Towards a "Majority-Minority" Status

Photo credit: John Lund/Getty Images.

"Welcome to the new off-white America.

"The latest census data and polling from The Associated Press highlight the historic change in a nation in which non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in the next generation, somewhere around the year 2043.

"'Numerically, the U.S. is being transformed. The question now is whether our institutions are being transformed,' said [Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, a global expert on immigration and dean of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies]."

"The numbers already demonstrate that being white is fading as a test of American-ness:

• More U.S. babies are now born to minorities than whites, a milestone reached last year.
• More than 45 percent of students in kindergarten through 12th grade are minorities. The Census Bureau projects that in five years the number of nonwhite children will surpass 50 percent.
• The District of Columbia, Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas have minority populations greater than 50 percent. By 2020, eight more states are projected to join the list: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey and New York. Latinos already outnumber whites in New Mexico; California will tip to a Latino plurality next year.
• By 2039, racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the U.S. working-age population, helping to support a disproportionately elderly white population through Social Security and other payroll taxes. More than 1 in 4 people ages 18-64 will be Latino.
• The white population, now at 197.8 million, is projected to peak at 200 million in 2024, before entering a steady decline in absolute numbers. Currently 63 percent of the U.S. population, the white share is expected to drop below 50 percent by 2043, when racial and ethnic minorities will collectively become a U.S. majority. Hispanics will drive most of the minority growth, due mostly to high birth rates, jumping in share from 17 percent to 26 percent."

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/03/17/2465772/rise-of-latino-population-blurs.html#storylink=cpy

Read more of the article by Hope Yen of the Associated Press by clicking here.

Television producer Nubia de Lima
in her Rio de Janeiro apartment.
Photo credit: Felipe Dana/Associated Press.

In the above article, the nation of Brazil was cited as a developing nation which has crossed the threshold to "majority-minority" status. The article also mentions that "[i]n Brazil, where multiracialism is celebrated, social mobility remains among the world's lowest for blacks while wealth is concentrated among whites at the top."

"People aren't used to seeing black people in positions of power," said Globo television network producer Nubia de Lima, herself a dark-skinned Brazilian. She added that upper middle-class black people like herself are in a kind of limbo, too affluent and educated to live in favelas (hillside slums) but still largely excluded from high-rent white neighborhoods.

To read more about the situation, check out the article by Jenny Barchfield of the Associated Press by clicking here.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/03/17/2465772/rise-of-latino-population-blurs.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/03/17/2465772/rise-of-latino-population-blurs.html#storylink=cpy