Whites in U.S. Edge Toward Minority Status

[sabra]

Source: AP

Demographers say 48% of Kids Born in 2008 Were Minorities, and This Year Could be the "Tipping Point"

(AP) Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.

In fact, demographers say this year could be the "tipping point" when the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers that of babies born to whites.

The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children born in 2008, the latest census estimates available, compared to 37 percent in 1990.

"Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America's children, the future is now," said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire who researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday.

Johnson explained there are now more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age who tend to have more children than women of other races. More white women are waiting until they are older to have children, but it is not yet known whether that will have a noticeable effect on the current trend of increasing minority newborns.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/10/national/main...

[dipsydoodle]

1. Since when

were Hispanic women, generally speaking, not white ?

[Captain Hilts]

2. Hispanics are demographically all over the place. nt

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Same time it happened to Hispanic men would be my guess.

Seriously though,probably since they were removed from most racial categorization questions and identified solely by ethnic origin. It's rare these days to see "white" without the exclusion "non-hispanic."

You're right that it's sloppy language to use the term "whites" as if it automatically excludes hispanics.

[pampango]

10. On the "Faces of American" show on PBS, they counted Native American DNA as "Asian"

since humans immigrated here from Asia about 14,000 years ago. I don't know if this is accepted practice. Most modern Hispanics are some combination of Native American ("Asian"), Caucasian and other races because of the long colonial period in Central and South America.

It does make it difficult for the Census Department since they're being asked to count people that aren't predominantly of one race, but a strong ethnic group that is a mixture of other races. As a large and growing presence in the US, I understand why we need to count Hispanics as distinctly as possible and that counting them as partially Asian (even if it's true scientifically) wouldn't help achieve any of the purposes the census is designed for.

On an unrelated note, I always jokingly tell my wife who is from the Philippines that she should be considered Hispanic, too, since Spain colonized the Philippines just like the did most of Central and South America. Filipinos could be the only Asian Hispanics! Having not grown up here, she shows little interest in our penchant for categorizing people into ethnic groups and has no desire to help correct this gross historical inaccuracy.

[dipsydoodle]

18. That woud make

the entire populations of Portugal and Spain non white too.

I don't understand categorizing people into ethnic groups at all.

One Love : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xjPODksI08

[old mark]

4. My BIL is Hispanic-Tex Mex, according to him- and he is whiter than I am...

When "they " take over, I hope they treat us better than we treated them.....


mark

[Steerpike]

5. HEH....

White is a tricky term when it comes to hispanics...You can be brown and descended from indigeonous people of the Americas...or you can be european white and descended from Spain or thereabouts. The white spaniards don't like it when you lump them in with the brown people they took a lot of time and effort to conquer and enslave...

[EFerrari]

14. There was also a large black populatin in LatAm that intermarried. n/t

[sufrommich]

6. Freeper heads explode. nt

[Mz Pip]

11. Pat Buchanan

runs screaming into he sunset.

[sufrommich]

12. Holding hands with Lou Dobbs. lol. nt

[pattmarty]

7. This is no surprise. Any informed person 10 yrs ago new this was coming.

[Steerpike]

8. I work at a News radio Station

And this exact headline hits the AP every couple of months...for the last ten years.

[pattmarty]

9. Yeah, even the RW has been harping on this. This ain't "new".............

........I just hope that when the "minorities" are the majority, they don't treat us like we treated them.

[EFerrari]

13. In CA, this projection has been discussed since the 70s. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. When it comes to filling out the "race" box on forms

I always check "other".
Once in awhile someone has figured out that my Irish name and complexion does not match the box.
They can't say anything about it tho.

It's my way of protesting this incessant division of people.

[Sabriel]

19. That's not always useful

Federal funds are sometimes awarded based on those characteristics, so you might be undermining institutions that benefit from that kind of categorization (which I agree is divisive).

[hunter]

16. I've been living as a minority white person more than twenty years.

Whenever I visit a place with a majority of white people I find it unsettling; it's like groups of people who are only white can't be up to any good.

If I see a group of teenagers in my own community who are all white it's almost always because they've self-segregated and there's rarely any good reason for that. Even if they're Mormons.

[The Straight Story]

17. Maybe we will finally get a white president!

[Matariki]

20. I really hate the term 'white'

perhaps when Caucasians/Euro-Americans are a minority they can insist on better terminology for themselves...