Zhu, Li Jan. 2006 Email: Li.Zhu.## email not listed ##
While our society has progressed in many aspects, social distance and racial
inequality still pose a major social problem in the U.S. Given the fact that there are more and
more new immigrants coming to the United States, especially from Hispanic and Asian
countries, how to deal with social distance between various racial/ethnic groups remains a key
problem facing our society.
Although racial prejudice and discrimination may serve the interests of the powerful,
such unequal treatment can also be dysfunctional to a society and even to it dominant group.
Sociologist Arnold Rose (1951) pointed out that a society that practices discrimination fails to
use the resources of all individuals. Also, racial prejudice aggravates social problems such as
poverty, delinquency, and crime and places the financial burden to alleviate these problems on
the dominant groups.
In 1940, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in the United States was 87%. But in
2000, this number dropped down to 69%. During the same period, the number of Asians and
Hispanic people in the United States increased drastically, accounting for more than 16
percent of the total population in 2000. And this trend is continuing. In 2100, it is expected
that the racial and ethnic composition of the United States will show an even more diverse
picture, with approximately 24% of Hispanic people and 9% of Asian and others in the total
population (Grieco and Cassidy 2001).
The influx of immigrants in the long run will alter the population structure and
related demographic features and also might influence the social norms in the United States to
some extent. Nowadays, immigrants not only make contributions to the society as workers
Dept. of Soc., Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287
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Convention