Census: Minority Babies are Now the Majority in USA

Click image to enlarge

Brace yourself for hysteria from the white Christofascists and the white supremacist allies once they digest this new census information:  of the new babies being born, most are members of minority groups.  Bryan Fischer, Rush Limbaugh, and similar talking heads of the far right will be sending out a veritable wave of flying spittle.  In a perverse way, it will be entertaining to watch.  Meanwhile, this ought to be a serious wake up call to the Republican Party that continues to pander to aging white conservatives while alienating everyone else.  Ditto for the Virginia GOP.  Will the Party wake up to reality?  I'm certainly not going to be holding my breath.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the new census numbers:

For the first time in U.S. history, most of the nation’s babies are members of minority groups, according to new census figures that signal the dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority.  Population estimates show that 50.4 percent of children younger than 1 last year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups. 

The latest estimates, which gauge changes since the last census, are a reflection of an immigration wave that began four decades ago. The transformation of the country’s racial and ethnic makeup has gathered steam as the white population grows collectively older, especially compared with Hispanics.  The census has forecast that non-Hispanic whites will be outnumbered in the United States by 2042, and social scientists consider that current status among infants a harbinger of the change.

 

Although minorities make up about 37 percent of the U.S. population, the District and four states are majority minority — California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas.

Metropolitan Washington, where whites are in the minority, is far ahead of the curve. Among children younger than 5, there are more minorities than whites in virtually every jurisdiction except Arlington and Loudoun counties. Statewide, Virginia has just barely more white children under age 1 than minorities, but they are on the verge of falling below half. 

One of the biggest factors in the demographic change is age. Whites are by far the oldest group. Their median age is over 42, so many are beyond their prime childbearing years. In contrast, the median age for Hispanics is under 28. Blacks and Asians have median ages in their early 30s. 

 

William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, said the slowdown in immigration may delay the nation’s transformation to a majority-minority society from 2042 to 2050 or beyond. But he said it will not prevent it.

“Eventually, when the economy returns, we’re going to get more immigrants, maybe not from Mexico but from other parts of the world,” he said. Without so many youthful immigrants, he added, the United States would look more like Japan, with its disproportionate share of elderly citizens.  “We were already seeing a declining youth population in large parts of the country,” Frey said.

The future is here, in Northern Virginia, where several hundred thousand immigrants have settled over the past 25 years from societies as different as Vietnam, El Salvador, Ethiopia and Iraq. 

In both Maryland and Virginia, the numbers of Hispanics and Asians continued to grow sharply. The number of blacks increased modestly, while the number of whites was virtually unchanged. 

Personally, the changes in the nation's demographics don't frighten me whatsoever.  But then, I'm not one who finds it impossible to see the common humanity of others unless they look and think just like me.  Among the Virginia GOP and at The Family Foundation, that's not a trait you're likely to see.  They only seem to be able to show empathy to white conservative Christians.  The rest of us - in their book we simply do not matter and are to be maligned and denigrated.    The white Christianists had best hope that as they become the minority the new majority doesn't treat them as they have treated minorities in the past.  Pay backs could be hell.