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 Entertainment | Books | June 2005 
The New Mainstream
 Guy Garcia - GNN.tv
| | A multicultural transformation is sweeping the U.S. |
Editor’s note: In his new book, The New Mainstream, journalist Guy Garcia explains how a multicultural revolution is transforming the American economy. The change, Garcia argues, is both subtle and seismic. It is demographic and social, cutting across corporations and organizations. It is putting a multicultural spin on everything from business and politics to entertainment and technology, and no amount of armed vigilantes on the Arizona border can stop it. The following essay is adapted from a recent presentation Garcia gave at the Association of International Educators:
“The future,” Rainer Maria Rilke once observed, “enters into us to transform us even before it happens.”
When I was 17 years old, the future changed my life.
I was a high school senior in Los Angeles who had never traveled beyond the suburbs of Southern California. Then one night at a friend’s house I met a girl who had just come back from a four-month-long sea voyage around the world. She had done it on a retired cruise ship called the USS Universe—and the most amazing part was that she had earned college credit while she was doing it. The notion of sailing around the globe on a cruise ship filled with students and professors, using actual countries in Asia and Africa as our textbook, seemed too amazing, too incredible to be true. The idea took root in my imagination and I became determined to join World Campus Afloat. After graduating from high school, I found a summer job to help my parents pay for the trip. And the following spring I boarded the USS Universe in Los Angeles harbor for a Semester at Sea that would take me to Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa and half a a dozen other countries before winding up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The experience, to put it mildly, was transformative.
Before my semester at sea was over I had attended a Chinese Opera in Hong Kong, ridden a bullet train in Tokyo, watched wild lions hunt in Kenya and witnessed tribal rituals in the jungles of Mozambique, and learned how to play a Balinese gamelan.
But the most important lesson I learned was that Americans shared the world with a dazzling array of other cultures and other peoples all of which had their own vibrant customs, languages, foods, and music. I also learned that many of those countries had ties to each other and to the U.S. —shared histories that had shaped their past and ours – and that were still very much alive and still evolving.
Twenty-five years later, the future would change me again. It was now the mid-1990s and the Internet was taking the world by storm. As a vice president for the world’s largest internet service provider, it was my job to help launch America Online services in Asia and Latin America. When I met with business people in Beijing, Mexico City, Tokyo, Madrid and Sao Paulo, I noticed that — no matter what country I was in — the second or third question was about always about AOL’s ethnic subscribers in the U.S. What, the businessman in Buenos Aires wanted to know, was AOL doing to address its huge U.S. Latino subscribership?
At first, the question puzzled me. Why, I wondered, would a businessman in Argentina care about Latinos at the other end of the western hemisphere? Before long, I learned the answer: not only were Latinos reaching a demographic and cultural critical mass in the U.S., they were also becoming an economic force as well. The buying power of Hispanics in the U.S. was quickly surpassing the Gross Domestic Product (or GDP) of all but the largest Latin American countries. The U.S. Hispanic market was huge and growing fast—and every businessman in Latin America was trying to figure out how to get a piece of it. As I traveled to other parts of the world, I noticed the same phenomenon. I realized that something important was happening, and the more I looked into it, the bigger and more important it seemed.
America, I soon discovered, was in the midst of a cultural and economic shift that went beyond anything that I had seen before. I quit my job at AOL and started collecting my research and thoughts into a book, a book that would become The New Mainstream.
The future enters into us and transforms us, long before it happens
Without a doubt, the future of America is here. But what exactly has changed, and why does it matter?
To be sure, most Americans know that if present demographic trends continue, European non-Hispanic whites will eventually be outnumbered, that Hispanics have overtaken African Americans as the national largest minority, that foreign-born immigrants—both legal and undocumented—are changing the flavor, texture and look of American neighborhoods, schools and churches. They know that these newcomers are from many different countries, of every race, and speak many languages, though often not English. They might also know that salsa long ago replaced catsup as the country’s most popular condiment, that Oprah can make or break a book, that gays have better taste than straights, and that women and people of color can—and do—run major corporations and win national races for political office. They know that the world’s greatest golfer is black, and the world’s most famous rapper is a white man named Eminem.
But what most Americans don’t realize is that the culturally-charged images they see on TV and at the mall are just the visible tip of a deeper, more fundamental change. This transformation cuts across corporations, institutions and organizations and is putting a trans-national spin on the increasingly global realms of business, politics and media.
Wider than a movement and deeper than a trend, this New Mainstream of multi-cultural consumers is an unprecedented intersection of demographic and economic forces that are remolding the rhythms and textures of American society and changing the way that companies devise, develop and market their products and services.
Today, the 80 million Blacks, Hispanics and Asians living in the United States make up more than one fourth of the country.
By 2050, non-Anglos will represent at least 47.2 percent of the population.
Hispanics, blacks and Asians are already outpacing the rest of the United States in terms of population and income growth.
The combined consumer buying power of African-American, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans is already growing much faster that of non-Hispanic whites. By 2009 it is projected to rise 242 percent to almost $2 trillion. Over the same period, the buying power of Hispanics alone will reach $992 billion.
As a group, the nation’s non-Anglo consumers purchase more goods than the general population, are more brand loyal, and collectively, represent other important new social patterns, influencing everything from images in advertising to attitudes about religion, family, education and the afterlife.
Led by the growing statistical and economic clout of Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and other so-called minorities, the New Mainstream is a loose but sweeping coalition of groups that, for a myriad of reasons, have been forced to forge an identity outside the old mainstream. The New Mainstream flows across age, race, sex and region, and is transforming how America will eat, work, play, learn and spend in the coming years and decades. But the ultimate significance of the New Mainstream is greater than the sum of its many parts. The explosion of ethnic buying power is only part of the story. Even as population trends and the profit-driven interests of corporations converge, they are being joined by a potent third force: the rise of the so-called “knowledge workers” or “creative class.” This group, often referred to as “explorers,” “first adopters” or “taste makers,” tend not only to be tolerant of communities and cultures that are not their own, but are more likely to find value in—and actively seek out—experiences and customs that add flavor, variety and diversity to their lives. These are the people who bought tickets to see The Motorcycle Diaries. These are the consumers who turned the Afro-Cuban undulations of The Buena Visa Social into a music industry phenomenon and who fork over $80 for a Hugo Boss T-shirt emblazoned across the front with the suddenly-hip phrase “Urban Latino.” These are the 50 million or so affluent professionals who bought tickets to see Bombay Dreams on Broadway, and who pay $300 a person to savor the Japanese Omakasie tasting menu at Masa at the new Time Warner center in New York. They are New Mainstream consumers by choice and affinity rather than race or ethnicity.
So, what happens when so-called minorities become the new majority? What happens when the periphery becomes core?
From Time Warner to Procter and Gamble, from Pepsi to General Motors, corporations are finally getting the message that diversity makes sound business sense, and that understanding the sensibilities of New Mainstream consumers is the key to tapping that market. Businesses are also learning that navigating the New Mainstream requires changes that go far beyond hiring a few people of color in their marketing department. New Mainstream thinking is both strategic and tactical, with implications that reach from the stockroom to the boardroom.
Allstate Insurance Co., after successfully reaching out to Hispanics and African Americans, launched a campaign targeted at the Chinese community in New York City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Asian Americans in the country. By translating its slogan, “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” into Mandarin and Cantonese, the company hoped to pitch a sense of security to Chinese foreign-born immigrants, who make up 65% of the U.S. Chinese population. Allstate used local community partnerships, ethnic media advertising and in-language promotions and materials to educate potential customers on the psychological and economic benefits of insurance.
Such efforts have had a measurable impact on Allstate’s bottom line. After investing $60 million on marketing to Latinos in the late 1990s, the Illinois-based insurer saw its business among Hispanics increase from $1 billion to more than $2 billion.
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (or NASCAR) has launched a “Drive for Diversity” program to develop and showcase minority drivers and mechanics in an effort to tap the sport’s expanding ethnic fan base. According to an ESPN sports poll, NASCAR’s white fan base declined by 14.6 percent between 1995 and 2001, compared to increases of 631.3 percent among Hispanics, 111.7 percent for Asians and 17.8 percent for blacks. NASCAR, which claims a fan base of 75 million and runs about 90 races a year in 25 states, hopes to build on the 6.4 million Latinos and 2 million African-Americans who follow the sport. NASCAR races are currently broadcast in about 100 countries. The Association, which acknowledges that its diversity effort is aimed at boosting audiences in the U.S. and abroad by making itself more reflective of multicultural audiences, ran its first race in Mexico this year.
On TV, new channels targeted to Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, gays and women are changing the face of the media—and the faces we see in the media. Si TV and Voy are testing the waters of English-language programming aimed at assimilated Latino audiences, while Desi TV, a new satellite network for U.S.-based South Asian Indians, is following a similar trajectory. At the same time, advertisers are figuring out that culturally and racially diverse programming helps them connect with consumers of all colors, and that New Mainstream icons like Keanu Reeves, Jackie Chan, Will Smith, Tiger Woods, J-Lo and P Diddy can fuel the sales of not just records, movies and golf, but also SUVs, cosmetics and credit cards.
Last month, Tu Ciudad, a new magazine targeting bi-cultural Latinos in Los Angeles, made its debut. The glossy English-language publication, includes articles that detail a new wave of Mexican-American surfers, chronicles from Hispanic soldiers back from Iraq, and where to get the best sushi in LA.
Tu Ciudad — which means “my city” in Spanish—plans an initial circulation of 110,000 issues with hopes to roll out soon to other cities with large multicultural populations. The magazine’s editor, Oscar Garza, describes his editorial vision as an intersection in the heart of Los Angeles, where trendy Sunset Boulevard becomes Cesar Chavez Boulevard, before heading deep into the city’s Hispanic east side.
“It’s actually the same street, but what it reflects is the intersection of our lives,” Garza said. “Metaphorically, it’s a place where our two worlds meet.”
Tu Ciudad is joining a long list of new and established publications that target ethnic consumers, including People en Espanol, the nation’s leading Spanish language publication, and Vibe, Ebony and Essence—three titles that put a new mainstream spin on African-American culture. There is also KoreAm Journal, a news and culture magazine aimed at Korean-Americans that began as a black-and-white tabloid 15 years ago and is now a heavy glossy with articles about Korean-American hip-hop artists and politicians. Heeb, a magazine for urban Jews, and Latina, which targets bi-cultural style-conscious women, are both distributed nationwide.
The New Mainstream is increasingly transnational, multicultural and global
Just as the symbiotic relationship between ethnic Americans and the creative class is driving the new economic and creative visions of the 21st century, the rising economic power of U.S. ethnic groups is fueling international trade and instigating new ways of doing business.
Awakened to the fact that the buying power of U.S. Latinos now equals the GNP of Mexico, Mexican companies like Bimbo baked goods and Carta Blanca beer are hawking their products to U.S. Hispanic consumers. At the same time, New Mainstream consumers are having a direct impact on the economies of foreign countries.
Affluent minorities seeking to get in touch with their cultural roots are becoming a lucrative market for foreign tourist boards and Latin American governments. In Brazil, the government of the state of Bahia, which one of the most vibrant Afro-derived cultures in the world, has begun a multimillion dollar marketing campaign aimed at African-Americans who want to get closer to their African roots but may find Africa itself too distant, expensive or dangerous. Bahia’s state tour operator estimates that 60% of the 45,000 Americans who visited the region in 2002 were African-American.
If we are what we eat, then the changing American palate is affecting entire industries in ways that most people would never suspect.
The surging popularity of sushi and other ethnic foods on college campuses has forced universities to revamp their menus or face a student body that’s willing to fight for its right to kimchi. The change has transformed the multi-million dollar industry that provides food services to colleges, hospitals and other institutions.
But the economic impact of sushi goes even deeper. Until recently all of the Japonica rice- the only rice that can be used to make sushi – was imported from Japan. Then, during the mid 1990s, an enterprising group of agriculturalists in California’s Sacramento Valley decided to begin the cultivation and production of Japonica rice. Within a few years California’s japonica rice industry grew from zero to a $500 million a year business. Meanwhile, America’s traditional rice growers in the South and Midwest were caught off guard and left out of the nation’s fastest growing rice market. They may never catch up.
The New Mainstream is having a palpable effect on urban development and planning, and changing the look and shape of once-depressed communities. In Harlem, the $236 million Harlem Park Complex — a shopping and entertainment center that will be anchored by a 204-room Marriott hotel — is the first major hotel to be built in Harlem in more than 40 years. The Harlem project is part of Marriott’s $1-billion pledge to do business with minority – and woman-owned suppliers and double the number of its minority owners and franchises in the next five years.
Across the continent, in Santa Ana, California, urban planners are using Latino architectural cues to replace urban sprawl with compact, people-friendly civic centers that mimic the zocalos – or town squares — of traditional colonial Latin American towns and villages. The architectural trend — which has been dubbed the “Latino New Urbanism” has proved popular with affluent professional Hispanics and other New mainstreamers who have become weary of cookie-cutter malls that they consider unattractive and dehumanizing.
The New Mainstream is taking hold in places where you might least expect it – sometimes with results that might surprise you even more
The symbiosis between immigrants seeking work and the booming communities of the Creative Class are re-shaping the nation’s demographic profile. It’s no coincidence that America’s fastest-growing communities — Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlanta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina, to name three— also have some of the nation’s fastest-growing Latino and immigrant populations. As middle-class whites and assimilated ethnic groups migrate to new towns and suburbs outside major population centers, they are followed by immigrants seeking entry-level jobs in construction, restaurants and secondary labor markets created by the growing local economy.
The city of Indianapolis — the nation’s 12th largest city, the so-called “cross-roads of the Midwest” has seen its Hispanic population rise sharply. During the late 1990’s alone, the Hispanic population of Indiana doubled, and the Hispanic population of Marion County, which includes metropolitan Indianapolis, quadrupled.
Faced with change, the citizens of Indiana decided to act responsibly. The Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership — a consortium of civic, business and philanthropic organization — looked at what other states and cities call a problem, and saw an opportunity. They decided that marginalizing the Hispanic newcomers was a self-defeating tactic. Rather than shunning the latest group of immigrants to come to their city, they devised a plan to bring into the fabric of the local economy.
INHP worked with businesses, banks and the mayor’s office to develop alternative credit solutions for potential low-income home owners. It helped to establish a 1-percent down-payment plan, and the acceptance of Individual Tax Identification Numbers in the place of social security to make it easier for immigrants to acquire home loans and other financial services. By partnering with local government agencies, lending institutions, community development corporations, and philanthropic organizations INHP has reached out to low income and minority would-be homeowners, offering home ownership education, counseling and other specialized assistance in both English and Spanish. During the fiscal year ending in March 2003 INHP helped over 1000 families move into their own homes, repair existing homes or receive education and financial counseling services with the goal of home ownership.
In the increasingly global economy, multicultural is also by definition multinational. Three years ago, in recognition of Indiana’s fast-growing Latino population and the fact that Mexico is the state’s second largest trading partner, a Mexican Consulate was established in Indianapolis. Exports from Indiana to Mexico increased 173 percent from 1999 to 2000 alone and totaled $2.2 billion in 2000. Trade with Mexico supports some 44,000 Hoosier jobs and the consulate has allowed Indianapolis to retrain travel and commerce business that would have otherwise been lost to Chicago.
A report on the Indianapolis Latino population conducted by the United Way and the Community Service Council in 2000, found that fully half of the Hispanic population in Indianapolis had arrived in the prior two years. The majority of newcomers were single males, but many had families with small children or hoped to someday bring them to the U.S. The study discovered that 89% of the local Hispanic population was born outside the U.S., yet their top three reasons for coming to Indianapolis—to find work, to look for a better life, to join families already here — are the cornerstones of a nation founded and mostly populated by immigrants, a tradition that goes back to the very first European settlers and is ingrained in the earliest history of the republic.
It is an idea symbolized by the Unfinished Pyramid on the Great Seal of the United States. The Great Seal was commissioned by the first Continental Congress and later placed on the back of the one dollar bill by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to remind the world that the United States was “a nation unfinished”—still in the process of being completed, a country that was continually being redefined and reinvigorated by newcomers of different cultures and races.
Today, a new breed of politicians are seeking—and winning—higher office by courting New Mainstream voters. Obama Barak, the charismatic African-American senator from Illinois, has reinvigorated the democratic party with his colorblind vision of AmericaLast month witnessed the election of Antonio Villaraigosa (veeya-rye-gosa) as LA’s new Mayor, the city’s first Hispanic mayor in more than a century. Villaraigosa’s landslide victory has been attributed to his ability to win votes from LA’s black community and also to convince white LA residents that is his administration will represent the rights and interests of all Angelenos—regardless of race or ethnicity. The same week in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the cover of the New York Post with his head digitally attached to a Mexican mariachi-costume, a joking tribute to the fact that his bid for-re election was kicked off that week with TV ads in which the Mayor spoke only in broken Spanish.
As the demographic and economic currents of the New Mainstream converge and swell, the redefinition and affirmation of democratic principles—the universal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—is being advanced simultaneously on multiple fronts: the aspirations of immigrants and minorities seeking to realize their version of the American Dream, the balance sheet aspirations of corporations eager to tap the ballooning influence and buying power of the nation’s ethnic minorities, and the financial windfall being enjoyed by cities and towns whose cultural riches are a magnet for the diversity-loving legions of the creative class. The blending of these powerful interests, and how they are transforming every aspect of American life, is the very definition of the multicultural consumer, and the driving force behind The New Mainstream.
The multicultural consumer and the American consumer are one in the same. Americans come in every color and socio-economic stratum, they are U.S.-born and foreign-born, speak dozens of languages, yet are united by shared aspirations and a common capacity for transformation, evolution and growth. As geo-relational databases, psychographic profiles and behavioral models slice and dice the mind and heart of the American buyer, the images and messages of the media are reflecting and projecting thousands of different Americas, each one of which is a piece of a larger picture that is only beginning to come into focus.
The “experiential economy,” in which consumers place a greater value on things that they can experience, is evolving into the “transformational economy,” which are the products, services and experiences that will make them a different, better person. Only by being transformed together, a mutual recognition of our common destiny as a people of many peoples, a race of many races, a nation of many nations, can we attain and complete the apex of the unfinished pyramid on the one dollar bill.
Guy Garcia is an award-winning journalist, novelist, and multimedia entrepreneur. A staff writer at Time magazine for thirteen years and a longtime contributor to The New York Times and other publications, he has also written two novels, “Skin Deep” and “Obsidian Sky.” Garcia was the founding editor of www.TotalNewYork, one of the first urban websites to appear on the Internet. More recently, he has worked on the development of AOL Latin America, AOL International, and AOL Broadband Music. |
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