{"id":636,"date":"2008-08-14T15:36:16","date_gmt":"2008-08-14T20:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/?p=636"},"modified":"2008-08-14T15:36:19","modified_gmt":"2008-08-14T20:36:19","slug":"the-us-is-already-a-majority-minority-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/2008\/08\/the-us-is-already-a-majority-minority-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Is Already a Majority-Minority Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Is Already a Majority-Minority Nation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> 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<\/em> comprise a majority of the nation’s population. The current U.S. population<\/a> is about 300 million. There are roughly 46 million Hispanic Americans<\/a>, 40 million African Americans<\/a>, 35 million Irish Americans<\/a>, 16 million Italian Americans<\/a>, 15 million Asian Americans<\/a>, 10 million Polish Americans<\/a>, 3 million Greek Americans<\/a>, and 3 million Russian Americans<\/a>. That’s a majority right there, and I’ve left out a bunch<\/a> of ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

What the Times<\/em> 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?<\/p>\n

While some Americans view the arrival of the milestone heralded by the Times<\/em> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Is Already a Majority-Minority Nation: The New York Times reports that “ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pekNN-ag","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}