In LA

The US Census bureau¹ has come out with a report which states that ethnic and racial minorities will outnumber the majority by the year 2042². I don’t know if the Census bureau uses the word “whites” because I can’t find their report online, but the Associated Press promptly wrote a headline declaring,”White Americans no longer a majority by 2042“, and the Detroit Free Press declared,”Whites will be US minority group by 2042, Census predicts“.

But “White” and “minority” are surprisingly mutable social constructs in the USA. History tells me that in the U.S., whoever is considered to be on top of the socioeconomic ladder at a given period of time automatically becomes part of the “White” blob. At one point, all those Italian immigrants to the US were not considered to be White, and the Whiteness of Irish and European Jewish immigrants was also in doubt.

I bet there were similar if more clearly alarmist headlines back in the early 1900s, shouting to anyone who would listen that in a few decades Whites would be outnumbered by these non-Anglo immigrant masses. In 2042, when the ethnic and racial groups included under the White banner include Latinos, Hispanics, and East Asians³ , I fully expect to see identical headlines to those of today about how “Whites will lose their majority status by 2076″.

America has always bubbled with immigration, cultural exchange and conflict, opportunity and oppression, and demographic shifts. My rational mind suspects there’s little new about this latest batch of news, though I am planning to hurry up and learn some Español, Italian, and Yiddish just in case.

Technorati Tags: race, whitey

1. Motto: “Page Last Modified: May 20, 2004″ [↩]
2. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2042 is also the year in which a computer-generated Charles Grodin will replace Chris Tucker as Jackie Chan’s co-star in the ever-popular Rush Hour franchise. [↩]
3. If that assumption sounds improbable to your 2008 racial spidey-sense, please reevaluate my argument in 2038. [↩]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Entitled Ranting, Media, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.