Michael E Johnson said:
According to the latest census figures by the year 2050 the US population will increase to 420 million and whites will make up only 50.1 % of the total US population. The other main "minority" groups-African-Americans, Hispanics , Asians and others- will make up the remaining 49.9 % . One would assume that by 2060 the United States will be a minority- majority land. Under what circumstances could the United States have reached the point where minority groups were 50% rather than 25% of the total US population by 2000? What would a highly diverse US have looked like in the late 20th century politically,socially and economically? The converse question of course is what would the US have been like with a smaller minority population - say only 10 -15% of the total by 2000? Would that mean better or worse race relations? Any and all ideas appreciated.
These figures could very easily be revised - even in OTL - by a slight shift in perception of what constitutes "white" and the groups that you have labeled here "minority."
Where, for example, would people of "mixed" ancestry fall? Arguably, that includes all of us (I for example, decidedly follow my maternal grandmother's family - a lineage replete with names like "George Washington Cook" and his brother "Hartson Pryce Cook" - in physical appearance, but my grandfather was Mediterranean, and my father's mother was Cherokee) - but people like me generally identify as "White - Non-Hispanic". What if our Hispanics (even those with African or Native American ancestry) were considered "White" as they are in the rest of the New World? A friend of mine, Jorge C-, who is descended in part from the crowned heads of Poland, funded his university studies through scholarships that he received partly because he is Hispanic. My Jewish friends thought that was rich. Another friend, A- Ponce de Leon, was considered Hispanic despite coming from a very European Hispanic family (of certain repute). Yet my friend M- Awad, who was born in Egypt, is considered "White - Non-Hispanic" and not African-American, even if he was demonstrably born in Africa and "darker" in complexion than many "African-Americans."
What if a strong "African-American" identity had never arisen, and light-skinned Blacks identified themselves as Caucasian (an extreme example of this is Leo Felton, the White supremacist from Boston, whose father is Black)? One could wreak havoc with these numbers by asking such questions.
Given the fact that large numbers of "Asian-American" women enter into interracial marriages (significantly larger than any other ethnic group in the US), what does this say about the future integrity of the "Asian American" community in the US? My employer is a Singaporean who is married to an American of French descent. Her son resembles his father. She now lives in a neighborhood in San Diego where
every couple on her block is interracial, and consequently so are her son's playmates (this, IMHO, is a great thing).
As for Hispanics, they are largely defined by their native language, but what happens in two or three generations? Not all Hispanics will continue to speak Spanish - sure, many may, but only in areas where Hispanics are heavily concentrated. As Hispanics move out of these areas, and become integrated into new societies, the loss of Spanish as their primary language is inevitable. As a parallel example, in 1753 Ben Franklin wrote to a friend that he feared it would be necessary to have German interpreters in the Assembly, and that "unless the stream of importation could be turned from this to other colonies, they will soon outnumber us, that all the advantages we have, will in my opinion, be not able to preserve out language and even our government will become precarious".
To me, all of this handwringing about Hispanics overrunning America, English dying out, and the "white race" becoming marginalized, strikes me as groundless and unfortunate as Franklin's fears about the Germans. As a "White" of dubious racial purity, I suppose it is less disturbing to me than it would be to the White Power set.