The Atlantic has the absolute must read piece of the day (seriously) about the coming minority majority in America. In the rhetorically titled, “The End of White America?” Hua Hsu of Vassar College examines a basket of issues surrounding the idea that it is no longer even mildly desireable to be “white” in America. According to Hsu, white youth are trying desperately to mimic the cultures they see within minority groups as a means to escape the blandness of their “non-culture”:
Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities–blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians–will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.
Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America. And it’s possible that “beige Americans” will self-identify as “white” in sufficient numbers to push the tipping point further into the future than the Census Bureau projects. But even if they do, whiteness will be a label adopted out of convenience and even indifference, rather than aspiration and necessity. For an earlier generation of minorities and immigrants, to be recognized as a “white American,” whether you were an Italian or a Pole or a Hungarian, was to enter the mainstream of American life; to be recognized as something else, as the Thind case suggests, was to be permanently excluded. As Bill Imada, head of the IW Group, a prominent Asian American communications and marketing company, puts it: “I think in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, [for] anyone who immigrated, the aspiration was to blend in and be as American as possible so that white America wouldn’t be intimidated by them. They wanted to imitate white America as much as possible: learn English, go to church, go to the same schools.”
Today, the picture is far more complex. To take the most obvious example, whiteness is no longer a precondition for entry into the highest levels of public office. The son of Indian immigrants doesn’t have to become “white” in order to be elected governor of Louisiana. A half-Kenyan, half-Kansan politician can self-identify as black and be elected president of the United States. [Link]
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p>The case of The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind mentioned in the article (someone we’ve blogged of before) refers to the 1923 case in which an Indian American veteran argued that he should be considered white (a precondition to becoming a naturalized citizen) because Indians were descended from Aryans:
Associate Justice George Sutherland found that, while Thind, an Asian Indian, may have had “purity of Aryan blood” due to being “born in Village Taragarh Talawa,near Jandiala Guru, Amritsar, Punjab” and having “high caste” status he was not Caucasian in the “common understanding”, so he could not be included in the “statutory category as white persons”.[1] George Sutherland wrote in his summary: [Link]
Hsu inevitably cites hip hop as one of the most important instruments used for overturning the desirability of whiteness:
Just as Tiger Woods forever changed the country-club culture of golf, and Will Smith confounded stereotypes about the ideal Hollywood leading man, hip-hop’s rise is helping redefine the American mainstream, which no longer aspires toward a single iconic image of style or class. Successful network-television shows like Lost, Heroes, and Grey’s Anatomy feature wildly diverse casts, and an entire genre of half-hour comedy, from The Colbert Report to The Office, seems dedicated to having fun with the persona of the clueless white male. The youth market is following the same pattern: consider the Cheetah Girls, a multicultural, multiplatinum, multiplatform trio of teenyboppers who recently starred in their third movie, or Dora the Explorer, the precocious bilingual 7-year-old Latina adventurer who is arguably the most successful animated character on children’s television today. In a recent address to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, Brown Johnson, the Nickelodeon executive who has overseen Dora’s rise, explained the importance of creating a character who does not conform to “the white, middle-class mold.” When Johnson pointed out that Dora’s wares were outselling Barbie’s in France, the crowd hooted in delight.
Pop culture today rallies around an ethic of multicultural inclusion that seems to value every identity–except whiteness. “It’s become harder for the blond-haired, blue-eyed commercial actor,” remarks Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, of the Hispanic marketing firm Enlace. “You read casting notices, and they like to cast people with brown hair because they could be Hispanic. The language of casting notices is pretty shocking because it’s so specific: ‘Brown hair, brown eyes, could look Hispanic.’ Or, as one notice put it: ‘Ethnically ambiguous.'”
“I think white people feel like they’re under siege right now–like it’s not okay to be white right now, especially if you’re a white male,” laughs Bill Imada, of the IW Group…<
p>If they’re right–if white America is indeed “losing control,” and if the future will belong to people who can successfully navigate a post-racial, multicultural landscape–then it’s no surprise that many white Americans are eager to divest themselves of their whiteness entirely. [Link]
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p>I would point to success of Slumdog Millionaire at the Golden Globes last night as a perfect example of a film which appeals to the mainstream (i.e., white America) especially because it is so “non-white” (unless you count the director and producer). A British newspaper even ran the headline, “Slumdog Millionaire: the first film of the Obama era,” this morning. Obama-era is thinly veiled code for “era of the minority.” Let’s be honest, based purely on critical elements Slumdog did not deserve best picture. Although most of the dialog was convincing, that between the two main characters was atrocious drivel. Dev Patel was also woefully miscast as the lead. That being said, it was a very entertaining and moving film and if it wins the Oscar for best picture it will join Forrest Gump and Titanic as overrated movies that were nonetheless worthy as crowd pleasers (although if you liked Titanic you should be shot). The main appeal of Slumdog is the slum part, set to A.R. Rahman and M.I.A’s exotic music. To like it is to be hip. If you saw it earlier than most at one of the limited screenings in L.A. or NYC then you get extra hipness points. This film follows in the wake of another popular multiethnic film, City of God. A few years ago if you found yourself at a multiethnic party of elitist
Matt Wray, a sociologist at Temple University who is a fan of Lander’s [the guy behind stuffwhitepeoplelike.com] humor, has observed that many of his white students are plagued by a racial-identity crisis: “They don’t care about socioeconomics; they care about culture. And to be white is to be culturally broke. The classic thing white students say when you ask them to talk about who they are is, ‘I don’t have a culture.’ They might be privileged, they might be loaded socioeconomically, but they feel bankrupt when it comes to culture … They feel disadvantaged, and they feel marginalized. They don’t have a culture that’s cool or oppositional.” Wray says that this feeling of being culturally bereft often prevents students from recognizing what it means to be a child of privilege–a strange irony that the first wave of whiteness-studies scholars, in the 1990s, failed to anticipate.
Of course, the obvious material advantages that come with being born white–lower infant-mortality rates and easier-to-acquire bank loans, for example–tend to undercut any sympathy that this sense of marginalization might generate. [Link]
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p>The funny thing is that when I read the site “Stuff White People Like,” I invariably find that I like most of that stuff too. Does that make me a minority who is “too white” and will thus begin to seek a minority fix whenever I’m jonesing? Does use of the term “jonesing” just then count as such a fix? This is the one thing that I feel Hsu doesn’t adequately address when he is describing the “wigger” phenomenon. How do you explain Asian youth who mimic hip hop culture when they already have their own culture that is separate from white non-culture? My head is spinning.
In 1994, a young graffiti artist and activist named William “Upski” Wimsatt, the son of a university professor, published Bomb the Suburbs, the spiritual heir to Norman Mailer’s celebratory 1957 essay, “The White Negro.” Wimsatt was deeply committed to hip-hop’s transformative powers, going so far as to embrace the status of the lowly “wigger,” a pejorative term popularized in the early 1990s to describe white kids who steep themselves in black culture. Wimsatt viewed the wigger’s immersion in two cultures as an engine for change. “If channeled in the right way,” he wrote, “the wigger can go a long way toward repairing the sickness of race in America.” [Link]
As a point of contrast to the entire discussion above I point you to a series of stories on NPR’s Morning Edition this week, the first of which I awoke to this morning. The three part series chronicles the struggle of minorities in Europe to be recognized and accepted in their country (Germany in the first story) despite, in some instances, their family having lived there for several generations:
In Europe, Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States was met with euphoria. But now, the continent is peering into the mirror, realizing there is little chance a member of one of its own minorities could reach such prominence any time soon.
Take Germany, for instance, where notions of national identity are still strictly linked to ethnicity. Nonwhite Germans are still fighting to overcome exclusion from mainstream society in many ways.<
p>”When you take white as the norm, and everything else is deviant from that, and your advertising is always targeted at white people, or when you write school books and they’re targeted at white children, this is, for me, a racist experience,” she says.[Link]
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Simply amazing isn’t it? On one side of the globe we are talking about the overthrow of “Whitey” only a couple of generations after minorities gained a solid foothold here. In Europe, even after several generations, the divide between white and “other” seems stretched to a chasm. Is there any wonder why it is so hard to find homegrown terrorists in America? Excuse me now while I go listen to some Santogold and read The Root before going to bed.
hmmm I’m aware in some main stream media the theme was ‘were all’ Americans’ now. But for me personally, and amoung my older /great uncles; 1 Korean Veteran , a grandad who was a WWII vet, Great grand father WWI vet, that theme didn’t really play well. E.g 9/11 was a tragedy but didn’t make me feel more or less American. I think 11/4/08 or 1/20/09 will have far more resonance as far as that goes. There are generational issues in the black community that may influence that. Some holdouts, who are actually conservative, but tend to have a black nationalist view point from the ’60’s, (Bill Cosby) that will never mesh with main stream GOP types. Younger people who didn’t come through the struggle are not as conflicted about their ‘Americaness’
Amitabh I’m not being flip but were you in the US on 9/11- did it make you feel more or less so?
You know I surprised my damn self by even saying that the term was offensive, and in the past I may have rolled my eyes at another black/brown or ‘other’ person who cared about the man getting his feelings hurt. However at the end of the day, there is a place for civil manners. I know the Abhi was being tongue in cheek when he wrote the post, and I was half joking when I left the comment. But we have to call bullshit when we see it. Hilarious rant on the very same subject [overuse of taking & giving umbrage] on the black snob: 99problems and a dress aint one also intersects on my point about how Americans -b/w and brown based on some comments equate race with privilege-> perennial favorite topic 😉
Yes, in fact I grew up in NJ not very far from the WTC. 9/11 stunned me as much as anyone else…there were a range of feelings. I certainly felt a surge of patriotism…yet unlike the average white dude I (thanks to my Indian background) was already familiar with the Jihadi mentality and the threat which militant Islam posed. BUT…FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I did feel weird moving around in society being non-white and someone who more closely resembles a ‘middle-eastern’ stereotype…this feeling only lasted a week or less but I do remember that I wouldn’t blast bhangra or Hindi music loudly from my car at that time…out of sensitivity to not appear to be celebrating my foreign-ness at a time of national catastrophe and so as not to incense anyone during that time of shock and mourning. Overall I was as comforted as anyone else by the American flags that suddenly sprouted everywhere and the resilient, defiant spirit that Americans showed. I felt the pain and the solidarity that anyone else not directly affected by the loss of a loved one felt.The backlash against innocent Sikhs was quite troubling.
Last post really 🙂
Ambitah and Shallow-thinker, you may think you’re coming from two different places, but you’re not. I’ve had a Pakistani American friend (1st generation) once tell me that he didn’t see how any black person could ever join the US Armed forces, he was not very religious; typical young man at the time; he sagged & bagged with the best of them. I’m sure he considers himself fully American
I haven’t read the Atlantic article but that’s is the point- everybody else , figuratively, jumps off the boat- becomes “
white”“American”, but we are supposed to stay locked in some freeze frame of opposition, or have our loyalty /patriotism/blackness questioned. That was the most egregious mistake of HRC’s campaign to me personally , her MLK/LBJ mix up. I didn’t take offense because she minimized MLK’s input, but I was offended that she could not conceive of ‘the black people’ ever being in a place not of protest/petition or outside the system looking to some other (white) person as a benefactor /benefactress153 · Amitabh said
intriguing, beautifully honest anecdote…machiavellian in the best sense of the word (ie putting morality aside for a moment in order to see the world as it really is) and not the first time i’ve heard amitabh make such an admission. very much encompasses at the contradictions and complexity that is the immigrant experience.
The “browning” of the U.S is a very intriguing and of course controversial topic. Those on the Left generally welcome it with open arms and eagerly await the assumed destruction of the racial hierarchy that it portends. The Right fears that it will mean the end of American Greatness and the breakdown of our democratic way of life. To what extent any of these predictions come true is anybody’s guess. What does seem fairly certain, however, is that massive sociodemographic change will occur, by hook or by crook. And no foreseeable natural, social, or political force short of a geophysical cataclysm in North America (along the lines of an asteroid strike or catastrophic climate change) will be able to prevent it.
There will probably be some unexpected outcomes along the way. However, looking at societies where this transition has already occured can give us some clues about what the post-racial United States might look like. Latin America probably is the best historical example. Throughout the past five centuries, and especially since Latin American Independence in the early 1800s, the process of miscegenation has continued unabated, albeit under conditions of unequal power and privilege. In New Spain (most of which is today Mexico), for example, after the demographic collapse of the indigenous population during the early years of colonization, Europeans constituted the majority population for nearly two centuries. It wasn’t until the early 1700s that indigenous peoples and mestizos -people of mixed descent- grew to become the majority. And it wasn’t until a century later that mestizos came to constitute an absolute majority in their own right. In many other parts of Latin America the demographic development was similar. So basically you had a situation of European-descendents being in the majority for many centuries before eventually being eclipsed demographically by more-or-less “pure” descendents of the aboriginal population as well as the mixed-raced population.
In Mexico today mestizos account for two-thirds of the population. This gives rise to some very interesting phenomena. For example, in any given mestizo nuclear family in which the parents are both dark-skinned, one of their offspring will be as tall and fair-skinned as a northern Italian, with wavy brown hair and green eyes, while another one will have dark-brown skin and eyes as black as obsidian; yet a third will have a medium olive skin tone and light brown eyes. You see such phenotypically mixed families in any city or town in Mexico. Obviously these people do not see themselves as belonging to different “races”. This would be ludicrous. They are all part of the same family and share the same gene pool. In this way, attributes such as skin color, eye color, height, shape of nose, etc. have become purely personal attributes. They do not mark you as being a member of a distinct race, they are simply variations that occur from person to person and that often occur even within one and the same family.
It does not seem unlikely to me that as the U.S. becomes more pluriethnic, and under the influence of continued massive immigration from Latin America and higher birth rates among latinos, a similar transformation with eventually take place in the USA. Demographers predict that in 2050, 30 to 40 percent of the population will be able to trace their lineage through Latin America. This means that one can envision a time even further into the future when hispanics become the majority or at least reach parity with non-hispanics. I hazard to conjecture that in the future the major fault line in U.S. society will no longer be between whites and blacks or whites and people of color, but between anglos and latinos. Anglos will consist of all of those subgroups, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, that share in common the English language and certain common cultural trappings that pertain thereto. On the other hand latinos will consist of those that share the Spanish language and hispanic culture as the common wellspring of their society. In short, I believe we will move from unipolar dominance of Anglo-American language and culture (and its various ethnic flavored subcultures), to a bi-cultural polity of Anglo and Latino communities in near-equilibrium, similar to Canada today.
128 · PS said
Well, if you read what I wrote in 93 carefully, you’ll see what I really was saying is that there is a large correlation between wealth and freedom.
I don’t see the ‘morality’ in it though…do you mean putting aside the principle that I should have been able to play whatever kind of music I wanted, as aggressively as I did pre-9/11, even after 9/11? I agree that in principle there was no reason for me to do anything different after 9/11 than before it. In fact within a few weeks it was life back to normal as far as that sort of stuff was concerned. In the acute phase however (the immediate days after 9/11) I just felt it highly inappropriate and insensitive (on my part) to have done so. It wasn’t that I was scared to do so; in reality I knew nothing was likely to happen to me; but it was a feeling of solidarity with the other Americans around me. It (playing loud Indian music in public) just felt uncomfortable at that time and gradually stopped feeling uncomfortable after a week or two.
158 · Amitabh said
Yeah, that’s all i meant. the principled thing to do would be to play the music, or even argue that that’s the american way, if you wanted to be a little more confrontational about it. i thought it a funny but honest micro-compromise.
145 · ak said
Let me put it this way. If the worst happens and America turns into a place that I can no longer believe in I can always flee to India. I have a homeland away from my home where I could remake my life. I would lament the fact that the American dream died but I could go along with a firm sense of Indian national identity as a substitute. Where could the typical American go?
Note I am making a point of using the term “typical” rather than “real.” It’s a clunky word choice but the best one I can think of. Basically it’s the WASPs and the Irish and Italian Catholics who have too thoroughly ingrained themselves into the country to identify with their homelands. It doesn’t make us hyphenated-Americans have any less of a claim to citizenship rights and membership in the country but let’s face facts. We are not the typical Americans. When you ask someone to visualize an American the image that pops into their minds is not a brown-skinned, Hindu man.
I think it’s fair that we accept the fact that while we, as fellow citizens, have full rights to participate in this country’s political, social, and economic opportunities we are still guests simply because we have the option of seeking out a sense of national community elsewhere by going back.
You have opened a can of worms – a whole lot of Desi Americans will scream to high heaven that they are Americans yet constantly talk about India!!! I d say the Tebbit test is a good indicator. I know I fail the test 🙂 Maybe harder with USA and India given that there is hardly any common sport 🙂
The “browning” of America will only continue as long as minorities such as blacks and Latinos remain relatively underprivileged socioeconomically. At some point as blacks and Latinos gain access to better economic and educational opportunities in larger numbers, they will follow the demographic trend of affluent people all over the world by decreasing the birth rate. I don’t see an America in which whites don’t hold at least a plurality for the foreseeable future.
146 · otoh said
Whaaaaaa–aaa?
Have you been to China? And no, I am not talking about Shanghai over the last 10 years.
Amibitah you always come across as a proud ‘son of the soil’ Indian- e.g. on topics of the preservation of authentic Indian cultures etc. You have this whole other’ country/lauguage(s)/cuisine/music/dress etc that you feel strongly about conserving.
Hopefully you can see how it might come across as patronizing your questioning of a black Americans’s sense of belonging. Just as Shallow thinkers need to frame any black person objecting to the term ‘whitey’ in an avuncular [Tom] kind of way. Haven’t brown people had issues with ‘the man’ , or is that meant to be the special forever preserve of ‘the blacks’. Unless I’m badly mistaken, Prince Charles Indian friend who “likes being called Sooty” would represent the majority view. I guess it’s less painful to project victim status on others.
Is that scrawny little sikh sepoy with the psycho eyes the guy who is supposed to have killed me?
“You are wrong to think Dublin is the only area where there is wealth…the country is rich.”
You spent 8 years in Ireland and you still think it’s a wealthy country? ye gads. Did you go to villages, small towns, slummy neighborhoods? Sorry, I’m still not with you. But you are entitled to your opinion. Just don’t expect the Irish I’ve known or the Ireland I’ve seen, to share them.
This recent article indicates that Ireland was tremendously wealthy during the boom of these past 8-10 years, primarily due to its real estate and housing boom, but that it might hurt especially badly now that this market has collapsed.
??? When did I question that??? I merely asked if 9/11 made a difference, that is all. My perception is that a subtle change in race relations happened at that time.
“This recent article indicates that Ireland was tremendously wealthy during the boom of these past 8-10 years, primarily due to its real estate and housing boom, but that it might hurt especially badly now that this market has collapsed.”
Wealth on paper for a few people renting castles to Germans and Japanese. Not likely to last.
“Have you been to China? And no, I am not talking about Shanghai over the last 10 years.
Admittedly no. Got this from a lady who emmigrated here from Beijing (married a VOA man who broke the rules big time.) She’d been a part of the “cultural revolution” in her teens. I’m sure there are still some left–it’s a huge country after all. But comparatively little remains.
??? When did I question that??? I merely asked if 9/11 made a difference, that is all. My perception is that a subtle change in race relations happened at that time.
Well maybe it wasn’t a question but an assertion that some AfAm felt ‘more American’. I wonder if your perception of a subtle change was something you noticed with your Black American friends or your white American friends? You have both right? Or do you feel you observed more bonhomie amongst b-w in general. My point that its not just ‘the black’ people, who have had a problematic realtionship with being American, but the continued underlying assumption by the larger society that that’s the case. And without really thinking about the implication of how static they see ‘the black’ people. I’m not attacking you, but its strange that you would ask about 9/11, on the cusp of Jan/20/2008, in the context of a watershed moment of black belonging.
I certainly don’t see the black community as static. I know it’s gone through huge changes since the beginning of the 20th century. Every generation has been substantially different than the one before, not to mention the diversity that now exists within cohorts from the same generation, depending on region, education, income, etc. And my timing of the question on the cusp of 1/20/09 was a coincidence. But I agree I’m getting in over my head on this one so I’ll stop now. Thanks for engaging.
The United States, being so geographically large, faces no threat of turning into a UK anytime soon, but to prevent the chance of that happening, we need to implement strict immigration laws regarding language and cultural assimilation. Training programs. Leeway can be given for our neighbors (Mexico), because they are our neighbors and Spanish is practically a second language in Southern Cal, Southern FL and Texas anyway. And their culture is not so extremely different from ours anyway, in terms of dress, religion, etc.
But for people coming from very different cultures, they should be required to assimilate more. I mean, there are entire neighborhoods you can wrong through in UK and not hear a single word of English or see a single female face!
Not gonna happen here.
“Genocide” was too strong a word and not accurate. What I meant was that white people are the only ones who revel in other people making fun of them or hating on them or “R.I.P.ing them”. Anyone else would be writing a million letters and emails in protest to this or that newspaper, company, whatever, crying, whining, demanding rights and accurate portrayals, blah, blah, blah. “Whitey” just sits back and takes it. That either has to do with being uber confident or uber intimidated or just not giving a damn. Maybe we desis need to inherit a little of whatever that is.
But for people coming from very different cultures, they should be required to assimilate more. I mean, there are entire neighborhoods you can wrong through in UK and not hear a single word of English or see a single female face!
I think other western countries like Denmark and Holland have changed there immigration laws due to the fact that immigrants there were making no effort to learn the culture or anything else about there new homeland and not leaving there backward thinking ways behind.
As for England, you might as well stick a fork in it. I wonder if there would be less racial problems in England today. If when they had opened there door to immigrants, they had chosen them from East Asians countries like Japan, South Korea and even China instead of places like Pakistan.