Mandatum novum do vobis: ut diligatis invicem

August 14, 2008 5:20 PM

White Americans No Longer A Majority By 2042.The nation will be more racially and ethnically diverse, as well as much older, by midcentury, according to projections released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042, with the nation projected to be 54 percent minority in 2050. By 2023, minorities will comprise more than half of all children.
posted by plexi (91 comments total)

Were gonna be a white minority
posted by NoMich at 5:33 PM on August 14, 2008

I'm down with that.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:34 PM on August 14, 2008

Everybody hispanic!

Ok, that came from Fark. But then so did this story, so even steven.
posted by mullingitover at 5:34 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Seems like we get one of these stories every couple of years, almost as if it were timed to the election cycle. Funny how that works out.
posted by EarBucket at 5:35 PM on August 14, 2008 [9 favorites]

Red Americans No Longer A Majority By 1742.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 5:36 PM on August 14, 2008 [26 favorites]

I'll be 90 in 2042. Just doing my bit to help seniorize America.
posted by netbros at 5:36 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'll be 72, netbros. Turn on Matlock. (I'm fairly sure Andy Griffith will still be alive and on TV in 2042. If we put our mind to it.)
posted by jonmc at 5:38 PM on August 14, 2008

Chris Matthews' head just exploded.
posted by Huck500 at 5:38 PM on August 14, 2008

White minority, pass a universal healthcare bill and *poof* suddenly you're living in Canada.

Oh, and go metric.
posted by GuyZero at 5:38 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

What ever will Lou Dobbs do?!
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:47 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

GuyZero: White minority, pass a universal healthcare bill and *poof* suddenly you're living in Canada.

? In Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal, perhaps. For the Canadian population as a whole, visible minorities are only 16%.
posted by russilwvong at 5:49 PM on August 14, 2008

This is assuming that the definitions of 'white' and 'minority' stay the same. Remember when Italians and Eastern Europeans used to be grubby minorities? Who's to say that we won't start considering Latinos 'white' in fifty years?
posted by dinty_moore at 5:52 PM on August 14, 2008 [8 favorites]

Who's to say that we won't start considering Latinos 'white' in fifty years

Probably Latinos.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:00 PM on August 14, 2008 [7 favorites]

I'll be 90 in 2042. Just doing my bit to help seniorize America.

91. Get off my lawn.
posted by fixedgear at 6:00 PM on August 14, 2008 [4 favorites]

Can we stop using the term minority for races? If we keep mixing enough, races won't mean much in a few thousand years.
posted by mrgrimm at 6:01 PM on August 14, 2008 [6 favorites]

54 percent minority

Guess they're going to have to call them something else. Majorities?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:02 PM on August 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

The Mix and Mingle Age.
posted by juiceCake at 6:03 PM on August 14, 2008

Dinty_moore: yes indeed. Although Jews, Irish and Catholics are now seen as 'proper' here in the UK, the enlargement of the EU produced a wave of tabloid paranoia about our culture being swamped by, er, white Christian Europeans.
posted by athenian at 6:05 PM on August 14, 2008

For the Canadian population as a whole, visible minorities are only 16%.

Wow. I honestly thought it was really much higher. 2006 Canada Census Visible Minority Groups, by Percentage. Markham, Richmond, Burnaby and Brampton top out actually. Apparently visible minorities like the suburbs. Only 6 census areas have a > 50% visible minority population. I am honestly surprised. Well, except for Markham and Brampton.
posted by GuyZero at 6:05 PM on August 14, 2008

There is no scientific basis for the concept of race. Ethnicity is the term to use.
posted by chudmonkey at 6:06 PM on August 14, 2008 [6 favorites]

I wonder how many servers for white nationalist websites are melting right now from all the wailing and gnashing of teeth on their boards. Assuming they read Time, of course.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:06 PM on August 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

Awesome, I can't wait to be the cool subculture rather than the unhip over-culture.
posted by DU at 6:08 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm half Puerto Rican. The only time I've even briefly thought of myself as anything other than "white" was while filling out college applications. How many millions are there like me already? I'm guessing "lots," and the number will only grow.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:11 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

I wonder how many servers for white nationalist websites are melting right now from all the wailing and gnashing of teeth on their boards.

That's nothing compared to what's coming to the pipe. White America is probably going to slowly, but completely lose their shit over this change. It will be ugly.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:12 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Of course, White South Africa did "OK" as a minority.

Also, shouldn't this post read "Regular Americans No Longer A Majority By 2042"?
posted by DU at 6:15 PM on August 14, 2008

Just a little south of me, latinos are already in the majority and it is awesome for two reasons:
1) great food
2) hot latina women (even Lou Dobbs can agree to that)
posted by birdherder at 6:20 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

DU: "Regular Americans No Longer A Majority By 2042"

Time to invest in Ex-Lax!
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:31 PM on August 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

"54 percent minority"

that phrase just imploded....
posted by HuronBob at 6:35 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yay
posted by Citizen Premier at 6:38 PM on August 14, 2008

GuyZero - Apparently visible minorities like the suburbs.

It starts out with immigrants only being able to afford to live in less expensive neighbourhoods. After a while, services normally available in their home countries start showing up (like, Asian supermarkets and whatnot) which draws more immigrants to the area.

It's really sweat here in Vancouver now; as the offspring of those immigrants grow up and get well paid jobs (which they manage to do partially because of the work ethic their immigrant parents instilled in them), they start residing in more affluent parts of the city. The nice side effect is that I can get Asian groceries just by walking down the block. Another great thing is the number and diversity of restaurants in just about any neighbourhood in the city.

In the case of Richmond (or Richmond Hill, I presume), the translated Cantonese name is quite auspicious and sounds rather tony. There's a reason why it's called Little Hong Kong. It's funny that we still have a "Chinatown" (which is in Vancouver proper, straddling downtown and the poor part of town). Back in the day, top flight chefs would be lured from Shanghai or Beijing Peking would be lured to Hong Kong. There was a time where the same top chefs would be lured to Richmond/Vancouver.
posted by porpoise at 6:39 PM on August 14, 2008

That's nothing compared to what's coming to the pipe. White America is probably going to slowly, but completely lose their shit over this change. It will be ugly.

I think there's a lot to that. I was cleaning out my bookmarks just the other day and found The Meaning of Tim McVeigh, by Gore Vidal. It focuses on McVeigh, of course, but he also goes into the extreme right in America. In part:

. . . in the immediate wake of the bombing, the Times concedes, the militia movement skyrocketed from 220 anti-government groups in 1995 to more than 850 by the end of ’96.

Now, I realize that the number of "anti-government groups" has probably gone up from 850 since 1996 based partially on recent changes in what defines an anti-government group. But even if this number never rose, that's still pretty alarming. Abortion and homosexuality have already driven some of these people to violence - something out of the Turner Diaries? Yeah, someone will probably try something stupid in response to this. But for some reason I don't imagine this shift in demographics changing our daily lives all that much. How many non-whites are in unelected positions of power? The next social earthquake in America will be about class, not race. The cake is stale and it wasn't very good to begin with.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:40 PM on August 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

White Americans No Longer A Majority By 2042.

And?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:46 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Can we stop using the term minority for races? If we keep mixing enough, races won't mean much in a few thousand years.
I wish I could favorite that another dozen times. People even apply the word "minority" to women.

The long-term future of humanity is interesting to speculate on. Assuming we don't suffer any isolating apocalypses (whether they be natural, military, or ideological), and continue our present relative freedom of immigration as a species as a whole, I wonder what the ethnicity of a typical Westerner (assuming even that term still holds validity) will be in four generations, our grandchildren's grandchildren?

I think the actual truth of the matter, for "generic whites" like me, is that the process has already largely occurred in the European colonies, specifically Australia and the USA. Which is why we're "whites", not English or Swedish or French or Polish or Greeks. We can identify our personal family ethnicity, but to the rest of the world, we're "whites". I don't know the demographic history of either country well, but I wonder if this happened some centuries previously in India and China.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:48 PM on August 14, 2008 [4 favorites]

"so what?"

is my response to this article
posted by zwemer at 6:58 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

dinty_moore writes "This is assuming that the definitions of 'white' and 'minority' stay the same. Remember when Italians and Eastern Europeans used to be grubby minorities? Who's to say that we won't start considering Latinos 'white' in fifty years?"

For good or for ill, immigrant children used to be ruthlessly Americanized in public schools, given "American" sounding names and "American" values, strongly discouraged from using their native tongues or respecting their foreign ways.

Distasteful as that indoctrination is to most of us today, it meant that a mostly white Protestant culture was transmitted,that in war a platoon consisting of Pulaski, Jones, O'Flynn, Schmidt and Cohen could function as a unit, and that after the war they'd all come home to work for United Steel and eat burgers and drink Coca-Cola.

We no longer do this in the schools, and immigrants now perpetuate their home cultures in their American raised children. They watch Univision in Spanish and shop in stores where everything is bilingually labeled.

America in 2042 will be as much or more a Latin American culture -- for good or ill -- as an Anglo-Saxon one. Examine Brazil or Mexico today to get an idea of what the US in 2042 will be.
posted by orthogonality at 7:00 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

They will, however, still be the majority by weight.
posted by Rinku at 7:11 PM on August 14, 2008 [13 favorites]

I believe you mean that non-Latino aka non-Hispanic whites will no longer be a majority by 2042. Many Latinos are "white".
posted by Allen3 at 7:19 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

aeschenkarnos - that's a very interesting point.

I'm really divided on the "generic white" vs. French, Polish, or Greek. I don't recall ever having someone relate to me that they feel slighted that their considered white rather than by the ethnicity/country-of-origin.

On the other hand I certainly recall cases where Koreans took offense to being called a Japanese (as an example) or just being referred to as Asian (instead of by their specific nationality - but this is probably a nationalistic thing).

You occidentals are weird. ;)
posted by porpoise at 7:25 PM on August 14, 2008

Red Americans No Longer A Majority By 1742.

here's what i've been thinking about: most of the "brown" in the american hispanic population is a hand-me-down from native american genes, right? mayans and other southwestern indian populations? so when brown overtakes white in this country, won't a whole lotta those people be the distant descendants of those "red americans"?

i'm thinking that the "white" invasion of this place was just a temporary glitch caused by warfare and smallpox.
posted by RedEmma at 7:26 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Distasteful as that indoctrination is to most of us today, it meant that a mostly white Protestant culture was transmitted,that in war a platoon consisting of Pulaski, Jones, O'Flynn, Schmidt and Cohen could function as a unit, and that after the war they'd all come home to work for United Steel and eat burgers and drink Coca-Cola. We no longer do this in the schools, and immigrants now perpetuate their home cultures in their American raised children. They watch Univision in Spanish and shop in stores where everything is bilingually labeled.

I don't see any corrolation between how strongly you adhere to the culture, traditions, or ethics of your home country and how well you get along with people from other cultures. Immigrant dynamics don't work that way. It's a lot more class-based. New arrivals typically take up the jobs that nobody can do or wants to do - as labor law is usually written to keep it that way. These jobs, however, are not exclusively employed by immigrants - they are mostly employed by working class nationals. They all make the same money, and utilize all the same resources for their income level, including the types of homes they can afford. This is why immigrant communities start in working class communities. There is usually a period of resistance to the new arrivals, but over time, you're working the same jobs together, riding the same buses together, shopping at each others' stores. That's camraderie. In my experience, the biggest white-flight Chicken Littles I've ever encountered live in safely ensconced suburbs, far from any brown person.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:28 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

We no longer do this in the schools, and immigrants now perpetuate their home cultures in their American raised children. They watch Univision in Spanish and shop in stores where everything is bilingually labeled.

This isn't a new Latino thing -- some countries assimilated more than others, for a variety of reasons. The Italians in my neighborhood STILL shop in Italian-owned stores, buy imported Italian ingredients, fly Italian flags, and speak Italian on the street. (And complain about how the Mexicans refuse to assimilate.)

America in 2042 will be as much or more a Latin American culture -- for good or ill -- as an Anglo-Saxon one. Examine Brazil or Mexico today to get an idea of what the US in 2042 will be.

Within one generation of immigration, the language gap for Latinos is pretty much closed. And I don't understand your comparison to Mexico at all -- the vast majority of citizens are Spanish-speaking Mestizos (i.e. Latinos), or Amerindians.
posted by desuetude at 7:39 PM on August 14, 2008

Huge demand for dwindling supply of Nordic semen.
posted by orthogonality at 7:41 PM on August 14, 2008 [4 favorites]

As long as we're above 40% we can filibuster, right?
posted by Knappster at 7:41 PM on August 14, 2008

I envision a world where everyone fucks everyone and race disappears. What a beautiful world of human beings. Unfortunately, I'll be dead.
posted by sluglicker at 7:46 PM on August 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

Distasteful as that indoctrination is to most of us today, it meant that a mostly white Protestant culture was transmitted,that in war a platoon consisting of Pulaski, Jones, O'Flynn, Schmidt and Cohen could function as a unit, and that after the war they'd all come home to work for United Steel and eat burgers and drink Coca-Cola.

Except we also eat pizza and bagels and have no problem pretending we're all Irish for St. Patricks day. Someone's probably eaten a green pizza bagel to celebrate.

'Hispanic' is, by definition, an ethnicity that is defined by language. Within only one or two generations in the US, the children are speaking more English than Spanish. I don't see any reason why the 'Hispanic' population won't assimilate any less than the other large immigrant waves of the past.

As for Latinos not defining themselves as White-I know a lot of Latinos that already define themselves as white-they're just White and Latino.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:46 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

I also don't understand how the values or togetherness, tolerance and just generally not being a prick are exclusively "white Protestant". It's not like teaching people to be Amurkin means they've been changed into someone you can now share a foxhole or eat burgers with.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:56 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I don't recall ever having someone relate to me that they feel slighted that their considered white rather than by the ethnicity/country-of-origin.

I'd be offended all the time, being a mix of Italian, German, Danish, Comanche and Spanish. My step-father is Japanese and my girlfriend is Chinese.

I don't get why people care about this "issue" so much.
posted by cj_ at 8:03 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Maybe, orthogonality, but here in California (the forefront of this sort of change) most of the Latinos I know are not only bi-lingual but bi-cultural. So yes, there will be a much heavier Latin American influence, but it will blend with the "established" American culture into something new, not something like Brazil.

Recent immigrants do tend to segregate by language, etc. But based on California, it seems after a few generations this separation weakens (which follows the pattern of other immigrant groups), and there is significant blending of both friends and cultures (unlike what I've seen from Hispanics in Georgia, where they are almost all recent immigrants). This is a good thing to me, like the gene pool, I think the "cultural pool" benefits from it.
posted by wildcrdj at 8:08 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

'sup, whitey?

(just practicing)
posted by jonmc at 8:17 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, and I suppose they'll want a parade too.
posted by cazoo at 8:18 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

which affirmative action programs will still exist, so that I might finally take advantage of them?
posted by killy willy at 8:19 PM on August 14, 2008

I'm not sure but I'm pretty sure that they told us this would happen by 2000 in the 80's and by 2010 in the 90's. Stupid statisticians.
posted by TomMelee at 8:22 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Stupid statisticians.

Well, they're probably white. what can ya do?
posted by jonmc at 8:23 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

Being plain ole' white is boring. The more we can mix up the races and create beautiful combinations of peoples, the better.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:39 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

porpoise,

I grew up in Richmond Hill. It's in Ontario. Richmond is in BC and part of the Greater Vancouver Area
posted by geekigirl at 8:41 PM on August 14, 2008

The only real news story here is that we Americans are acing our statistics classes. Way to go, America! Don't let anyone tell you that you suck at math!

If a stable population of statisticians armed with modern statistical tools had come over on the Mayflower, this story could have been written once every 50 years from 1620 on.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 9:15 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

People even apply the word "minority" to women.

Given that there's undeniably a sense of the word "minority" that goes beyond "less than 50 percent," this isn't technically incorrect. (Look! Dictionary.com agrees with me!)
posted by Dr. Send at 9:27 PM on August 14, 2008

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing writes "It's not like teaching people to be Amurkin means they've been changed into someone you can now share a foxhole or eat burgers with."

Yugoslavia. Rwanda. Rhodesia Zimbabwe. Basque Spain. The ever-changing borders of Poland.

Languages, religions, ethnicities matter to people.
posted by orthogonality at 9:43 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Why don't they just say there won't be a single-group majority?
posted by troybob at 9:45 PM on August 14, 2008

Gonna feel inFERIORITY
Gonna be a WHITE MINORITY
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:46 PM on August 14, 2008

There is a lot of racist drivel spouted by the right these days, masked as anti abortion propaganda, and anti birth control propaganda. They are trying to keep white people having children, to head this off.

Starting with that "Scientist" lamenting that the last blond would be born in Finland in 2200, or whenever it was, like that was big news.

The class war is on, since the race war has been lost. Globalization is everything, including color, art, music, style, commerce. If we can succeed in making peace, then the world will get interesting, as we will all be more welcome everywhere.

It is good when people find their humanity, but it is often late in life, or after significant loss, or significant awakening from being called to serve in areas that the unwhite come from.

I tell you this. The world is a lot nicer place to live, than it was in the 1950's. In the American South where I was growing up, hatred for the unwhite was a full time preoccupation. There was so much invested in this, that bucking it, was a one way ticket to anywhere else.

The fact that this is a news story is a monument to bigotry. I mean who is reading this story, and who is it for? It is to create unease in the voting public. It is a not so subtle ad for the white guy running for office. There will be a lot of this kind of not so subtle campaigning for wealthy whites, this kind of research, and then revelation plays to getting wealthy whites elected by poor whites, who might buy into this kind of reactionary propaganda, and metaphoric elbow rubbing with their betters.
posted by Oyéah at 9:57 PM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites]

Being plain ole' white is boring. The more we can mix up the races and create beautiful combinations of peoples, the better.

I think infinite diversity is a beautiful thing. So.. white, black, brown, green, polka dot--all have their place in that diversity.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:22 PM on August 14, 2008

Huge demand for dwindling supply of Nordic semen.

I... don't drink your milkshake. I... pursue other commodities markets.
posted by kid ichorous at 11:36 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yay!

/not white
posted by CommonSense at 12:11 AM on August 15, 2008

jonmc writes "Well, they're probably white. what can ya do?"

ThePinkSuperhero writes "Being plain ole' white is boring."

CommonSense writes "Yay! /not white"


You know, folks, if you substituted any other ethnicity for "white" in your comments, you'd be rightly called racist.

"Well, they're probably white Jews. what can ya do?"
"Being plain ole' white asian is boring."
"Yay! /not white black"

Glorious as multi-culturalism and multi-raciality is, I don't think we get there by casting aspersions on any race, even "nasty old whitey". And doing so will only cause white Americans to be more fearful of, and resistant to, this wonderful multi-cultural future, if their role in it is to be a despised and mocked minority.
posted by orthogonality at 12:36 AM on August 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

I'm, uh, pretty certain that both jonmc and ThePinkSuperhero are white as white can be, so it seemed to be more in the vein of self-deprecating humour. Similar and opposite for CommonSense.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:01 AM on August 15, 2008

dirtynumbangelboy writes "I'm, uh, pretty certain that both jonmc and ThePinkSuperhero are white as white can be, so it seemed to be more in the vein of self-deprecating humour. Similar and opposite for CommonSense."

Yes, they're white, I know. You've heard of self-hating Jews? I think many American whites have been taught to be ashamed or guilty of their race.

Let me put it another way. If a black guy made Amos 'n' Andy style jokes, we'd feel pity for, or anger at, an Uncle Tom. When a white person does it, it's cute or even considered appropriate contrition for 400 years of racism.

And if they were just speaking for themselves it would be one thing ("I'm stupid/boring because I'm white") -- it would still be racism, but it might get a pass if they were speaking only of themselves. But when they speak for a whole race of people, it's clearly a matter of judging whole diverse group of people, solely by one superficial criterion, the color of their skin.

What makes it worse is that the motivation too often is to show everyone how righteously PC and guiltily self-hating they are, to ingratiate one's self by self-deprecation.

And that's just as bad and infantilizing as some black Tom playing the what Stanley Elkins characterized as the Sambo role by sucking up to Whitey and saying, "Nah suh, you's sho' 'nuff right not to trust us shiftless N------".
posted by orthogonality at 2:35 AM on August 15, 2008

Languages, religions, ethnicities matter to people.

Of course they do. What I'm saying is, you assert that teaching all comers to America our "white Protestant" values is synonymous with making them capable of cooperation and being reasonable social partners - and this is way off the mark. I reckon they teach such values everywhere in the world.

Invoking countries like Zimbabwe is also not a very accurate comparison to this situation. As I said, immigrant dynamics are based more on class than racial distinctions. In Zimbabwe, for example, whites were the land owners while the nationals were tenant farmers. That's a tremendous economic and power difference between the two. When different ethnic groups are living in the same social class - going to the same jobs, the same schools, living in neighborhoods adjacent to each other, shopping at the same stores - there's a completely different dynamic going on. It's when non-whites move into areas of privelege, such as the suburbs, then you see people tearing out their hair over crap like the concept of a white minority.

Holding onto the culture of your homeland =/= incapable of playing nice with the natives.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:39 AM on August 15, 2008

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing writes "I reckon they teach such values everywhere in the world."

I reckon they do, and those aren't the same values worldwide.

Look at the Census press release linked to above. It points out the most important cultural difference between the American majority now, and the projected majority in 2042. Indeed, there'd be no press release and no FPP without this signal cultural difference.

What is that difference?

White Americans -- even poor whites -- have learned that having more babies is a cost. Which is why the non-Hispanic white population is projected to rise hardly at all.

Hispanic immigrants haven't, for the very good reason that if you're a peasant farmer in Honduras, having more kids is an economic benefit, even a necessity. Which is why the Hispanic population is projected to rise so much.

Without this very important cultural difference, we'd have no change in which population will be the minority in 2042.

I'm making no value judgment here: white Americans are making the correct choice given the economic environment they live in, and Latin Americans the right judgment for their environment, whether it be in Honduras or working as a braceros in the US (witness the poor pregnant 17 year-old who recently died of dehydration picking fruit in California).

But what is a reasonable choice for exploited agricultural workers turns into a traditional cultural value that's hard to give up when circumstances change. Which means many of these Catholic immigrants will still be having more babies then can be adequately supported in the first-world style they will come to expect from living in the US.

And hell, the world is already being ruined -- fished out, farmed out, clear cut and strip-mined -- to support the extravagant lifestyle of "only" 300 million Americans who expect as their birthright a 50-inch TV, a VCR, a DVD player, and now a DVR in every bedroom.

No way the country or the world can support another hundred million new Americans with American lifestyle expectations.

It'll crash somewhere -- either in ERs swamped by the undocumented and uninsured giving birth, or by public schools overwhelmed by families with five or ten kids each, droughts in California and the Western states, or maybe we'll just drain the oceans of fish and the land of topsoil, as the new Americans acquire American tastes for steak faster than they acquire American attitudes toward family planning (which gets advertised more, the Pill or beef?).

Again, if the projected Hispanic majority didn't have different values about family size, they wouldn't be projected to be a majority. And even if in every other way they will be median-typical American in their values, that propensity to larger families will be enough to transform the US culture and economics, and bankrupt us and the world.
posted by orthogonality at 3:17 AM on August 15, 2008

That's nice and all, about how Latinos pop out a lot of kids, but this sounds an awful lot like what was said about Irish Catholic immigrants in the late 19th, early 20th century. Somehow, we survived. Just sayin'.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:25 AM on August 15, 2008

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing writes "this sounds an awful lot like what was said about Irish Catholic immigrants in the late 19th, early 20th century. Somehow, we survived. Just sayin'."

Yes, because having displaced the Native Americans, we were able to send train-load after train-load of orphans West. Yes, because the slums of New York killed immigrants by malnutrition and disease. Yes, because the Bohunks and Slavs and Italians got swallow up into steel mills and mines with appalling safety standards.

We can't send them West anymore; the West is full, the top-soil is gone, the water is rained from the Colordo basin already to water Los Angeles. The steel mills are in China. and I don't think any of us want barrios and slums like Hell's Kitchen, if only for the selfish reason that their incubators of disease that knows no ethnic boundaries.

100 million more Americans will mean that our American way of life ends. And it won't end gracefully -- people aren't going to go vegetarian and give up their McDonalds and McMansions and SUVs and cheap Chinese gegaws until forced to by poverty. At which point it will be too late, too late to take a more sustainable path. Instead we'll see famine and race wars, succession and Balkanization, hoarding and chaos and collapse.

I'm all for aid to Latin America, for helping them find a sustainable future, but the solution to Latin America's many woes (some caused by the US) is not for all of them to move to L.A. and Texas. That just means a collapse for all of us.
posted by orthogonality at 3:38 AM on August 15, 2008

Excuse me if I don't share your apocolyptic vision of America's future. Are you suggesting that there's a corrolation between a rising percentage of Latinos and our country's economic collapse? Because that's what it sounds like. Please do correct me and clarify if I'm wrong there.

What is our "way of life"? You seem to be pointing to material goodies. Sure, I can accept that. But if we face a bleak economic future it has little to do with race and more to do with failed economic policies. I'm sorry, but after having studied the history of immigration in America, I keep seeing the same cries of the sky falling, over and over, year after decade after century, and somehow, we not only survive, we improve.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:46 AM on August 15, 2008

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing writes "Are you suggesting that there's a corrolation between a rising percentage of Latinos and our country's economic collapse? Because that's what it sounds like. Please do correct me and clarify if I'm wrong there."

No, and if you'd read what I wrote, you wouldn't be asking. But let me explain again:

There are 301 million people in the US now.

The projection is for 439 million in 2050, an increase of 45 percent.

Our way of life, for a variety of reasons (a small bit your "failed economic policies", most of it an exhaustion of resources both in the US and worldwide) is already unsustainable, at 301 million, given what we are taught to expect as US citizens.

Adding another 138 million, whether Latino or white or whatever, will cause even faster resource collapse.

The Latinos whom immigrate to the US are the best of their nations -- they have to be tenacious, ambitious, and hard-working just to get here. They are motivated to come here in order to secure a better life for themselves and more importantly for their children. Unfortunately, "a better life" means the material and economic benefits of being a first-worlder: a big truck, a big house, a big TV, lots of inefficiently high up the foodchain food.

It would be just as bad if whites were immigrating and reproducing as fast as Latinos; it doesn't really matter the ethnicity of the mouths, as all of them want to be fed, all of them will want a single-family house and a car for every adult

It's purely a historical accident that Latinos, not the Irish or Germans or Bohunks are the straws that threaten to finally break the canel's back.


Marisa Stole the Precious Thing writes "I'm sorry, but after having studied the history of immigration in America, I keep seeing the same cries of the sky falling, over and over, year after decade after century, and somehow, we not only survive, we improve."

Again, the difference is that past immigrants were not adding to an already unsustainable population with unrealistic material expectations. Once the Native Americans were killed off, we were populating a mostly empty continent, a continent that (north of Mexico) hadn't even been extensively farmed.

Just as there used to be millions of barrels of oil under Saudi Arabia, put there by the deaths of trillions of plankton over millions of years, the Great Plains used to have yards of fertile topsoil deposited over millennia. Your idea that we can repeat the immigrations of the 1800s and 1900s is like saying that you could go to Saudi Arabia now and repeat the last 100 years of oil drilling. Just as that oil is gone, used up, burnt up, so is the US's capacity to increase its population 45%. Regardless of the ethnicity of the immigrants and babies.
posted by orthogonality at 4:18 AM on August 15, 2008

It's purely a historical accident that Latinos, not the Irish or Germans or Bohunks are the straws that threaten to finally break the canel's back.

Is this written in stone? We're doomed, period? Hardly. US immigration law, like immigration law in other countries, is designed to only allow newcomers to work a job that a) no national wants to do or b) no national can do. That's the starting point. As these people have children, those children - born in this country, mind you, which is somehow being left out of the equation here - will be attending out schools and then going out into the workplace. In other words, immigrants do not drain society, they contribute to it through their work and their taxes. And unlike oil prospectors, they don't drain resources, they are a resource.

This is why I scoff at all this hand-waving "We're doomed I tells ya!" immigration paranoia. People don't come here and start sucking on the whithering teat of our social system - they work, they go to school, they pay taxes, they contribute, partially because the law requires that they do so in order to stay. This talk of "we can't take care of them all" is indeed a repeat of irrational fears brought up a century ago.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:28 AM on August 15, 2008

troybob: Why don't they just say there won't be a single-group majority?

I suspect because it doesn't provide as much fear, uncertainty, and doubt to white people unless you say "OMG! Whites won't be the majority anymore!!!" Ask my mom. She'll tell you. She lives in a county that is 94% white, and she's already proclaiming the end of the world as we know it due to people speaking languages near her she doesn't understand and there being bilingual labels on things at the grocery store. "They are going to make us learn Spanish," she complains just about weekly. She's convinced no one will be speaking English anymore, and we'll all have to adopt Latino and African-American culture ... or else.

It's an odd opinion (and fear) for her to have, seeing as she is the daughter of immigrants, English wasn't her first language, she speaks her native tongue everywhere she goes, and my family has held onto its cultural practices with an iron grip and assimilated only as necessary. She's not unusual. I know a county where nearly 94% of the population feels just like she does and whose families have done the same thing as mine. But, you know, they are "white" so that makes them more American or something.

I did, in fact, experience some culture shock when I went to college away from home, because at the time, that county was 100% white. I loved all the different ethnicities, and it made me ever so glad I got out and decided to Americanize myself as much as possible.
posted by Orb at 5:15 AM on August 15, 2008

Wow, some people on this thread seem to be unaware of something called the demographic transition. It's not like people come to the US from 3rd world countries and continue having seven children per women each generation. Yes, there will be problems, but if people are going to be inculcated with such undesirable American values such as wanting big trucks and TV, it makes sense that the good stuff would tag along like the desire to have fewer children.

Plus, the products of collapse are already on their way to becoming luxuries thanks to economics. When I lived in a U.S. city I couldn't afford a car and steak was a rare treat even if I bought the lowest quality meat. Now I live in Norway and there is no way in hell I could afford a steak more than three times a year.

Malthus was just one economist, there are many ways of looking at things.
posted by melissam at 5:26 AM on August 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

No way the country or the world can support another hundred million new Americans with American lifestyle expectations.

Wait, I thought that they were being all culturally separatist and stuff?
posted by desuetude at 6:15 AM on August 15, 2008

Wait, I thought that they were being all culturally separatist and stuff?

No, they're mindless automatons who just breed incessantly and want everything. "They" = anybody who doesn't look like me.
posted by cashman at 6:19 AM on August 15, 2008

orthogonality, you make quite a leap. You seem to be reading a lot of extra-credit negativity into TPS and jonmc's comments, while removing the entire concept of "context."

Honestly, I don't even want to reprint your whole comment to refute it, because I find the hyperbole of comparing a mild, self-deprecating aside referencing whiteness to the long, disgusting tradition of racism intended to remind blacks that they were slaves to be damned offensive.
posted by desuetude at 6:38 AM on August 15, 2008

There's an argument I want to make about how the person waving a finger in the face of the person who made a self-race joke is really the person with the race issues, but I can't seem to get it phrased right. If you hold everyone to the same general politeness standard, the same general work standard, and the same general "hey dude" standard, there's no reason to be threatened by any description of race, color, or creed.

The new fangled sensitivity of the 21st century is taking us backwards, I'm afraid.

What the hell is race, anyway? My dad's cajun-native american, my mom's scots-irish. I'm permanently dark complected, ranging toward red in the spring/summer and olive in the fall/winter. I tan dark enough that people used to ask who my real mother was, and insist that my good friend and I must be brothers---his dad's the rich deep brown you read about in romance novels. My girlfriend's idiot family insists I'm italian because "I look like it". I've got cajun family who, when discussing my skin tone, have said "Yea, musta been a n****r in the woodpile a couplea generations ago." Several customers insist I'm greek. My coworkers husband didn't believe that I was anything but latino.

So yea, I've been the n****r-lipped, babykilling, back-to-the-reservation, pasta-faced kid since I was little.

Why does a story about a changing US demographic have to ZOMG RACIST, and not merely looked at as a data point? Are the stories about the rich population getting richer and the poor population getting poorer then not in the same bad taste?

I would argue there's a bigger cultural divide between the haves and the have-nots than between the races in the US these days, and I think that because FINALLY we're seeing each other as every day motherfuckers and treating each other the same instead of saying "There's an African American gentleman, I better have a shallow conversation and watch what I say lest he think I have an issue with him."
posted by TomMelee at 7:03 AM on August 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

I would argue there's a bigger cultural divide between the haves and the have-nots than between the races in the US these days, and I think that because FINALLY we're seeing each other as every day motherfuckers and treating each other the same instead of saying "There's an African American gentleman, I better have a shallow conversation and watch what I say lest he think I have an issue with him."

You are absolutely right. That's what I've been saying about the biggest difference being class-based, not culture-based, and it's something I've experienced firsthand as both a national of one country and an immigrant in another. Most immigrants move to a new country at the behest of an employer, i.e., the law is written in such a way that you can only take a job that no one is able to do (that would be the specialists) or wants to do (blue collar), with the vast majority coming because of the latter. Yes, there is casual racism in blue collar neighborhoods, especially against new arrivals, but this is nothing compared to the sort of discrimination one experiences when trying to move into a higher income bracket, or into a better neighborhood.

People avoid confrontation. People who live and work side-by-side with different ethnic groups tend to have less visceral and less antagonistic attitudes towards these other ethnic groups because they're around them all the time. It's when people live in homogenous communities, and are confronted with someone different than themselves, that the fur really starts to fly.

Unfortunately, politicians take advantage of this. Dog-whistle messages of the brown menace whiz by so frequently that we barely notice them anymore. This is why you find attitudes about illegal immigrants spilling over into attitudes about immigrants in general - what a burden on society they are, how they don't want to blend in, how they demand we learn their language instead of the reverse, and so on. It's utter crap.

If you have the guts to leave behind your country, your friends, your family, your culture, and move to a whole other country to make a better life for yourself, welcome. It's what built our country from the very beginning. And there is absolutely no mutual exclusivity between hanging onto the culture of your home country and being a productive citizen in your new home. A casual stroll through the neighborhoods I grew up in are a testament to that fact.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:57 AM on August 15, 2008

You've heard of self-hating Jews? I think many American whites have been taught to be ashamed or guilty of their race.

orthogonality

There is a partial truth here - what's missing, however, changes everything.

The most bumptious Americans who bang on about being "taught to be ashamed..of their race" don't really act ashamed at all.

They DO seem to love complaining that's what they're told - as if it's a tremendously sound reason to get defensive - and bumptious.

I find it very different to the genuine self-hater who, deep down, actually wishes he or she wasn't born with a certain identity.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 8:07 AM on August 15, 2008

100 million more Americans will mean that our American way of life ends. And it won't end gracefully -- people aren't going to go vegetarian and give up their McDonalds and McMansions and SUVs and cheap Chinese gegaws until forced to by poverty. At which point it will be too late, too late to take a more sustainable path. Instead we'll see famine and race wars, succession and Balkanization, hoarding and chaos and collapse.

I'm all for aid to Latin America, for helping them find a sustainable future, but the solution to Latin America's many woes (some caused by the US) is not for all of them to move to L.A. and Texas. That just means a collapse for all of us.

I like a Cassandra as much as the next person, but sometimes this kind of waxing apocalyptic, whether it's the xenophobic ranting of right-wing talk radio or the anti-civilization eco-suicide alarmism of left-wing intellectuals, sure uses up a lot of rhetorical hot air and slippery logical leaps to project a sense of doom-and-gloom, crystal-ball certainty about the future.

It's too easy to string together such a vision. I see a lot of words here, and a familiar Road Warrior tale of what's to come, but I also see a lack of any penetrating real-world analysis or appreciation for how complex the world's problems really are. What's being done in those paragraphs is mostly myth-making.

In the first instance, it's a vast and misleading caricature to say "all of Latin America is moving to L.A. and Texas." Contrary to the notion of Latin American economic stasis, there seems to be a growing consensus that Latin America's economic future is better and more robust than it's ever been. I can't provide citations here, but I've read numerous articles in the past few years that indicate Latin America's economic fate is not simply to be an incubator for migrant workers heading to America. The middle class in Latin America has grown, and the dynamics of how Latin America changes are less than obvious. A lot of Latin American countries may turn out to be places that are far more stable and desirable for immigrants than America. It not all just north/south. Latin America is a big, complex place.

Secondly, phrases like "it will be too late" just stir the pot of misunderstanding. The present is fluid, and sudden "collapse" is less likely than gradual revision. The examples you give are telling, because they are familiar images, but they paint only a small part of the overall picture. I guess what I'm saying is your argument might be better served by the sobriety of specifics, rather than merely using the old "run for the hills" survivalist screed. I'm not trying to say we don't face serious problems, but one must be careful not to let the "Day of the Locust" atmosphere of the problems overwhelm the details of how things change in reality.
posted by ornate insect at 8:19 AM on August 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

The idea that third-generation Chinese, first-generation Guatemalans, and pre-Revolutionary African-Americans, all combined, constitute a meaningful demographic category to be set against white people is perfectly ludicrous...
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 9:16 AM on August 15, 2008

Fake - all based on calling Latinos non-white.
posted by A189Nut at 9:54 AM on August 15, 2008

And I'll be 99 y.o. in 2042. Yes!

Minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042, ...

Huh? Doesn't that mean no one group will be in the majority (except women, of course)?
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:51 PM on August 15, 2008

Any extremist whites tearing their hair out over this forgets that whites maintained rule in South Africa despite being the extreme minority. Obama or not, it's not as if whites are going to relinquish power to other ethnic/racial groups anytime soon. Also, Obama or not, non-whites don't vote in the same proportions as do whites. I have no reason to believe that much will substantially change just because non-whites make up the majority of the population. Whites still have most of the money.
posted by desjardins at 2:57 PM on August 15, 2008

I just can not work up any care at all about what happens to skin colours. White, brown, black, blue: wtf difference does it make? Answer: none, none whatsoever.

It's not skin colour that is worth preserving: it's culture and society. And those, too, are very mutable things.

Change is good, donkeys.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:05 PM on August 15, 2008

Yes, they're white, I know. You've heard of self-hating Jews? I think many American whites have been taught to be ashamed or guilty of their race.

I am the inspiring skin-tone of bad mayonaisse, yes, but to tell the truth, most of the time it dosen't mean all that much to me. (this is not to say that I'm not aware that there's shit I don't have to put up with because of my skin color, just that I don't feel any automatic 'brotherhood' with other white folks.) And as others have mentioned, it wasn't too long ago that my ethnic background-Irish Catholic and Italian-was not considered 'white.' I'm proud of my ethnic heritage, and a lot of the time I'm proud to be American, but white? Accident of nature.

Let me put it another way. If a black guy made Amos 'n' Andy style jokes, we'd feel pity for, or anger at, an Uncle Tom. When a white person does it, it's cute or even considered appropriate contrition for 400 years of racism.

I'm not a fan of conspicuous guilt or collective guilt, and as far as the opposite scenario went, it would depend on the joke, the context, and my relationship with the person involved. I'm not a big fan of oversimplifying human relations.
posted by jonmc at 4:40 PM on August 15, 2008

The only race I'm deeply ashamed of is the Human Race.
posted by tkchrist at 8:11 PM on August 15, 2008

I think that because FINALLY we're seeing each other as every day motherfuckers and treating each other the same instead of saying "There's an African American gentleman, I better have a shallow conversation and watch what I say lest he think I have an issue with him."

you clearly don't live in a part of the country where African-Americans and Latinos are <5% of the population. there is a significant population of Native Americans where i live, but they are the "minority" that was here first, and aside from generalized disdain imbued with residual thieves-guilt, the dominant population doesn't find them *threatening*, while they most definitely do find the somewhat new infusion of African-Americans to be so.

i wish it weren't true, but there are great swaths of the US that are only now beginning to balance out after the lynchings and burnings of the late 1800s and early 1900s drove the populations of blacks back to the big cities. my town is one of them. the local population of African-Americans plummeted after a lynching here in 1920 and has only this last census surpassed its pre-1920 levels.

my city was known unofficially as the home of the "biggest white ghetto"--meaning that the income levels that bottomed out after Steel and other big industry left in the 60s stayed stagnant. now, if you listen even just a little, you can hear the population of those economically stressed-out whites (and the "new middle class" that has barely moved up) freaking out all over the place about this supposed infusion of blacks--who are incessantly characterized as criminals. James Loewen mentioned in Sundown Towns about how whites in communities like mine are constantly overestimating the black population, because it seems like every black man counts as ten in their consciousness. (the population of African-Americans is still unnaturally small. the Latino population this far north is nearly nonexistent still--no jobs.)

we have little crime in our city, but by the chatter, you'd think we were undergoing a crime wave. you'd think that we were under siege by black gang members who were moving here by busloads to rape/impregnate "our" women and sell our children drugs. (i have heard that exact statement so many times that i can't even find it laughable any more, since i'm dreadfully nervous about what some people are capable of when they might feel supported in their beliefs.) never mind that the local paper went so far as to prove statistically in a week-long series that these beliefs were wrong. if you saw the way people brushed aside the facts to continue in their beliefs, you'd be tempted to give up hope too.

it is right, as said above, that this message was perfectly timed for the electorate i am surrounded by. an electorate that is still mired somehow in a belief that their "way of life" is being threatened. yes, it's a sickness. but it's far more common in many parts of this country than you might realize. they will find any excuse possible to vote against Obama.

while it is true that proximity and interaction cures racism, there are many places where segregation continues, and that cultural exchange has only begun to happen. another generation ought to do it, but don't underestimate the chatter that goes on and is reinforced in those areas. it ain't over yet.
posted by RedEmma at 12:36 PM on August 17, 2008