“All God’s Children,” Ellis Henican Column, amNewYork, December 18, 2009
Where America is going, New York already is.
With the whites outnumbered!
And if the people in America will just ask nicely, we’d be happy to explain to them what their future holds.
Think Elmhurst!
The U.S. Census Bureau caused quite a stir this week, predicting America’s demographic tipping point.
More precisely: the year that white people will be an official minority group.
It’s 2050, the bureau said.
This hasn’t happened quickly. By 1675, whites already outnumbered the Indians 10-to-1 in what became the United States.
But the Census Bureau’s new prediction is actually eight years later than its last one. The rotten economy is keeping some immigrants home.
But not all of them. And with ethnic disparities in birth and death rates, the un-whitening of America is coming soon enough.
Then what?
This whole idea – whites the new minority – is deeply alarming to some.
You already can hear the questions bubbling up across dinner tables and on talk radio.
Will today’s minorities insist on taking over? Will centuries of resentment be turned back on whites?
Will everybody have to eat arroz con pollo and kimchi? Will America elect a black president?
Wait, that last one’s already happened, as you might have noticed – and look, the world didn’t immediately crash and burn.
That may be the real message in these new numbers – and the real message in the experience of New York.
Things change. People adjust.
The city is already majority-minority, to use a common but peculiar phrase. Whites now make up something like 44 percent of New York City, with blacks and Latinos sharing the No. 2 spot, followed by growing slices of Asians and “others.”
As usual, Queens leads the diversity trend.
One hundred and thirty eight languages are spoken between Astoria and Far Rockaway, the top 12 being English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Greek, Russian, Tagalog, French, Punjabi, Gujarati and Arabic.
The people aren’t all inviting each other home for dinner. But the vast majority are working. The vast majority mostly get along. And the vast majority wouldn’t have it any other way.
Oh, and don’t worry. The kimchi’s great.
