The GOP will be dragged to that reality kicking, screaming and gerrymandering
In a former life, I was enthralled with demographic projections as I studied for my certified association executive credentials. I had not seen statistics used to forecast sociological changes that leaders should consider when planning an organization’s future.
It remains an important field of study, especially in the world of politics. For example, I’m sure you’re aware that White people are a minority of the world’s population. The global majority accounts for about 85% of us and does not include White folks (or Jewish ones).
Did you know that White people are also projected to be a minority in the United States in about 20 years?
We Americans with a Eurocentric heritage may not have thought of ourselves as anything other than the majority we have been. But that position is fragile, and the political pushback to its loss is nascent and fierce. (Let’s not examine the fact that Spain is European.)
Majority-minority is not a topic that gets direct attention from national media. But it sure gets an indirect acknowledgment with the century-old replacement conspiracy theory trotted out by MAGA Republicans. Think back to the Charlottesville rally during the first Trump Administration: “you (or Jews) will not replace us!”
However, there is no “invasion,” President Trump.
There is no puppeteer encouraging the world’s “tired …poor [and] huddled massesyearning to breathe free” to “invade” the United States. Instead, the United States is seen as a beacon of progress, despite our checkered past in response to prior refugee crises.
Today there are a confluence of factors. Education and economic opportunities for women lead to fewer children, and the US is no exception. White birth rates have fallen faster than non-Whites. Most immigrants are not White: they come from Latin America and Asia in this third wave of immigration to the United States.
We can expect additional immigration pressure from refugees as climate change makes low and middle latitudes uninhabitable due to oceans flooding and excessive heat. That geography is not particularly White.
There is a cadre of White men determined to beat back this inevitable evolution with every breath in their bodies (as they also claim climate change to be a hoax).
I asked myself: if the US is on track to become a minority White country, which states are leading the way? Might they lean Democratic rather than Republican? Kinda sorta. Are they gerrymandered? Yup.
