As far as flows of human beings across national borders are concerned, the world today is radically less fluid than a century ago.
***** From 1860 to 1920, more than 13 percent of the population was foreign-born. In 1990, roughly 8.5 percent of the population--about 1 person in 12 in the United States--was born abroad, considerably smaller proportionally than during much of U.S. history.
The present proportion in the United States, 8.5 percent, also may be compared to 1990s' proportions of 22.7 percent in Australia; 16 percent in Canada; 6.3 percent in France; 7.3 percent in Germany; 3.9 percent in Great Britain; and 5.7 percent in Sweden.
("Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts ," <http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-imquant.html>) *****
Even within a nation, we are less racially integrated than in 1988.
***** The New York Times January 18, 2004 The Supreme Struggle By ADAM COHEN
On May 17, 1954, the day the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, the N.A.A.C.P. held a news conference to unveil an ambitious new agenda. With segregated schools now unconstitutional, the intention was to move on directly to housing segregation and employment discrimination. Thurgood Marshall, the N.A.A.C.P.'s lead lawyer, admitted there was still work to be done implementing Brown, but he was sure it wouldn't take long. School segregation would be eliminated nationwide, he told reporters, within five years. . . .
But millions of black students are celebrating Brown's anniversary in schools almost as segregated as when it was decided. It is now true, as the court held, that ''separate but equal facilities are inherently unequal.'' But 70 percent of black students attend schools in which racial minorities are a majority, and fully a third are in schools 90 to 100 percent minority. . . .
Under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who wrote a memorandum as a Supreme Court law clerk arguing for reaffirming Plessy, progress on desegregation has not only stopped but reversed. In a series of decisions in the 1990's, sometimes called the ''resegregation cases,'' the court made it far easier for school districts to skirt desegregation orders already in place. A pair of cases in the early 1990's lowered the obstacles for school systems once held to be segregated to achieve ''unitary status,'' meaning they had legally desegregated and could start becoming segregated again. In the majority's view, desegregation was no longer a state for America to aspire for and work toward, but a punishment imposed on districts that had once done wrong, to be lifted as soon as possible.
A few years later, the court went further, dismantling a Kansas City, Mo., program meant to attract white suburban and private school students willingly to heavily black city schools. Gary Orfield of Harvard regards that decision as ''the most disgraceful of all,'' because it made even voluntary desegregation virtually impossible. The deciding vote was cast by Clarence Thomas, who occupied what was once Marshall's seat.
The waning support for desegregation efforts had an undeniable effect. The percentage of blacks attending majority white schools in the South, which peaked in 1988 at 43 percent, had fallen by 2000 to 31 percent; nationally, 28.4 percent attended majority white schools. . . .
Adam Cohen is an editorial writer for The Times and co-author of ''American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation.'' A lawyer, he helped represent plaintiffs in the 1996 school desegregation case in Hartford.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/edlife/EDCOHENT.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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