America Is Actually Blending, Not Bifurcating: The “Mainstreaming” of American Minorities, Part 1

The Great Demographic Illusion (2020)

The book takes issue with the way race is framed in America in the media, as well as for certain government purposes. First, the author argues that “mainstream” is a better term than “white” to describe people who feel part of the majority culture. ‎(“Mainstream” means a person who is generally accepted, rather than treated as intrinsically different.) Who has been considered “white” in America (and therefore “mainstream”) has continually expanded – for example, until after World War II, it did not include most Catholics or Jews, and in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, he didn’t include either Germans or Swedes, who were Northern European and Protestant, as “white.”)

The author also shows how silly some of the official racial categories are. For example, people from the Middle East are tabulated by the census as white. I doubt that many Muslim Middle Easterners have felt “white” in many part‎s of America over the last few decades. And most importantly, the book shows what a large proportion of mixed race individuals, a demographic that now way surpasses Asians in number of births in America and is close to the number of African-American births, generally self-identify as mainstream (the exception generally being births to one black and one white parent), rather than as part of some monolithic non-white demographic.

Here is some interesting and thought-provoking material from the book:

●       “The transformation to what is often called a “majority-minority” society—one in which today’s ethno-racial minorities (African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans) together will constitute a majority of the population—is presumed [by many in the media] to entail profound and wide-ranging effects. For some whites, the current narrative about ineluctable demographic shift, ending in their minority status, congeals into a threatening vision about their place in America. At the extreme, their uneasiness about the future takes the form of what the New York Times columnist Charles Blow has described as “white extinction anxiety” and propels them into the embrace of white nationalism. Political scientists who have analyzed the forces behind the startling and unanticipated 2016 election of Donald Trump argue that white “racial resentment,” stoked in part by the anxiety over massive demographic change and its implications for whites, was the most consequential among them.”

●       “The current dominant narrative, that of the majority-minority society, is deeply problematic, and not just on grounds of accuracy. It is inherently divisive because it highlights a societal fracture line. To many whites it seems to augur a zero-sum future for them, one that couples minority ascent with their decline.” [Note: As these posts will illustrate, it is a false narrative.] “That picture has helped to fuel an intense political polarization and ignite a flare-up of white nationalism.”

●       “For the critical public presentations of data, the Census Bureau classifies individuals who are reported as having both white and nonwhite ancestries as not white. This classification decision has a profound effect on public perceptions of demographic change, but it does not correspond with the social realities of the lives of most mixed individuals [Emphasis mine], who are integrated with whites at least as much as with minorities… On the whole, these individuals occupy a liminal “in between,” but their social mobility and social integration with whites are indicative of an assimilation trajectory into the societal mainstream.” “The mainstream does appear to be expanding and becoming more diverse, and the implications are potentially quite consequential.” [Emphasis mine]

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If you find the subject matter in these The Mainstreaming of Minorities posts interesting, check out this link to the late Arthur Schlesinger’s book The Disuniting of America, foreshadowing the difficult place identity politics would lead us. (I used to get scolded for suggesting people read it.) All twelve of the posts can be found in the “For Those With More Academic Interests” section on the Lone Liberal Republican website.

As always, thanks for reading and sharing, and be well.