.
The new narrative comes from the ethnoburbs, a term coined in a 2009 book by Arizona State University professor Wei Li to describe entire cities dominated by a nonwhite ethnic group. They are suburban in look, but urban in political, culinary and educational values, attracting immigrants with advanced degrees and ready business skills.
As one would expect for somebody writing in the New York Times, Egan looks at the western U.S. from the viewpoint of a Peace Corps volunteer in the Andes, but even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.