ABSTRACT
The newspaper headline “City Minorities May Now Be Majority” from the New York Times on October 24, 1989, did not refer to European immigrants but to the combined force of blacks, Asians, and Latinos, which by 1990 made up approximately 54 percent of the city’s population. The percentage is presumably higher today. While ethnic politics is not new in New York City, the Chinese community is emblematic of a new importance placed on the diversity of ethnic groups in New York City politics. The idea of America as a vast “melting pot” that would Americanize all newcomers has been scrapped and replaced by “cultural pluralism,”where the retention of cultural differences is accepted and valued.
