Another country

By David Brooks

From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

That also explains the almost hysterical tone against this reform, as well as, on a more general level, the raging fear that so strongly marks the political and social debate here. We’re looking at a crash in slow motion.

It is not something coincidental. It has to do with a transformation so broad and deep that to many is one of the most serious threats they face: a demographic shift in the most powerful country in the world.

It is very simple to summarize the dramatic scope of this change: in little more than 30 years, whites will no longer be the majority in the United States, a country composed mostly of minorities. In other words, no sector of the population will account for more than 50 percent of the national population.

In the United States, a multicolor future is literally being born. For the first time in history, nonwhite births – the births of minorities – are a majority in this country. Last year, the Office of the Census estimated that 50.4 percent of the population under the age of one were minorities – Latinos, African-Americans, Asians and mixed races – while their white counterparts made ​​up 49.6 percent of the population.

As La Jornada reported last year, although the country remains predominantly white (63 percent), demographers say that this Census report on births between July 2010 and July 2011 exactly marks the point where this country will begin its transformation into a multi-ethnic society in which all ethnic groups are minorities.

According to previous projections of the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2042 the country will no longer be predominantly white, although this date could be delayed until 2050, given a recent slowdown in migration flow, some demographers warn. But everyone knows that the moment when whites become the largest minority, followed by Latinos, will come.
Today, Latinos or Hispanics are the largest minority in the country, with 52 million, according to the Census. Latinos now make up 17 percent of the national population of the United States. African Americans are 12 percent; Asians, 5 percent.

Among Latinos, 37 percent were born outside of this country, in other words, are immigrants (nearly 19 million), according to the Pew Hispanic Research Center. Of these, 65 percent – about 33.5 million– are of Mexican origin (descendants here and newcomers), with 36 percent of them born in Mexico. The other sectors are Puerto Ricans (9.2 percent), Cubans (3.7), Salvadoran (3.6 percent), Dominicans (3), Guatemalans (2.2), followed by Colombians, Hondurans, Ecuadoreans and Peruvians.

Of the more than 40 million immigrants here, almost half (47 percent) are Latinos.
All this is expressed in a thousand ways: more Spanish in the nation’s everyday and even official language; more food from Latin America and elsewhere incorporated (and sadly distorted and perverted) into the national diet; new influences on the arts, especially on music, journalism and, of course, changes in local, state and national politics.

It is in the electoral and political environment where all this has implications that are increasingly apparent to the nation’s leaders. It is worth remembering that the vote from Latinos, African-Americans and Asians was considered the key to the historic election of an African-American to the White House. The vote in 2008 was the most racially and ethnically diverse in the country’s history, with nearly one in four votes cast by non-whites.

In 2012, with 71 percent of the Latino vote, 73 percent of the Asian vote, and the overwhelming majority of the African-American vote, Barack Obama was reelected.
This change is recorded not only nationwide. It is also changing the electoral map in some surprising places, such as Texas and even Arizona, two bastions of conservative Republican power, with regions that are frankly racist and anti-immigration.

In Texas, for example, whites are no longer the majority – only the largest minority, 45 percent of the state, while 38 percent identify themselves as Latino. Therefore, some Democrats believe that by 2016 that state might no longer be controlled by Republicans. In Arizona, Latinos represent 30 percent of the population increase of 46 percent in just a decade.

That explains, in part, the ferocity of the notorious anti-immigrant initiatives in the state, which some analysts see as measures to eject more Latinos in general (born here and abroad) and to try to stop a future where white conservatives lose their political monopoly of the state. These changes are also beginning to transform the landscape in places like North Carolina and Georgia, among others.

The future where most people are minorities is already here, not only in Texas but also in California (where Latinos make up nearly 40 percent of the state population), New Mexico and Hawaii.

"The rural, older and white United States, occupies one land; the younger, urban and increasingly non-white United States, lives in another," writes analyst and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to characterize the struggles over social issues, from immigration to civil rights, gun control and others that are now at the center of the political debate.

"With time, this older, white and rural United States will lose ground to a nation increasingly younger, more urban and less white" and that, he alerts, causes great fear among the former, who are willing to do everything "against the forces of change."
Like it or not, however, this is becoming, right now, another country.