2050: minority majority

I just read on CNN.com that the U.S. Census Bureau has projected some big changes for the U.S. American population by 2050, which is 42 years from now. I’m 42 years old. I’m halfway to becoming a minority in my country.

Some of you may think this is not such big news, and hopefully it won't be, but bear with me. It could be very interesting. First of all, here is the specific projection: that “non-Hispanic, single-race whites” will still make up 46% of the U.S. population but will be outnumbered by, collectively, all other races that the U.S. census identifies. Together, African-Americans, Hispanics and Hispanic Whites, Asian-Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and people of two or more races will comprise about 54% of the U.S. population.

Forty-two is a meaningful age. (After all, it’s the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.) When my blonde, blue-eyed daughter is 42 in the year 2048, I will be 82, probably happily repeating my favorite stories in an Assisted Living facility. Emma will be in her prime, leading (I hope) efforts to make the world a better place. So by 2050, chances are that she will be leading from the perspective of a demographic minority.

So what?

According to the projections, the single-race, non-Hispanic white minority will still be the largest racial group. The way my husband and I are raising Emma will hopefully make her comfortable with people from all races. Growing up alongside the increasing “minority” population, she shouldn’t have the same hang-ups that some of us do who remember segregation and its effects, who struggled to figure out how to be friends with people of different races. In fact, idealist that I am, I’m hoping that the whole concept of “race” will be archaic by then.

But what if it’s not?

It’s not like my Emma would be in the same place that Barack Obama is now. Whites are still going to be historically dominant in this country, regardless. “White” is still, in many people’s minds (of all races) the so-called “normal” face of (north) America and I expect it will be for a long time. But things will change, and relatively rapidly.

The United States is a democracy and we are accustomed to “majority rule”. So the concepts of minority and majority are important - all tangled up in POWER. By 2050, will people of color (not a great term but better than “non-white”) be united enough to feel and act like a majority? Will whites as a whole respond to minority status with open minds or with defensiveness? Will we try to manipulate the system in order to stay dominant? Will we clamor for Affirmative Action, or keep our mouths politically-correctly shut?

What will our country be in for in the areas of health, crime & justice, education, and poverty, where there are already noticeable racial disparities? These lived statistics are the legacy of whites’ historical dominance. Will demographic forces magnify the inequities or cause them to finally be given our full and best attention? Or, hopefully, will this be a moot question because we’ve actually solved the problems by then?

More on this topic in a later post. I welcome your comments.