Perhaps marginally outnumbered, but don’t be fooled to think that fraction truly has immediate implications.
This news has been in circulation for some time now--the projection that non-Hispanic whites will soon be outnumbered by the ethnic/racial minorities of our nation. Even last year, the Pew Research Center took this one step further by telling us this shift in numbers is “official”, since recently-released Census Bureau estimates record minority infants inching over non-Hispanic white ones by 0.2%.
If you ask me, there are two large issues with this coverage: first, they spin the story to obscure the full truth behind the meanings and implications of the majority/minority relationship; and second, they scare white people.
If we are going to keep reporting things from the U.S. Census, we may as well utilize all of their claims. Including the one in which they define a “minority” as being anyone belonging to “any group other than non-Hispanic whites alone”. While there can be an interesting debate over the nuances of this definition, at its face-value, one thing is clear: no, white Americans, you are not a minority, and will not become one anytime soon.
What also never gets mentioned is that the significance behind the demographic makeup of our nation doesn’t get determined just by numbers. If this were the case, women, who make up just under 51% of US population, would not be considered a minority group. Instead, the defining factor of this minority/majority relationship is power. When it comes to power, numbers are largely insignificant. That’s why we can reflect on Apartheid South Africa, and see how a group that was the demographic minority was able to take power in the government and establish laws to suppress the native non-whites in all aspects of life for over four decades. Unless this small shift in our numbers results in a proportional shift in treatment and power--like changes in the disadvantages felt by minorities in terms of employment opportunities, medical treatment, housing opportunities, etc.--this news should not be inflated into more than what it is.
Even if outnumbered, if one group is the only one who has a voice, who is really in power...?
And this brings me to my second point, concerning scaring America’s white population. Usually, I wouldn’t be one to fret much over the “fears” felt by the white majority. However, in this case, I’ll say it in caps for the people in the back: STOP SCARING WHITE PEOPLE.
To understand my new stance, we first need to look at the way these things get reported. As both a writer and an information consumer, I am intimately familiar with the invaluable importance of word choice and framing for setting a particular connotation for the information being conveyed. And when you use words like “cease” and “gone” when talking about the white majority, intentionally or not, it attaches a certain connotation to this demographic shift, directed towards a specific group of people. And this wording doesn’t get widely interpreted as dropping a few percentage points--it’s read as the white majority going from ‘existing’ to ‘not existing’, which is the nature most understand the word “cease” in. And that thought (understandably so) is a scary one.
We can pair this example of how the reporting of this demographic shift can instill fear in the America’s white population, with multiple examples of what the implications of white fear looks like. We have already recently seen an increasing hostility towards Muslims--who, by the way, make up only about 1% of the nation’s population--in a variety of forms, ranging from hate letters sent to mosques to deadly in-person assaults. And this sentiment obviously stems from fears induced by terrorists groups who base their actions on radical forms of Islam. We can even look towards a similar phenomenon that relates directly to the demographic changes: the rise in white nationalist-sentiment. With fears about the losing the dominance that whites undeniable hold over this nation, individuals aligning with the “alt-right” have already made public declarations that whites need to take back what “belongs to [them]”. And this fear isn’t stopping at small rallies and get-togethers; it’s chipping into our political system (i.e. former KKK Grand Wizard’s 2016 Senate run). Even though it’s debatable whether these fears are valid (or is it?), one thing that has been shown is that when white Americans are scared, the ones who truly feel those fears are those of us who don’t fit into that identity. And if anything, such overblown reporting only make such situations worse.
So this is my plea: enough with this headline. Despite the truth that lies in the population proportion shift, whites will still be the most powerful group in this nation. But by hammering away at this demographic change, the white perception of this power relation gets distorted, and their fear that results from it has significant one-sided impacts on the so-called “minority-majority” population. And perhaps rather than fear-mongering, we can use our platforms to orientate our nation’s attention to more pressing issues--ones that will encourage all members of our society to be productive, and unite ourselves behind common goals and shared values.