Towards a White Minority?

Towards a White Minority








Did you see those demographic stats in the New York Times last week?


The Census Bureau estimated yesterday that from July 1, 2005 to July 1, 2006, the nation’s minority population grew to 100.7 million from 98.3 million... Nearly half the children under age 5 are Hispanic, black or Asian... 80 percent of Americans over age 60 are non-Hispanic whites, compared with only 60 percent among those in their 20s and 30s, and 58 percent among people younger than 20...


(Some of the quotes in what follows are from the NYT story; the others are from the actual U.S. Census Bureau news release from which the story is abstracted.)





It is not news that white Anglo (i.e. white non-Hispanic — I am using “Anglo” just as a linguistic marker) Americans are heading for minority status. Bill Clinton was exulting over the prospect a decade ago. Interesting to see the numbers in detail, though, and the state-by-state disparities.


Four states and the District of Columbia are “majority-minority.” Hawaii led the nation with a population that was 75 percent minority in 2006, followed by the District of Columbia (68 percent), New Mexico (57 percent), California (57 percent), and Texas (52 percent).


The economic sidebars are interesting, too:


[Demographer Dr. Mark] Mather said the three most homogeneous states — Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia — spent the highest proportion of their gross state product on public education.


This reinforces a number of findings from recent years suggesting that people are much more willing to be taxed for the benefit of people like themselves than for the benefit of the Other. Old people already grumble about paying taxes to support extravagant educational establishments. As the racial generation gap opens up, with the oldsters being noticeably more white and Anglo than the kids being educated, the grumbling will escalate into action — most likely, the simple action of yet further residential segregation, the old and white-Anglo living here, the young and dark Hispanic living there.





Though, of course, the unwillingness to be taxed to support the Other cuts both ways. How will a majority nonwhite young workforce feel about paying out income and Social Security taxes for the sustenance of old, white Anglos? I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I, at least, have looked forward glumly to my last days, most likely spent stuck, incapable, in some cruddy nursing home with a bunch of other helpless white geezers, my daily needs in the hands of resentful black and brown orderlies whose educations featured long catalogs of the wrongs done to Them by Us.





Back of all that is the question: As white Anglos decline into a minority, will we see the rise of white-Anglo race consciousness? The common understanding at present is that open expressions of race consciousness are taboo for white-Anglo Americans, but just fine for everyone else. A leading black presidential candidate subtitles his best-selling biography “A Story of Race and Inheritance”; the main lobbying organization for Hispanics carries the proud title “National Council of the Race”; and so on. This word is, however, not available to white-Anglo Americans in reference to themselves, and white-Anglo Americans are indoctrinated from childhood to believe, or to pretend to believe, that race is an empty category.





This taboo is left over from the old pre-1960s order of unassailable (as it then seemed) white-Anglo supremacy. It was really just a form of noblesse oblige, a patronizing courtesy from the vast-majority race, who owned and ran pretty much everything in the U.S. up to about 40 years ago, to minorities about whom they nursed a mildly guilty conscience.





Noblesse oblige is a wonderfully satisfying, self-flattering attitude: “Look at me — not only powerful and rich, but gracious and kind, too!” Whether it can survive as white Anglos dwindle to minority status is not clear to me. It might: it runs strong today among the white-Anglo inhabitants of Washington, D.C., even though they are (see above) only 32 percent of the population there. I suppose it depends how the economics shakes down.


Hispanics accounted for almost half (1.4 million) of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 1, 2005 and July 1, 2006... The Hispanic population in 2006 was much younger, with a median age of 27.4 compared with the population as a whole at 36.4.


It is quite possible that Americans alive today will live to see the nation become majority Hispanic. Did anyone ever think this would happen, prior to a few short years ago? Well into the 1960s, Mexico was an inconsequential place, a joke place, while the other Central American nations simply did not register at all. You went to Acapulco for an exotic vacation, got a nasty case of Montezuma’s revenge, and came home with some colorful handicraft trinkets to put on your mantel shelf. That aside, you never thought about Central America from one year’s end to the next. The highest level that Mexicans rose to in the American imagination was the vaguely sentimental portrayals in the works of southwestern writers like Willa Cather.





The inconsequentiality was numerical, too. In midcentury there was one Mexican per four or five Americans. The place was underpopulated. The few thousand Mexicans who drifted across the border looking for work could easily be rounded up and deported if they became an inconvenience, as in Eisenhower’s famous “Operation *******.” There were no limits at all on legal immigration from the Western hemisphere until the 1965 Immigration Act, none being thought necessary. An annual quota of 120,000 was imposed by that act; but this was just a low-value bone thrown to key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Everett Dirksen and Sam Ervin) by Teddy Kennedy to get the bill through. Nobody cared about Hispanic immigration; no-one thought it consequential.





Now there are 110 million Mexicans to the U.S.’s 300 million, with corresponding numbers of Hispanics further south. If you count the 20 or 30 million Mexicans actually living here, legally or illegally, the Mexican-American ratio must actually be about one to two. Unfortunately Mexico’s great late-20th-century population boom was boomier, and longer-lasting, than that nation’s economic boom, which fizzled out around 1980. Not only were mid-20th-century Central American populations numerically insignificant until recently; the economic gap between their sleepy, stagnant economies and our vibrant one was less then that it is today, after several more decades of sleepy stagnation on their part, vibrancy on ours.





And so white-Anglo America slips into minority status. Probably we never wanted it to happen. Probably, if asked around 1970 whether it ought to happen, most of us would have said no. The topic never rose to the status of a major political issue among the mass of Americans, though. The coming presidential election will be the first in my lifetime to have immigration as a major theme.





If Americans minded what was happening, they didn’t mind enough to stop it. To be sure, their indifference was aided and abetted by the late 20th-century browbeating campaigns by cultural elites on behalf of “diversity,” “political correctness,” and racial guilt; but Americans didn’t seem to mind those much, either — not enough to rebel against them in any significant way.





If there is any large general historical lesson to be taken from all this, it is that a population as prosperous, secure, well-employed, and well-entertained as the white Anglos of late 20th-century America, and as confident of its own cultural superiority, cannot be made to care much about matters of ethnic identity, and may altogether lose the habit of thinking in such terms.





Whether this ethnic insouciance will survive the coming great demographic changes, I don’t know. Things have gone so far now that there is very little we can do but wait and see.

Towards a White Minority?
you have pointed out some interesting facts...I have paid into social security since I was 12 years old and took on my first full time job (42 hours a week) and I have a voice...I do not care what is PC, when I am old and my voice is weak...I will get a bull horn and still demand my rights as a tax paying American with an ancestral history that fought to keep this country free...everyone else who speaks against me because of my race can kiss my wrinkled butt..I want to be treated as an equal, I don't expect *special* treatment.
Reply:White minority should never happen. It would suck! Report It

Reply:Well it's hard to reproduce your own offspring, when you have to work harder and longer to pay for all the kids they are having at will and have no business doing it. they know they will get help so what the hell do they need to stop for? I understand diversity and have no problem with it, but if you sit there and say what I said isn't happening, Get in the car with me oneday and I have your mind changed.
Reply:...yawn...
Reply:that was wayyy to much to read! Face fact, times are changing, there's going to be a more diverse American.
Reply:WHAT THE HECK IS YOUR QUESTION?
Reply:I read some similar observations and questions to this post recently when I was researching David Duke of the American Ku Klux Klan and other white supremist organizations for a history project. Frankly, I can't wait for the golden age, when all the races are blended and melded into various shades of gold. Talk about genetic heterogeneity and robustness!
Reply:I don't know if you have a question in there somewhere or not? As far as all the information, I have a couple of comments.





1) I am half Asian, half Caucasian. When I get a census, I check on the "asian" line. When I applied for a job, I did the same. Why? Because I wanted to be a minority. Why? When I was 15 I applied for a job as a secretary. I interviewed and tested for the job. I typed 120 wpm, and I killed every other applicant on the grammar and math tests. Know what they told me? Sorry - we have to hire a hispanic person for this job and we can't hire you. I had checked "caucasian" on the application.





2) Considering the above, think of all the mixed racial marriages there are today. Hispanics marrying caucasians. Blacks marrying caucasians. Asians marrying caucasians.


Now - you send a census out and all of their children may check a minority status instead of straight caucasian. That would explain why our minority categories are growing at such a fast rate.





3) My son is 1/4 asian, 3/4 caucasian. When we fill out a census, we STILL put asian :-)





4) It is possible that in future it would benefit my son to check "caucasian" LOL!





All of this said, I am happy that our country is turning into an even broader melting pot. I love that there are tons of mixed marriages. I think that is good, healthy, and the best way I know how to eliminate racism.





However, I am indeed concerned that we will just create another minority (caucasians). I am concerned that people STILL look at skin color when hiring for jobs, picking friends, making judgement. When the day comes that there is no place to check on a form at all, I will be happy.
Reply:do you thank white is realy the dieing breed.
Reply:Affirmative action for white people... anybody... anybody??? no thats right white people actually want equaltiy!
Reply:k*lane, please, don't speak as the voice of my race. Not only have you gotten sentiment wrong for at least some of those you self-appointedly represent, you miss the point entirely. If someone was to ask you what the dominent race, in terms of numbers, is in the US, the answer would be white. What is concerning is the loss of cultural identity, through being swamped by minorities. Fair enough they deserve equality, but the US history is one of a white nation. If America does not STAY a white nation, the people cannot call that history their own, now can they.





Though I must concur with the 'what is the actual question' comment.
Reply:Change is America.
Reply:Is a pattern. White, English people kill the Native Americans and they became the dominant race in this country. Now, Hispanics are becoming the dominant race, just learn to live with it. Then, somebody else will become the dominant race.
Reply:If the majority of our citizens are of Mexican ancestry in 50 years or so, what history will they teach in school? The history of the United States, a country founded by a different racial and cultural group, or the history of Mexico? Perhaps both? But which will be given more respect, more admiration? I'm afraid I know the answer, and that is what scares me.
Reply:Your rant is a little long. You might want to state your case, give a few examples, and include a link for those who want more information.
Reply:This is a free country. If you want to quit spawning, that's not my problem.
Reply:The planet earth is a very small speck of dust in this vast universe. The inhabitants of this speck are all biological blueprints of one another. What we consider color difference is nothing more than variations of brown determined by the environment of the place where different people evolved. God has provided everything needed for everyone to be very happy. Unfortunately human nature has taken these gifts and determined that they should be distributed according to self determined guidelines of color, affluence, and many other indicators of false pride. Life is what you make it.