Yep, must be about race

So this is a headline on the Drudge Report right now...

WHITES NO LONGER MAJORITY BY 2042...

A couple of thoughts....

1.  Why are we speculating what things are going to look like  34 YEARS FROM NOW anyway?!  We have no idea what groups might be moving in or out of the country within the next 10 years, much less the next 30.  What if companies like the one my good friend John Williams is employed at decide they want to continue to outsource some of their business to Mexico, which causes a huge boom in their economy, which causes many of them that are here now to decide to move back?  Heck, what if we buy Mexico (as I have proposed before) and Hispanics become the majority overnight?  What if some sort of famine\plague\act of war ends up wiping out a huge area of the country and thus turns our racial demographic upside down?  My point is - we have no idea what the future holds.  This study is not credible at all.

2.  This is actually just a copy of someone else's thoughts, but he is exactly RIGHT!  From this article:

The New York Times reports that "ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation's population in a little more than a generation." But ethnic and racial minorities already comprise a majority of the nation's population. The current U.S. population is about 300 million. There are roughly 46 million Hispanic Americans, 40 million African Americans, 35 million Irish Americans, 16 million Italian Americans,  15 million Asian Americans, 10 million Polish Americans, 3 million Greek Americans, and 3 million Russian Americans. That's a majority right there, and I've left out a bunch of ethnic groups.

What the Times really means, of course, is that "Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites." We've become so accustomed to this arbitrary definition of "ethnic and racial minorities" that it's easy to lose sight of how bizarre it is. Is there a single objective criterion that unites these particular ethnic and racial minorities while distinguishing them from all the excluded groups? Is there any rational reason why a descendant of Spaniards, say, should count as a real minority, whether or not his ancestors spent time in Latin America, while a descendant of Italians does not? What is it, exactly, that makes Indians more ethnic than Albanians?

While some Americans view the arrival of the milestone heralded by the Times with horror, others see it as a sign of progress. I'd say obsessing about it one way or another indicates a lack of progress.

 

Love that last sentence.  :)