Lessons In Tolerance From California

The political ads warned that illegal immigrants were dashing, by the millions, over the Mexican border, racing to claim taxpayer-funded public services in California.

“They keep coming,” the announcer intoned. When viewed on YouTube today, these ads hardly seem the stuff of multicultural California as we know it.

In 1994, though, that message helped lift California’s governor, the Republican Pete Wilson, to re- election. That same year, voters adopted a referendum, Proposition 187, denying state services to undocumented immigrants.

California is often held up as a harbinger of the demographics — and, Democrats hope, the politics — of the United States to come. Mr. Wilson’s bet against immigration is thought to have hurt Republicans in the long run in the state. But in the dawn of the Trump era, the state is also a cautionary tale of what happens during the tumultuous years when that change is occurring rapidly.

Donald J. Trump has taken office in a nation that is growing more diverse everywhere, because of both foreign immigration and migration to rural areas in America that are nearly all white.

After an election in which Mr. Trump appealed to unease about the United States’ changing identity, his presidency poses a very different question from his predecessor’s.

How will Americans handle racial change that is only going to accelerate?

California lashed out at diversity before embracing it.

“There’s a very rich history of xeno-

What will it take for America to accept greater diversity?