In 1986, when I took Stephen Klineberg's sociology class at Rice, he began by explaining to us how lucky we were to be conducting an opinion poll in Houston at that precise moment. The oil boom had attracted people from all over the country to this city, so that its demographic mix precisely mirrored that of the rest of the U.S. At that magical moment, Houston! was the most American! place! in America! On nearly any controversial topic, he told us - abortion, taxes, gay rights - Houston's opinions mirrored those of the wider United States. Journalists know he can always be relied on for a quote; business groups jostle to book him as a lunch speaker. After Rich and Nancy Kinder launched the effort to support serious study of Houston and other cities, Rice president David Leebron informed Klineberg that it was the largest gift to the social sciences ever made in Rice's history. ExxonMobil underwrote "Interesting Times," as the upgraded documentary is called, in part because the company itself needs to explain Houston to the highly skilled workers that it wants to move here. [...] the city's astounding ethnic transformation - a trend that will inevitably continue - could be Houston's greatest asset, giving its businesses a competitive edge in a fast-globalizing world; or ethnic tensions could tear us apart.
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