The headlines were almost breathless.
”Minority births outnumbered whites for first time.”
By now, I am certain you have all read the stories. Even The Economist led with the story in its passive voice: “More births of non-white babies than white babies were recorded by the Census Bureau for the first time in the United States. Hispanic, black, Asian and mixed-race babies made up 50.4% of total births in the 12 months to July 2011.”
Apparently, some Americans (especially, journalists) are having a bit of trouble getting past their Jim Crow mentality concerning race. They love to put people into some rather ill-defined boxes and then conjure up policies as if those definitions meant something in reality.
Here are the numbers. In 2010-2011, of the babies born in the United States, 49.6 percent were “white,” 26 percent “Hispanic,” 15 percent “black,” and 4 percent “Asian American.”
For a moment, let’s skip over those labels. A manipulative grab bag of ethnicity and race that do nothing but draw silly lines dividing people into warring tribes. The Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman tragedy being the latest example of racial doublespeak.
But before I get off of the label issue, an example.
Several years ago my company required all of its employees to attend a diversity class. A friend of mine, born in Oregon of Iranian parents, was in the same session.
The moderator asked each of us about our backgrounds. When she got to him, she asked: “Let’s start with you. How does it feel to be a person of color in a white-dominated company?”
He was speechless. Probably because, to look at him, he looked as if he could have lived in Oslo. No one, except a person with her own agenda, would have applied the term to him.
Such is the nonsense of labels.
But that is a topic for another day.
What struck me most about the news articles were the Chicken Little “experts” who saw nothing but racial catastrophe in their crystal balls.
From the New York Times: “Will older Americans balk at paying to educate a younger generation that looks less like themselves? And while the increasingly diverse young population is a potential engine of growth, will it become a burden if it is not properly educated?”
Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration Studies at New York University: “The question is how do we reimagine the social contract when the generations don’t look like one another?” .
If I am reading that correctly, it sounds as if the accusation is that white, old people are so stupid they will ruin the future of their nation merely because a majority of young people do not look like them.
And this is one reason political discourse has become so difficult these days. Most Americans do not see the country in racial terms. And it angers the people who can only see things in racial terms.
We have had a terrible history when it comes to race. But, in my lifetime, most Americans have moved far beyond that. It appears the only people who have not are those who cannot think outside of their little census boxes.
A couple of newspapers managed to slip in a voice of reason in the last few paragraphs of their articles.
Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, of the American Enterprise Institute: “The findings do not foreshadow anything in a ‘fluid society’ with an historic pattern of assimilation that has worked well.”
The news does not mean that we face a race war or the need for more government programs or any of the other subtext agendas that have kept the headlines howling.
It is simply an announcement that America has a strong future with new citizens on the horizon who will continue to add to the uniculture that is America.
Sounds like good news to me.
Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration Studies at New York University: “The question is how do we reimagine the social contract when the generations don’t look like one another?” .
If I am reading that correctly, it sounds as if the accusation is that white, old people are so stupid they will ruin the future of their nation merely because a majority of young people do not look like them.
And this is one reason political discourse has become so difficult these days. Most Americans do not see the country in racial terms. And it angers the people who can only see things in racial terms.
We have had a terrible history when it comes to race. But, in my lifetime, most Americans have moved far beyond that. It appears the only people who have not are those who cannot think outside of their little census boxes.
A couple of newspapers managed to slip in a voice of reason in the last few paragraphs of their articles.
Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, of the American Enterprise Institute: “The findings do not foreshadow anything in a ‘fluid society’ with an historic pattern of assimilation that has worked well.”
The news does not mean that we face a race war or the need for more government programs or any of the other subtext agendas that have kept the headlines howling.
It is simply an announcement that America has a strong future with new citizens on the horizon who will continue to add to the uniculture that is America.
Sounds like good news to me.
