“The New Mainstream: How the Multicultural Consumer Is Transforming American Business” by Guy Garcia; Rayo ($24.95)



A “new mainstream” is evolving in the United States that will, in the view of journalist, novelist and Internet entrepreneur Guy Garcia, “keep America young and strong even as the world’s other major industrial powers become older and weaker.”

This growing and expanding new mainstream of minorities, immigrants and “creatives,” Garcia maintains in his new book “The New Mainstream,” gives this nation a decided advantage in a global economy characterized by racial, cultural and ethnic diversity.

“The multicultural economy is the global economy because market trends in the United States drive – and are in turn determined by – market trends throughout the world,” he writes. “America is a global society because its media shapes the dreams of millions and because the issues and opportunities of the domestic ethnic market are a microcosm of America’s relationship with the rest of the world.”

He points to demographic projections that indicate that by the middle of this century Japan will have 30 percent fewer people, and by the end of the century its population could be half of what it is today because of its cultural and racial insularity.

Because Japan’s entrenched traditions will not allow enough immigration to make up for the population decline, it is likely to suffer a shrinking tax base, economic deflation and the collapse of its national pension system, Garcia writes.

Across another ocean, Europe’s low fertility rate and rising median age will cause it to lose demographic ground to the United States, China and Latin America, Garcia says.

The point those comparisons underscore, he says, is that immigration and the multicultural dimension of America’s population have been and will increasingly be a boon to the nation’s economic, social and cultural viability.

In that context, he suggests, restrictive immigration policies make little sense. But he does not belabor the point. Perhaps he feels that the flow of immigrants – legal and illegal – into this country is destined to continue regardless of official policy, particularly from Latin America.

He reminds readers that by the middle of the century Hispanics are projected to constitute 25 percent of the U.S. population.

“Today, the 80 million blacks, Hispanics and Asians living in the United States make up more than one-fourth of the country and spend over $1.2 trillion a year. By 2050, non-Anglos will have grown to 47.2 percent of the population,” he writes. “Hispanics, blacks and Asians already outpace the rest of the United States in terms of population and income growth. The buying power of Latinos alone is growing at a compound rate of 8.7 percent, almost double that of non-Hispanics, and is projected to reach $926 billion by 2007.”

He maintains that the nation’s non-Anglo minorities buy more consumer goods than the general population and display more brand loyalty.

“Led by the growing statistical clout and buying power of Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other so-called minorities, the New Mainstream is a loose but sweeping coalition of groups that for myriad reasons have been forced to forge an identity outside the Old Mainstream. Yet, the New Mainstream consumes media, products, and services at a greater rate than the general population,” Garcia writes.

Garcia recognizes that most Americans are aware of these demographic, cultural and economic shifts. They know, he suggests, that European, non-Hispanic whites will eventually be outnumbered, that Hispanics have surpassed blacks as the largest minority group, that salsa has replaced ketchup as the most popular condiment and that black talk-show host Oprah Winfrey can make or break a book.

“But what most Americans might not realize is that the culturally charged images they see on TV and in the streets are just the visible tip of a deeper, more fundamental change. It is a change that cuts across corporations, institutions, and organizations and is putting a transnational spin on the increasingly global realms of business, politics, and media,” Garcia writes.

More than the general public, much of corporate America is aware of this and is responding. Unlike government-propelled affirmative action, which is designed to redress the injustices of past racial discrimination, corporate diversity efforts stem from concern for the bottom line.

He cites Ford, Aetna, Fannie Mae, American Express, Bank of America, Verizon, IBM and Nike as examples of the growing number of companies that recognize that diversity is good for business.

“But even as more Fortune 500 companies are acknowledging the importance of diversity to their bottom line, ethnic representation at the senior executive and boardroom levels continues to lag,” Garcia writes.

Nevertheless, he expects that the business case for diversity will become so compelling in the near future that growing numbers of minority men and women will occupy seats in executive suites and board rooms.

“As they do, they will join other members of the New Mainstream elite, an amorphous but powerful group of racially and culturally diverse innovators and leaders in entertainment, media, business, advertising, politics, technology and other fields, who are setting the style, mood and direction of what America is and what it will become as it leads the way into the twenty-first century,” Garcia writes.

“The New Mainstream” is a well-written, well-researched and carefully reasoned look at a crucial piece of the contemporary American social, economic and political landscape. Certainly everyone who has anything to sell should read it in order to understand who his or her consumers are, how to appeal to them and how to avoid culturally insensitive gaffes that can turn them off.

At the same time, however, “The New Mainstream” presents a broad overview of who the American people are and how they became this cultural amalgam that is worth reading purely for its historical and sociological merit.

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(c) 2004, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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