The US is expected to eventually become majority non-white (estimated in the 2040s), and a significant percentage of white Americans are worried about that.
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/109013/ajardina_1.pdf?sequence=1
See chapter 6, starting at page 151.
This really cannot happen fast enough.
They need to get over it. I say this as a physically lily white American (though my skin color doesn’t “match” most of my ancestry or my family).
It amazes me that people care in 2016 about the amount of melanin in one’s skin but it has been made clear in the past year that some do care very much. However, racial classification has long been an issue in this country, but a moving target, too, as what determines “white” (whatever that means) has changed with the times and new groups of immigrants have often faced bigotry. During the Great Migration between 1880 and 1920, when huge waves of Italians arrived in the USA, many were considered nonwhite characterized as “colored” or black, along with other immigrants like Jews, Greeks, Polish. We have a history of always hating on and fearing the newest group of immigrants. Ridiculous stuff. Let’s move on.
In HI, there is NO ethnic majority, but caucasians and asians do have much of the wealth and power.
It’s almost as if those worried white people are afraid that, as minorities, they’ll be discriminated against…wonder where they got that idea?
2040 can’t come soon enough, imo.
Swarthy skinned people without education, swarming our country, dominating us in voting, and taking us over.
These were the things said by Benjamin Franklin about Germans. Somehow I think we survived.
What about white Hispanics? Are they too classified as non-white for the purpose of creating a non-white majority?
Gonna go out on a limb and say that the fact that concepts like this are exciting OR scary to some people always strikes me as odd.
Not proud to be from a certain ethnicity or ancestry, but not ashamed either. None of us can help to whom or how we were born, for better or for worse.
The place where I live – Montgomery County, Maryland – is well on its way to becoming majority non-white. Our public schools are there already.
I’m not bothered by it, and most of the other white people I know aren’t bothered by it, either. Many people consider our diversity an asset. But perhaps we feel comfortable because it’s unlikely that any group will be in the majority. We have large African American, Hispanic, and Asian populations here. What we’re moving toward is a multicultural community where no one group dominates.
I suspect we might feel different if a single group that is now a minority was going to become the majority. I think this is something that most white people are ill-prepared to cope with.
This country has always been a melting pot. Who cares what the predominant color is? Tangential story but relavant I think: my father who came here with nothing and put himself through medical school was blackballed from the local country club because of his skin color (not black but very dark skinned Mediterranean from a predominantly Muslim country). It was wrong in the '50s; it’s wrong now.
Interesting observation by @SouthFloridaMom9 concerning an excited/scared spectrum. I never thought of myself as excited about non-whites becoming a majority in the US. However like some other trends, I have always viewed it as a highly probable scenario in my lifetime. Perhaps more importantly, I have chosen to look at the positives as it comes to fruition.
This is just one reason (of many), why I reject any rhetoric that hints at white supremacy. In my opinion, it’s short-sighted with future consequences.
So while I disliked some of the emphasis on ethnicity/skin color/religion during the election, America needs to look in the mirror and embrace its diversity and make it our strength, not our undoing.
Frankly, you can’t change the ethnic shift. Mass self-deportation is a silly notion. No one said the great American experiment would be easy.
I am white and live in a very diverse community and work in a very diverse office. There was a lot of diversity at my kid’s schools which is reflected in their friend groups. No one in my household is concerned about this at all.
I just want to be around nice and decent people. Could not care less about what race, nationals, ethnicity, religion or anything else like that.
“Gonna go out on a limb and say that the fact that concepts like this are exciting OR scary to some people always strikes me as odd.”
^ I have thought that, too, but realize we all have individualized experiences with different cultures and races (as well as within our own).
This is a thought-provoking article related to this topic. It’s long, but truly worth the read.
I can never put myself in someone else’s shoes and I think there is sometimes a whiff of arrogance in even trying to do so. I recognize that there are experiences (including racism) people live through that other people can never appreciate or fully understand. Growing up with a visibly disabled sibling taught me that (not that being a minority is a disability or anything like it - please do not impute that to my words).
^^how I feel.
If the demographics change in our country, that’s just how it is.
In addition to Hawaii, California and Texas are majority minority states.
Before we jump into the orgy of indignation, we shoud pause a bit to consider the nature of apprehension. Is it just the color of the skin or possible cultural change it might bring?
You mean that people have a notion of what “American culture” is, and they ascribe it to a particular race? That seems sort of problematical.
And being that we are on CC, I wonder how people’s excited / scare answer lines up with the diversity level of the college selected for their child.
Personally I am excited and welcome diversity. And my son is at a school study white students are in the minority.
I think it’s a good point…that there can be a whiff of arrogance in claiming to understand another’s experience. What is sorely needed is the opposite…the humility to NOT claim to understand, but being willing to try…to listen, really listen to another’s experiences without discounting or getting defensive. That may be the hardest thing to do.
Just identifying as a nice person among other nice people of many ethnicities is not doing anything to change the fact that the dominant group automatically controls the script of how things go without being fully aware of it. Guess that’s human nature in any culture. I’m not claiming to be doing any better than anyone else in making the changes, just saying that intense frustrations will build whenever there’s a benignly detached “let them eat cake” mentality.
My WASP stepdad moved to a highly desirable, upscale area near Los Angeles. On moving day, he looked around his street and said, “I really made it. I live on an all-Asian block.”