23 June 2018 — 1824 mdt
Whites will not be a minority in the United States for decades
Once again, the “Non-Hispanic White” statistic is being used to minimize the size of the nation’s white population.
At the Brookings Institute, a center-left think tank, there’s a new study by William Frey, US white population declines and Generation “Z-Plus” is minority white, census shows, that will scare the devil out of some of Trump’s partisans, and gladden the hearts of those who believe the U.S. is becoming, and should become, a minority majority nation in which whites are less than half of the population.
Frey correctly reports that the nation’s white population is declining, but his allegation that whites already are a minority of “Generation Z” depends on counting Hispanics as not white. That’s intellectual fraud. As the Census Bureau reports, “Hispanic” refers to ethnicity, not race:
What is race? The Census Bureau defines race as a person’s self-identification with one or more social groups. An individual can report as White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or some other race. Survey respondents may report multiple races.
What is ethnicity? Ethnicity determines whether a person is of Hispanic origin or not. For this reason, ethnicity is broken out in two categories, Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. Hispanics may report as any race.
When white Hispanics are included in the tally of whites, here’s what the Census Bureau reports America’s racial composition was in 2012 and is projected to be in 2060:
In the 2010 Census, 53 percent of Hispanics identified their race as white (Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010, page 5). Three years ago, the Pew Research Center reported that adding Hispanic as a race on the 2020 Census form was under consideration, but apparently that proposal was rejected. On 29 March 2018, the Census Bureau released to Congress the question on race that the 2020 Census will use:
(I’ll check the White box, and, because I’m a natural born American, not a hyphenated American, print American for my ethnic origin.)
If the 2020 Census uses this form, I suspect that the percentage of Hispanics who identify as white will not change appreciably from the 2010 Census. If an appreciable change occurs, projections of the nation’s racial composition will need to be modified accordingly.
But unless, and until, that happens, the Non Hispanic White statistic should be used only when accompanied by an explanation that it’s a subset of the nation’s white population, and that it’s employed for political purposes, most if not all dubious, that distort the facts and trigger unnecessary fears and illegitimate joys.