Assessing Local “Diversity”: A Nationally Representative Analysis

Abstract

The meanings and definition of “diversity” can change across different applications and contexts, but many such meanings have implications for racial difference and racial ideology in the United States. We provide a nationally representative analysis of how everyday Americans assess “diversity” in their own communities. We test how county-level racial, religious, economic, and political heterogeneity predict the view that one lives in a highly diverse locale; we also test how individual-level factors predict such a view. Among the four indicators of local difference, racial difference is most strongly and consistently associated with Americans’ assessments of local diversity. Individual-level factors do not weaken this relationship; rather, local context and individual-level factors conjointly predict assessments of local diversity. Despite the flexible, hyperinclusive nature of diversity discourse, local racial difference is salient in Americans’ assessments of “diversity” in their communities, and this pattern is not simply a product of individual-level factors. Our findings illustrate another dimension of the flexible-yet-racialized nature of diversity discourse in the United States. We also show that Americans are particularly aware of racial difference in their locale, which has implications for social and ideological responses to changing communities and a changing nation.

Know It When You See It? The Qualities of the Communities People Describe as “Diverse” (or Not)

“…Recent work by Abascal, Xu, and Baldassarri (2021), for example, suggests that the effect of ethnoracial group shares on assessed diversity is moderated by Whites’ support for immigration and affirmative action. Notably, however, Rajasekar et al (2022) find that individual racial attitudes play only a minor role in predicting assessed diversity, and they do not alter the relationship between assessed diversity and community composition.…”

“…Second, experimental research with a nationally representative sample finds that Americans’, and especially Whites’, assessments of diversity hinge on the presence of Blacks (Abascal, Xu, and Baldassarri 2021). And, despite our focus on Chicago, the preeminence of race/ethnicity we observed also emerged in Bell and Hartmann’s (2007) interview study of Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, and the Twin Cities (also see Hoekstra and Gerteis 2019) and Rajasekar and colleagues’ (2022) quantitative study of U.S. counties. Still, future research would do well to examine understandings of diversity in other cities with different ethnoracial and economic compositions and histories.…”

“…In neighborhoods, "diversity" can also take on multiple descriptive associations, for example, with race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, sexuality, and politics (Berrey 2005(Berrey , 2015Hoekstra and Gerteis 2019). Rajasekar, Stewart, and Gerteis (2022), for example, find that people describe their locales as more "socially and culturally" diverse if they live in counties that are heterogeneous in terms of race/ethnicity, religion, partisanship, or poverty status. However, research in neighborhoods also suggests "diversity" retains a strong association with race/ethnicity.…”

“…However, research in neighborhoods also suggests "diversity" retains a strong association with race/ethnicity. For example, when prompted to describe experiences with neighborhood diversity, people most often describe interactions with ethnoracial outgroups (Bell and Hartmann 2007; also see Rajasekar et al 2022). In addition to race/ ethnicity, research suggests a robust association between neighborhood diversity and economic differences (Bell and Hartmann 2007;Berrey 2005Berrey , 2015Burke 2012;Hoekstra and Gerteis 2019;Rajasekar et al 2022).…”

“…Rather than asking people to define diversity in the abstract, we ask people whether they would describe their communities as diverse (or not). Like Rajasekar et al (2022), our goal is to link subjective evaluations of diversity to objective community traits. We build on their work by using (1) a more fine-grained proxy of community (neighborhoods vs. counties), (2) measures of both heterogeneity and representation, and (3) an outcome measure that allows respondents to interpret diversity broadly, without priming "social and cultural" differences.…”