The U.S. Census Bureau released information Thursday showing the majority of the births in the country are now non-white. Minorities will eventually comprise a majority of the population. White births account for 49.6 percent of all births and are still the largest proportion of all different categories.
While this news has long been anticipated, it still presents a challenge for politicians – some whom have paid little attention to minorities and some who believe minorities and multiculturalism represent a threat to the country.
There are those who believe the changing statistics are one of the signs that America is entering a decline. Patrick Buchanan, a conservative, the advisor to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, and a political commentator wrote about the ‘Death of White America’ in his book ‘Suicide of a Superpower.’ He argues that the white, Christian, European basis of the country is slowly eroding and the country is drifting further away from those who created it. He cites the chapter as the reason he was fired as an MSNBC contributor.
He argues the Republican Party will be one of the casualties of the changing demographics. ‘Republicans now depend on the vanishing majority for fully 90 percent of their votes in presidential elections, while the Democratic Party wins 60 to 70 percent of the Asian and Hispanic vote and 90 to 95 percent of the black vote,’ he wrote in his nationally syndicated column.
For the GOP to continue to receive support, it will need to change its stance on immigration policy and other policy areas that directly affect minorities. The party’s desperation may already be apparent.
States with GOP-controlled legislatures have tried to impose new voter-ID restrictions in the name of preventing voter fraud. The GOP has an incentive to suppress Democratic voters. Now it has an excuse, even though voter fraud is an unproven phenomenon.
The idea that nonwhites present a problem to the United States is a long-existing attitude in the country. Historically, the nation’s immigration policies have worked to engineer a population that reflects a desire to maintain a white population. We passed legislation like the 1924 National Origins Quota Act or the Chinese Exclusion Act to exclude certain populations.
State governments and the federal government must understand the importance of the shifting demographics. In recent months, states facing illegal immigration problems have taken measures to stop illegal immigrants. Politicians in states like Arizona want to ensure that all people have documents proving their legal status to police.
Michael Hethmon, one of the authors of SB1070, an Arizona immigration law currently under review of the Supreme Court, says he fears a minority-majority. ‘How many countries have gone through a transition like that – peacefully, carefully? It’s theoretically possible, but we don’t have any examples,’ he told the Washington Post in April.
One country that has been dealing with multiculturalism is Norway. Immigration has affected the country with nearly 13 percent of the population born to immigrant parents in 2011, up from almost 4 percent in 1992.
The world is currently watching the trial of Anders Breivik, a Norwegian man who killed 77 people in Oslo in 2011. He justifies the killings by saying he was trying to protect Norway from multiculturalism and its own changing demographics. He told the court, ‘My country is in the process of dying.’
Breivik’s ideology is not far removed from some people’s views in the United States. Hopefully, our own citizens and political parties understand the problem of trying to maintain an ideal ‘white America.’ Those who fear that American values will be changed by multiculturalism must accept and embrace the reality that the population will no longer be dominated by whites.
Harmen Rockler is a senior newspaper journalism and political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at horockle@syr.edu.