The Census Bureau released some preliminary data on the minority population of the country and it’s tough news for real Americans.
Much of the nation’s demographic change is seen among children. In California, minorities make up 72% of those under age 15. In 2000, they made up 65%.
Nationally, 46% of children under 15 are minorities, compared with 40% in 2000.
I have news for you. Nearly half of all 15 year-olds will be eligible to vote in 2012. And watch out in 2016.
In 42 states, numbers show a loss of non-Hispanic whites under age 45. Nationally, this group declined by 8.4 million.
In contrast, the number of states in which the majority of children under 15 are minorities has increased, with Florida, Maryland, Georgia and Nevada bringing the number of such states to 10.
I wonder how much longer it will even be possible for Republicans to carry Florida. And Georgia could follow Virginia and North Carolina into the Democratic column before long. But you want to know what will spell the death knell of the Republicans’ racial politics? Texas.
In 2000, the District of Columbia and three states — Hawaii, New Mexico and California — had minority populations which exceeded 50%. In 2009, Texas joined that group.
And it’s not just immigration that is driving this.
Among Latinos, there are nine births for every one death, according to census data. For whites, the ratio is 1-1.
The reason for the difference in that the Latino population is young and mostly of child-rearing age, while the white population reflects the full spectrum of life, for birth to death. It’s also likely that Latinos, on average, have larger families than whites.
The percentage of Americans who identify (like the president) as multi-racial is also growing.
Last year, minorities helped the overall U.S. population grow by 2%, boosted by a surge in births and people who identified themselves as multiracial. In 2009, 5.3 million Americans classified themselves as multiracial, up 26% from 3.9 million in 2000.
All this really means is that America is beginning to look like its cities have looked for twenty or thirty years. Except for a brief time that I lived in Maine and in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I have lived in racially diverse communities my whole life. I actually feel kind of uncomfortable in settings where everyone is white. I first noticed this about myself when I moved out of Philadelphia into its suburbs. I would go out to a restaurant and be waiting in the bar for a table, and I’d look around at a sea of all white people. Everyone was too alike. It didn’t matter that they were like me; it didn’t seem very interesting.
But, you know what? I went into the city earlier this week and for the first time I didn’t feel at home. I was out of rhythm with the pace. Things were moving faster than I could anticipate them. Assessing the intentions of the people around me was actually a conscious effort, rather than something my brain did on auto-pilot. Human beings are slow to adapt to change, and the new is threatening and energy-consuming. If you’re used to living in a white community, it can be a little worrisome when the complexion of that community changes. It takes time to adjust to living among people who have different backgrounds, and the effort alone can seem like an imposition. It’s no wonder that there is a white backlash against having a multiracial president and against the changing demographics of the country. But people do get used to it, and they get not just tolerant, but intolerant of intolerance.
Some day soon, the suburbs will be as progressive as the cities are today. Texas and Florida will be states where today’s Republicans are no more welcome than they are currently in California.
Eventually, the Latinos will prosper as the Italians and Irish did before them, and they’ll begin to vote against tax-hikes and for some socially conservative issues, But, in the near term, we’re still entering a progressive era where the national politics more nearly resemble to politics of our cities.
Ever been to a Cracker Barrel? I went once, and told my parents that I didn’t want to come back. I felt very uncomfortable (I’m a straight middle class white male). This was years ago, though.
I’m normally comfortable in every setting, just not that one. I remember one time when I went to a 7-11 to pick up booze for a party in Richmond, we were in a “bad” part of town and I was with my girlfriend. I don’t think white people normally went in that particular 7-11, she felt very uncomfortable, whereas I didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. When we left she asked why I didn’t feel weird, as supposedly they were staring at us. I didn’t notice, I guess.
And I put the word “bad” in quotes specifically in reference to what this article talks about:
http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/market-forces/
Although it really was a bad part of a dangerous city, seeing as the murder rate there is in the top 10.
Spoke about this with my parents recently. In the 1980s my home town had large latino migrant populations that dried up when automation hit the farms around the town. Recently the town has gotten more Somalis and since the economic crisis, a lot of African Americans which that town has never had before. American Indians and Latinos yeah, but few blacks. In fact it wasn’t until I moved to a new place that I became used to African Americans around me. The reason for the new arrivals is because the unemployment level in the town is at about 5%.
I’ll be honest, crime has gone up since. But that’s explainable as a consequence of the economic crisis (though very few people have been fired, there have been very few hired for years) and what happens when you add economically distressed people into a single area.
At the mall my parents said they used to stand out when they first lived here in the 70s (being latinos) but now there are significant minorities of all kinds and every year they see more and more interracial couples.
So what is really interesting is that this is the biggest town in the state–and the rest of the state is still going to be lily white. So you’ll have this one city where people will have to get used to this new dynamic and that city will be unlike the area around it. It already is more diverse and more left leaning but the pace of the change is accelerating.
BTW, what is with that census? You can’t claim Hispanic properly anymore. That’s how I self-identify so there’s nothing else I can choose.
I’m of Italian extraction and my family is full of the most obnoxious repugnant-hugging semi-racists I’ve met anywhere. I don’t understand why the increase in minorities heralds a move towards progressive values whatever they might be. You just need a sensible repugnant—this year, next year—who moves the slightest bit away from the extreme right towards the center and the Democrats are toast. When this happens, and it will, the GOP party of white people with ‘brown skin’ will emerge.
They’d still have to get elected in SC.
I don’t really feel uncomfortable in either scenario, although it does strike me as a bit odd. I grew up in an almost entirely white neighborhood, but busing meant I went to pretty diverse schools.
Funny thing is, while you’ll get a lot of older people who’ll gripe about busing and what a “disaster” it was, the truth is integration worked quite well, at least in my experience. Not to say there wasn’t ever racial animosity among people my age, but it was pretty rare.
I don’t think it’s an issue of the GOP leadership failing to recognize the issue. They said enough in more candid moments to suggest they see the iceberg coming (they’re cynical and figuring they can sort it out later), but they’re not the ones steering the ship. The Teabaggers are, and they’re in denial, throwing people overboard to try to take the wheel. They’ve had both their last president and their last nominee — both wrong on policy but at least willing to acknowledge the sane side — try to explain it to them, and both got their asses kicked.
If Latinos harden into a 70-80% Democratic group, the GOP is only a few years out from Armageddon. Calling them a “regional party” will be too generous.
I had the experience you described when I lived in Green Bay. It was quite a shock that the only blacks one saw were driving Mercedes and that there were only a few of them. And all of them played for the Green Bay Packers.
That was back in the days when NFL players actually moved to the city they were playing for.
When I was a student in college in the early ’70s, that Camelot-in-Oklahoma liberal arts college, one of the key recurring themes of the core curriculum was: get used to the idea of change. Change is inevitable, it is a normal part of life and of history. You can learn to adapt to it, or you can get run over by it. One thing you cannot do is prevent it.
Another key theme was, if you want to get a sense of the direction of change of the country as a whole, watch California, Florida, and Texas. As they go, so goes the country. Now all three have non-white majorities. The predominantly-white power structures are still trying to prevent the political and economic change that will inevitably follow. They will fail. Not without some sturm and drang, mind you, but they will fail.
I figure we’ll have at least another generation of turmoil, some of it ugly, even violent. But the days of blacks, latinos, and other ahem, minorities, being treated as second or third class citizens, relegated to the periphery of the economic and political life of our nation, are coming and will come to an end.
It’s not just Georgia and Texas that are moving in that direction. There is a growing Hispanic population in Iowa.
And the Muslim population in North Carolina’s high-tech cities (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle and Charlotte) is growing. Indian and Palestinian convenience stores, Muslim cabbies, good Mexican and Chinese restaurants in small towns, Chinese tailors and cobblers. Bars with World Cup parties in the old tobacco area of NC. Welcome to the new North Carolina.
Only a half hour to wait for the South Africa-Mexico World Cup match. I’m getting impatient.
Bet there’s a “soccer flu” going around in some neighborhoods in America.
Yesterday, Steven posted a link to some ominous quotes from Glen Beck. I bet this is the “darkness coming” that Beck feels and why he thinks whites need to lay claim to a “civil rights movement”…
Fear of retribution has always been a deep motive of racism. Native Americans wanting their land back. Blacks wanting reparations and repaying whites with discrimination in employment. Hispanics forcing Anglos to speak Spanish.
They feel the “darkness coming” all right. And they fear it. Out of their own transmogrified guilt.
Wow, Boo — you got culture shock from a — what — 40-mile commute? Sometimes I still really like America.
more like 20 miles.