In another telling truism about how ‘demography is destiny”, the Census Bureau recently released a report with a most radical implication: whites will be a ‘minority’ by 2042 or a full 8 years before most experts predicted. Coming from places like California, many of us have witnessed firsthand some of the white minority dynamics that will define the future United States Of América. Scholars like my friend David Hayes-Bautista, writers like Dale Maharidge, author of the ever-prescient “The Coming White Minority”, and people in Whiteness Studies programs have long analyzed the extreme fluidity of whiteness. Yet, the news from the Census is nothing less than astonishing in terms of its political, economic, and cultural implications.
Viewed from the perspective of such startling demographic developments, the current anti-migrant climate, a climate filled with fear and with tragedies like the recently reported death of Chinese immigrant Hui Lui Ng , reflect the workings of personal and institutional fear or what I call “White Fear” in this article. Though I do not have any direct insight into the workings of the mind of An Other, I imagine that news of the coming white minority status must inspire images like those depicted in this photo-parody by San Diego-based Chicano artists Richard Lou and Robert Sanchez formerly known as “Los Anthropolocos”:
While the idea of the coming white minority may inspire sardonic humor and premature triumphalism in some while also inspiring intense fear and extreme loathing in Others, we must move beyond these preliminary responses; We must understand and prepare for the implications of such profound shifts in the demographic order. Consider, for example, how no previous Euro-dominant empire has ever witnessed a situation in which a white majority became a minority. Add to this demographic cocktail other, unprecedented and simultaneous developments like the decline of U.S. hegemony and the fundamental reconfiguration of the global economic and political system, and current political issues like immigration became more easy to understand in all their complex intensity and insanity.
How the political and economic elites and the mainstream and other media begin introducing the issue of white minority status into the public discussion must be monitored as it will have definite and deep impacts on whether and how future race relations and racial conflict in the U.S. will evolve. Without a smart, balanced and balancing approach to this intensely personal and racially-charged topic, an approach that is severely lacking today (ie; we don’t even talk about whiteness as it relates to the crisis of immigration), we run the risk of opening up a Pandora’s Box of racial resentment and violence that will make the current immigration conflict look like a pizza party. Current talk of a “post-racial” United States is not just silly; In the age Of América, the Soon-to-Be Land of White Minorities, it’s dangerous.
Much, much more on this critically important development in future posts.
Of América 
August 15, 2008 at 3:14 pm
My mother has, twice now, insisted to me that a Euro-white minority in the population and in our governance would be bad for everybody on America’s soil because Euro-whites have the highest population of people who make good policymakers and social contributors, both currently and, just as importantly, according to her, in the recent past (that is, the last 1,000+ years or so).
There ya have it.
Geez Louise, I despair and cry and think of all the “Luis Ramirez” situations I won’t be able to prevent, because if I can’t even sway my own mother to drop this belief…what beatings to death can I prevent?
August 15, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Thanks for your post, Katie. With total and absolute respect to your Mom, you might ask her how she reconciles the record of Euro-descended “good policymakers and social contributors” when it comes to their policies on violence: decimation of millions of indigenous people’s in the Americas, enslavement and killing of another few million Africans, mechanization of war in the name of progress, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, to name but a few.
August 19, 2008 at 1:51 am
I donno, but it seems multi-racial and mixed-“race” societies just find a new way to act like dicks.
I’m always being told by my fellow gringos that Mexico is “run by a white Spanish elite”. Oh? I live in a particularly wacky ethnic stew of indigenous-German-Chinese-Filipino-Afro-Mexican corner of the Republic, and those that are “white” don’t seem to be doing any better or worse than anyone else. Even the ones that still can claim to have “spanish” heritage (not that anyone gives a damn after a couple of generations).
The heirs to the folks with power and money now will hold on to it, they’ll just be a paler shade of brown than the rest of us for a few generations.
August 19, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Thanks for your reply, Roberto. I try…I run out of facts, though, when she comes up w/ things that probably aren’t true, and I hesitate to say, “That’s not true!” when I don’t have any hard facts to back up my assertion (even though she doesn’t give hard facts to whatever it is I’d like to assert isn’t true). You know how it goes? If you say, “How do you know that?” instead, they go off into personal anecdotes. And if you say to the anecdotes, “But those are just anecdotes” and don’t have counter-anecdotes on the exact same population (which eventually happens), then they go back to saying, “___ is true.” Only it might not be quite the original statement. So you have to go back to, “How do you know that?” And they go into anecdotes… and on and on.
I try, but I have definitely not mastered it yet.
August 24, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I think it will be fine as long as Europeans have a racially secure homeland–which they don’t. To understand how angry Europeans are gonna be pretend you’re American, then pretend you’re country of origin is also gonna be in the same situation and go from there. I think people need to allow certain countries to remain European;otherwise, there will be serious problems. White people have been relatively nice for 40 years and have gotten crapped on politically for it and have had their birthright given away. Everyone deserves a future, even white people and no matter how much the whip of political correctness is used, nothing will stop this survival instinct. All of the white people who want to be politically correct instead of securing a future for their own people are repulsive. Take your daughter’s or son’s toys away and give them to your non-white neighbor’s children instead because that is in essence what you’re doing by capitulating and kowtowing their futures away.
September 5, 2008 at 1:32 am
Why are we letting this happen? This is America, this is the west? It’s not racist to want to protect/continue your country!! All this politically correct stuff is bull! America/Europe is predominantly white , so why shouldn’t it continue that way? The same with Europe, looks like we’ll be muslim in a few generations. If someone celebrated the fact that South Africa would be white in 20 years it would be awfully racist, but somehow in this pc World the reverse is not considered so! White is fast becoming an endangered race but no one wants to talk about it because it’s “racist”. Before WWII, Europe contained 25% of the World’s population, so if we give USA/Commonwealth another 5% then ~1 in 3 was white, now it’s almost 1 in 10! Give it another century & God know’s what it will be. The same goes for wealth, no wonder the West has most of the World’s money, when the developing World’s population is growing exponentially! Ethiopia’s population has more than doubled since Live Aid!!! (Remember they had a drought that lead to a famine) What do they expect, an even bigger hand-out when the next drought comes? (Which it will!) But NGO’s would have you believe that we’re screwing them! Of course 10% have 90% of the wealth when the other 90% is growing exponentially!!! It’s time we stood up & said Yes, like most of America/Europe I’m Christian, I’m White, I want it to stay this way & I’m f***ing proud!
September 5, 2008 at 3:41 am
You go, you fly white minority guy;)>
September 18, 2008 at 7:10 pm
OBAMA, IN AN EARLY PRIMARY SPEECH, USED THE WORDS “RACIALLY BALANCED”, HAITI, AND AFRICA CONCERNING HIS COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY. AFTER HIS EUROPEAN TRIP, IN A SPEECH TO A MINORITY JOURNALIST MEETING IN CHICAGO, HE REPEATED THIS SENTIMENT. IF “BALANCED” MEANS EQUAL NUMBERS, AND RELATIVES ARE INCLUDED UNDER OBAMA’S POLICY OF EASING FAMILY REUNIFICATION, THEN 15 MILLION ILLEGALS BECOMES 50 MILLION. AND IF “RACIALLY BALANCED” TURNS INTO 50 KILLION OF FRICAN DESCENT, THEN THE RESULTING 100 MILLION NEW NON-WHITE CITIZENS PLACED EFFECTIVELY IN STATE POLITICAL DISTRICTS, CAN PUT NON-WHITES IN THE MAJORITY NOT ONLY NUMBER-WISE BUT ALSO IN STATE AND FEDERAL CONGRESSES. THIS CAN OCCUR IN THE FIRST 8 YEARS OF OBAMA RATHER THAN IN 2042. NATO WILL CRUMBLE BECAUSE NEITHER A DRAFT (FOR A LAND WAR (NOR A POLICY OF MUTUAL ASSURED DISTRUCTION (JEPRODIZING US “INNER-CITIES”), FOR MISSILE DEFENSE WILL BE POLITICALLY FEASIBLE. THIS WILL CAUSE A US WITHDRAWEL FROM NATO. RUSSIA THEN TAKES EUROPE AND CHINA ECONOMICALLY CHECK MATES AMERICA. SINCE WHITES ARE NOT REPRODUCING THEIR REPLACEMENT, THEIR PERMANENT MINORITY STATUS, POLITICALLY AND MILITARILY, CANNOT BUT INVITE EXTINCTION OF THE WHITE RACE BEFORE 2002 AT THE HANDS OF RADICALS SEEKING”REVENGE”. ARE COLLEGE STUDENTS AND UPPITY WHITES PROUD OF THEIR BLIND, UNTHINKING SUPPORT FOR SUCH A FUTURE.
October 25, 2008 at 10:12 pm
The year 2002 Anno Domini is already past.