Texas Becomes a Majority-Minority State

Texas Becomes a Majority-Minority State By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 11, 7:50 AM ET

Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.

According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.

Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations — with Hispanics the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.

Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.

Public policy analysts said these states and the country as a whole need to bring minority education and professional achievement to the levels of whites. Otherwise, these areas risk becoming poorer and less competitive.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said lawmakers need to start with immigration reform, while striving to bring minorities' education and salary levels in line with Anglos.

"Immigration is good for the United States ... it's important for us to keep our doors open, but we need to keep an eye on the people coming in," Frey said. "While initially it will be a state problem, eventually it will be a national issue, and education is the best way to deal with it."

Complications from the cultural shift aren't likely to be exclusive to states that already have majority-minority populations, Frey said.

Nevada, for instance, has seen a massive influx of minorities in the last 15 years, reducing the percentage of Anglos since the 1990s from nearly 80 percent to about 60 percent. Such a rapid shift is likely to cause growing pains that include trying to balance the needs of a bigger and younger minority community with an aging Anglo community, Frey said.

"That's the kind of state that is going to have to deal with quick transition," Frey said.

Though some areas may never see this shift, the country as a whole is expected to continue the trend first noticed more than a decade ago.

The nation should be more than half minorities by 2050, said Steve Murdock, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

"If you look in the 1990s, in every one of the 50 states, non-Anglo Hispanic populations grew faster than Anglo populations," Murdock said. "It's a very pervasive pattern."

I think your analysis of white guilt is largely correct, with one large exception.

White liberals, or elite white liberals I should say, have no intention of giving up their power or going to the back of the bus. This is the fate they want for fellow whites who dare to hold more traditional values, and who don't share that paralyzing sense of white guilt. It is these fellow whites above all else that elite white liberals hate and must be superior to.

So I would agree that they suffer from extreme White Guilt, and that they hate their own culture and traditions and legacy and heritage, but I think they see the Democrat-friendly demographic shifts as a way to finally gain permanent dominance over those other whites who don't share their shame.

That there is virtually no public discussion of, or Congressional debate over the massive and unforeseen collision between racial preferences and the mass immigration of those eligible for them, is a disgrace.

I understand that the GOP fears looking mean and hostile to immigrants in the eyes of white suburban women. Its a frustrating position to be in, i.e. that on so many social and cultural issues the majority of Americans (including no doubt these suburbanites)hold conservative values and positions, yet pressing forward on those issues is portrayed as pursuing a 'hard-right, ultraconservative, mean-spirited, divisive' agenda, thus scaring away Oprah viewers.

But I think that if put in direct terms, and if, for example, asked if they think immigrant children and the children of immigrants should be given a preference over their own children in college admissions, then these moderate women (and men) will suddenly fail to be placated and convinced by all of the nauseating, feel-good platitudes that have somehow come to substitute for intelligent and rational debate on immigration policy.

Its not that whites must or should be a majority. Its not that happiness can only be achieved with a white majority.

The question, or point, is to ask why this is happening, and why has there been so little discussion about it. And 'it' doesn't even have to be the percentage make of each ethnic group, but instead can be immigration policy. Like it or not, mass immigration was resumed based on fraudulent legislation back in the mid 60s. The sponsors of that bill (like Ted Kennedy) said it would not result in a large increase in the number of immigrants, or a change in the ethnic demographics of the nation. Both of these turned out to be false. Now with the second of those two promises, one could say that it was made in a different time to mollify a different nation and that is has no place in polite society today, but the question about numbers is no less valid today that it was then.

Since then, other pieces of legislation have made the current influx even larger, but those bills are rarely presented in such a way. And polls consistently show that only 10-15% of Americans favor increases in immigration.

So my point is that regardless of wheter or not diversity is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and if it is or is not the great strength we are constantly told it is (and it is most certaintly a poison, not a strength, for free speech), don't you think immigration policy should be set more carefully and deliberately? Shouldn't the American people be asked if they want their nation to be so drastically transformed?

So that is my take on it; namely that its not racist attitudes that account for the remarks doubting the wonderfulness of whites losing majority status, but rather resentment about feeling as though the policies that make it happen -- and it does result from public policy, its not some irresistable force of nature -- are set w/o any consideration of what ordinary Americans want.

The Mexican birthrate has indeed fallen quite a bit, but its almost certainly incorrect to think that will have a dampening effect on legal and illegal immigration from Mexico anytime in the near future, as one of Bush's campaign strategist recently opined in the NYTimes (Dowd was it???)

Mexican population growth still has tremendous momentum from past yrs of high birth rates, and that will continue to fuel mass immigration of Mexicans to the United States, assuming the US continues to allow it.

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