This paper appraises Judith Treas and Daisy Carreon’s article titled Diversity and our common future: Race, ethnicity, and the other older American. Accordingly, the article was published in Fall 2010 as the third issue of the thirty-fourth volume of the Journal of the American Society on Aging (Treas & Carreon, 2010). The article’s purpose is to offer an in-depth analysis of diversity and how it is gradually transforming the racial composition of America’s aging population and inform future social policy. The authors draw from the realization that immigration has played a significant role in changing the racial composition of America’s older population to argue that greying is gradually becoming the ‘new white.’ Precisely, the article seeks to elaborate that some of the barriers that have historically divided Americans into discriminative racial groups are beginning to wan, implying that ethnicity and race may soon become more symbolic in understanding the lives of older Americans. Put, the authors seek to elaborate their perspective that aging is now a unifying factor for people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, considering that they have similar old-age experiences.
The authors use different methods to gather information relevant to the study. Notably, the research uses primary and secondary data to develop a strong defense for its ideas on the racial composition and experiences of aging in the United States. First, the article presents interview findings from the target population (Aging Americans), where the authors quote one of the respondents, a seventy-year-old female immigrant (Treas & Carreon, 2010). The primary data from the interview helps the researchers present the aging population’s experiences, arguing that the studied group is finding a commonplace in America’s racial composition despite struggling previously. Second, the article may have presented primary data, but it significantly relies on secondary statistical and descriptive information drawn from different sources to strengthen the authors’ suppositions.
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The article’s strongest argument is that America’s aging population is significantly racially diverse. Most of the statistics used to justify the claim draws from the 2008 US Census data, showing that immigrant populations were gradually greying, transforming the group’s demographics. They also suggest that immigrants are changing the racial make-up of most regions since they are settling in unconventional areas—those away from the original immigrant gateways, such as California (Treas & Carreon, 2010). Despite the data presented, the primary arguments may suffer from incredibility, especially when one questions the authors’ methodological efficiency. Notably, the study does not outline any methods followed in testing any of the formulated hypotheses. Instead, the researchers rely on their relatively little analysis of census data to describe the demographic composition of America’s aging group, relying on such analysis to draw implications for future policy development. Consequently, methodological limitations (the choice to rely on descriptive statistics) are the primary limitation of the research.
The study first finds that greying is gradually becoming the new white, implying that older Americans are slowly accepting racial minorities, as they age. They elaborate statistically that by 2010, eight in ten older Americans were non-white (Treas & Carreon, 2010). The article also finds that immigrants are now settling more in heartland America than they did before, suggesting constantly transforming demographics. Lastly, the authors report that older Americans are more accommodative of racial and ethnic disparities than younger people, mostly because they realize they have similar aging experiences. Despite the reported limitations of the research, I find the results appealing because they suggest that older Americans have similar experiences, regardless of their race and ethnicity. Precisely, the authors present compelling evidence for social policies to foster racial and ethnic integration, considering that immigration has significantly challenged America’s racial homogeneity.
Reference
Treas, J., & Carreon, D. (2010). Diversity and our common future: Race, ethnicity, and the other older American. Journal of the American Society on Aging, 34 (3), 38-44.
