Google+hangout: Diversity in America
The U.S. is in the middle of another great wave of immigration.
Just as large groups of immigrants came through Ellis Island during parts of the last century and flocked to coastal cities, today's immigrants are pushing past the coasts, flocking to the center of the country. Hispanics and Asians are flooding cities in the Midwest, rapidly changing diversity in places such as Des Moines and Appalachia in the quest for greater economic opportunity, according to data gathered for USA TODAY's diversity project.
Other patterns have also emerged. A reverse migration is taking large numbers of African Americans back to communities in the South; Native Americans are the largest minority community in some Northern states and states in the Southwest.
What does this rapidly changing diversity mean for minority groups and the larger communities that are being shifted? Will the shift to a majority-minority culture mean greater economic empowerment?
Join USA TODAY columnists DeWayne Wickham and Raul Reyes, author Helen Zia, and José Barreiro, assistant director of research for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian at 1 p.m. Oct. 22 for a live national discussion on race as part of USA TODAY's Changing Face of America project.
Watch the conversation in the video player below and leave your comments on Twitter using #changingface. You can also post comments using Facebook on this story page and in the Cover it Live chat box below (you may need to click refresh to see the box). We may add your voice to the live discussion!
Roundtable participants
Brian Gallagher, host: As editor of the editorial page, Brian is in charge of USA TODAY's opinion section and leads its Editorial Board. He has served two stints in the job, most recently since 2004 and previously from 1999 to 2002. In between he was the newspaper's executive editor.
Eileen Rivers: Eileen is the editorial page's Web content editor and also serves on USA TODAY's Editorial Board. Before coming to USA TODAY in 2008, she was a copy editor and freelance writer at The Washington Post, and was an award winning investigative reporter in Augusta, Ga.
Michelle Poblete: Michelle is USA TODAY's Your Say editor. She collects and edits reader comments for publication and acts as a liaison between readers and USA TODAY editors. She is also a member of the Editorial Board. Previously, she worked for three years on the news copy desk at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. She also was a copy editor at Gannett News Service.
DeWayne Wickham: DeWayne is a USA TODAY columnist and veteran print columnist who also has worked as a commentator for CBS News, Black Entertainment News and the Tom Joyner Morning Show. He is currently dean of the journalism school at Morgan State University.
Raul Reyes: Raul is a USA TODAY columnist and an attorney in New York City. He is a contributor to The Today Show, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and NBCNews.com. He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Texas Monthly and the Huffington Post.
Helen Zia: Helen is an award-winning writer and a former executive editor of Ms. Magazine. She is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, the New York Times and The Nation.
José Barreiro: Jose is the assistant director for research at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and a leading scholar of American Indian policy and the contemporary Native experience. He also helped establish the American Indian program at Cornell University.