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Since the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the start of the Colonial period, the U.S. has been predominantly white.
But the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping, from a little under 90% in 1950 to 60% in 2018. It will likely drop below 50% in another 25 years.
White nationalists want America to be white again. But this will never happen. America is on its way to becoming predominantly non-white.
The U.S. federal government uses two questions to measure a person's race and ethnicity. One asks if the person is of Hispanic origin, and the other asks about the person's race.
A person is defined as white if he or she identifies as being only white and non-Hispanic. A minority, or nonwhite, person is anyone who is not solely non-Hispanic white.
[...] Whites were not the first people to settle in what is now the U.S. The first immigrants were a people known today as American Indians and Alaskan natives, also commonly referred to as Native Americans. They arrived in North America around 14,000 years ago.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492, there were around 10 million American Indians living in the lands north of Mexico. But by the 1800s their numbers had dwindled to about 1 million. They are now the smallest race group in the U.S.
The first sizable stream of immigrants to what is now the U.S. were whites from England. Their arrival at Plymouth in 1620 in search of religious freedom marked the start of large waves of whites coming to this land.
When the U.S. was established as a country in 1776, whites comprised roughly 80% of the population. The white share rose to 90% in 1920, where it stayed until 1950.
[...] Although the majority of the U.S. population today is still white, non-whites account for more than half of the populations of Hawaii, the District of Columbia, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. And, in the next 10 to 15 years, these half dozen "majority-minority" [PDF] states will likely be joined by as many as eight other states where whites now make up less than 60% of the population.
Census Bureau projections show that the U.S. population will be "majority-minority" sometime between 2040 and 2050. Our research suggests that this will happen around 2044. Indeed, in 2020, there are projected to be more non-white children than white children in the U.S.
Source: phys.org; original at The Conversation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 02 2019, @09:18AM (25 children)
The article doesn't take a position, only presents facts rather dispassionately. Facts are never going to be racist no matter how much you want them to be.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:41PM (3 children)
Sometimes you can tell a lot by what facts people like bringing up.
Like if someone kept talking about how goats have pussies like women. Well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:06AM (1 child)
That is an offensive racial slut against muslims! How dare you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @09:28AM
Wasn't a Muslim that brought it up. Why are you so triggered? Oh, no, AC! Not the Livestock!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @03:52PM
Well, but you have to admit that even if so, "buttsex" means something else when we're talking about goats.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sshelton76 on Thursday May 02 2019, @03:20PM (12 children)
It would be nice if it had it's facts straight though.
The claim that whites have EVER been a majority in this country is flat out wrong and laughable on it's own.
Those statistics don't account for the natives, it doesn't account for the slaves and it doesn't account for anyone who wasn't a land owner / able to vote. Even women were uncounted, regardless of race.
The article paints it as though whites are being outbred by people of color. That's not what is happening. What is happening is that people who were not counted before are being counted and people who previously would have selected vanilla, because "Whitening your family line" was a desirable thing not too long ago, are now electing to call themselves other flavors such as chocolate or butter pecan.
True story. I have a niece.
Her mom is white, her dad is brown.
What should my niece select?
Should she go by her skin color which is a light mocha, or should she go with what she is culturally which is white?
Most people would have her select "black". Most people are idiots.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:02PM (9 children)
Except, of course, for over a century as noted in the article.
Except that they do. There weren't that many natives, slaves, and other non-land owners of color. What you're missing here is that for a few centuries, a vast number of Europeans moved over. That's why there are so many whites here.
I'll note also that if we counted Hispanic white as white, which we did so for every other such group, then white isn't even close to becoming a minority.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sshelton76 on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:43PM (8 children)
Well I was about to call you out and ask for citations, because I just knew you were wrong.
Then I did my own research going back to the actual census records.
You're right, I'm wrong.
I'm uncertain where my original information came from that I used to form my opinion, but it was wrong and I'll be more careful in the future.
For the record, the information I had been going on was a statistic claiming that "white" americans had always been a minority and that when you account for "the unaccounted for", that whites only ever made up a maximum of 30% of the population and this figure had been dropping steadily since desegregation and the repeal of miscegenation laws. But since I'm unable to find a source there is no way to defend it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:53PM (3 children)
Similarly, Irish, Poles, European Jews (I guess mostly Ashkenazi Jews) were all considered bottom of society and disreputable - butt of many racist jokes of the time. None of them would be considered members.
Now, they're just lumped in with the rest.
My take is that we're probably 2-3 generations from just not giving a damn. At that point, things will be so mixed up, it's not worth the bother of deciding what ethnicity someone is supposed to be.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by sshelton76 on Thursday May 02 2019, @09:00PM (2 children)
Agreed and that's essentially my take on the whole mess even if it seems like I'm saying something different.
This topic has spawned a few hundred responses. Looks like my more indepth explanation of my position and the position I hope my children take, has dropped over to the second or third page. But it amounts to, we only have about 4MB of genetic material that separates any of us. More genes code for hair than for skin color. Race in modern society is a pointless construct intended to divide rather than unite us. Anyways that's the summary of it. I went into quite a bit more depth and put in citations to defend it. Hope you'll track it down and give it a read.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @03:45AM (1 child)
>> Race in modern society is a pointless construct intended to divide rather than unite us.
I do not completely agree with you. My cousin lives with me here in the US. We are Malaysian, and he has been waiting for a marrow donation without luck so far. We've been told that the chances of a match are very, very poor outside the group of donors of Southeast Asian ancestry.
(Score: 1) by sshelton76 on Friday May 03 2019, @10:34AM
Yes but if a person could qualify and step up, you wouldn't care what color his skin or what his background right?
Haplotypes like that are useful in demonstrating the regions that were isolated long enough to diverge genetically.
But unless you're going to ban miscegenation because of the higher incidence rate of certain diseases based on race, (e.g. blacks are more susceptible to sick cell anemia but as a consequence they are less susceptible to malaria) then pursuing race instead of regionalism / culture is sort of a dead end.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 03 2019, @12:31AM (3 children)
Good on you man. We could use more folks willing to change their position when they find out they're wrong. Mostly they just move the goalposts and keep arguing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday May 03 2019, @01:08AM (2 children)
Who does that! I am shocked that TMB would even suggest such a thing! (Oh, TMB, where do you want me to set down these goal posts?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @03:49AM (1 child)
Goddamn! You can be an obnoxious fuck! Can't you ever give it a rest?
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday May 04 2019, @04:46AM
No.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @01:58PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @03:44AM
I have a niece.
WOW! Small world!
(Score: 1, Troll) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 02 2019, @03:48PM (2 children)
Did you know that animals defecate, the sun rises in the east, slavery in America was based on racism and was the cause over which the Civil War was fought, and Protestant colonists from England were Puritan zealots as well as naughty, disobedient rebels who strayed from the Catholic Church and were in defiance of Papal decrees that divided the entirety of the New World between Spain and Portugal?
Just a few facts.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:15PM
Slavery in the US wasn't based upon racism, it caused racism. Most of the racism targeting Blacks in the US is a result of propaganda that had been spread to rationalize enslaving Africans. Africans were hardly the first choice, the tried enslaving the indigenous peoples, but that didn't work as they generally escaped before too long.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 03 2019, @12:33AM
All good to know but none of that is news to anyone. Well, possibly aristarchus but nobody else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @04:28PM (3 children)
Well at least now you've gone full jackass for everyone to see. I mean you've done it plenty before, but this is just laughably transparent.
The fact this was accepted by the editors is a clear signal that Aristsrchus has been right all along, SN is infested by the alt-right. At least there are plenty of others calling this bullshit out too.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:12PM
Eeeee-yup. Been calling this out for over a year and shouted down every time. Cassandra Syndrome strikes again!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 03 2019, @12:36AM (1 child)
Stating facts is racist now? Guess I won't tell you that you're an idiot then.
Get it straight though, I don't give a rat's ass who the majority demographic is or even if there is one. As far as I'm concerned, you're all trespassing but I'm willing to put up with you in exchange for air conditioning and the Internet.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @02:12AM
Delusion, a fun party game all incels can enjoy alone after the waifu burns itself up.
Oh right, you sleep with catfish, but I think that basically counts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @02:42AM
The scientific facts are that there is no such thing as race.