The mix of people who live in what are now the 50 United States (and DC) has changed greatly over the past 500 years and will probably keep on changing till at least 2100.
Here are four snapshots (each chart square = 1% of the population):
1492: 18.25 million:
- 98.6% Native American
- 1.4% Asian
- 1.4% Native Hawaiian
It would be cool to break down the Native American number by nation, but getting an overall number is hard enough. The 18 million is just one estimate. It may have been half that. The eastern nations would lead any list since they practised farming, unlike those west of the Mississippi River that Hollywood loves to show.
After 300 years most had been killed off by European disease and genocide:
1790: 4.85 million:
- 12.4% Native
- 16.1% Black
- 65.3% White
- 56.7% British
- 5.6% German
- 2.1% Dutch
- 0.7% French
- 0.2% other
- 1.0% Latino
- 1.0% Mexican
- 5.2% Asian
- 5.2% Native Hawaiian
Most people are: British.
Despite French, Dutch, Spanish and even Swedish settlements, the British hugely outnumber other whites by the 1700s. (I count as British those who are English, Welsh, Scottish, Scotch-Irish or “American”.)
Two huge waves of European immigration followed:
- 1840s to 1880s: Second Wave Whites: mostly Irish and German, heavily Catholic
- 1890s to 1920s: Third Wave Whites: mostly Italians, Poles and Jews.
Each wave seemed like it was going to destroy America As We Know It. Instead, as the children of each wave began to vote and fight in wars, they slowly broadened the idea of what a Real American was: from Wasp (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) to Nordic (northern European) after the second wave, and from Nordic to European after the third wave.
By 1940 the US was 89.8% White – with some help from ethnic cleansing of Asian, Mexican and Native Americans and laws that all but shut off immigration of non-Nordics, aka “alien races”.
A fourth wave began in the 1940s and continues to the present day. It is mostly Asian and Latin American.
2008: 304 million:
- 0.8% Native
- 12.4% Black
- 65.4% White
- 19.1% British
- 16.5% German
- 11.9% Irish
- 5.8% Italian
- 3.2% Polish
- 3.1% French
- 2.1% Jewish
- 3.7% other
- 15.4% Latino
- 10.1% Mexican
- 1.4% Puerto Rican
- 0.5% Cuban
- 3.4% other
- 4.4% Asian
- 1.0% Chinese
- 0.8% Indian
- 0.8% Filipino
- 0.5% Vietnamese
- 1.3% other
- 1.6% other (not shown in the chart)
Most people are: British, Black, German or Irish.
By the 2020s there will be more White deaths than births, while other groups continue to grow. By the 2040s, Whites will be a minority. They will probably try to limit immigration, but their shrinking numbers will lessen political support for such laws while at the same time increase the need for more immigration!
After 2050, immigration will become heavily African instead of being mainly Asian and Latin American.
Assuming that the ethnic mix within each “race” remains the same (unlikely, but good as a first guess), by 2100 the US will look something like this:
2100: 462 million:
- 1.0% Native
- 15.6% Black
- 38.8% White
- 11.3% British
- 9.8% German
- 7.1% Irish
- 3.4% Italian
- 1.9% Polish
- 1.8% French
- 1.2% Jewish
- 2.3% other
- 30.6% Latino
- 20.1% Mexican
- 2.8% Puerto Rican
- 1.0% Cuban
- 1.0% Salvadoran
- 0.8% Dominicans
- 4.9% other
- 13.9% Asian
- 3.4% Chinese
- 2.8% Indian
- 2.7% Filipino
- 1.6% Vietnamese
- 1.5% Korean
- 1.9% other
Most people are: Mexican, Black, British or German.
Whites, to maintain their political majority, will probably broaden their idea of what a Real American is to take in most Latinos.
Sources: 1492, 1790, 2008, 2100, mainly. Since I could not find anything like it on the Internet, I made the charts myself with my not-so-mad Microsoft Paint skills.
See also:
Why do people keep saying whites will be a minority? What is the logic behind this? I can’t come up with one non-racist answer.
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Whites are as comfortable as a minority than as a majority. Hasn’t History proven it already through countless examples. What kind of meme is this “Whites, to maintain their political majority,” ?
Why were there two huge immigration waves ? Because there was some much available land, they had no idea what to do with it. And they wanted those lands inhabited with as much white people as possible. Done.
“Whites” only support a majority based system because they are actually … a majority. As soon as it ceases to be the case, expect some major political flip flop.
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But more Whites be imported in? Looking at gentrification, if they can bring in more Europeans to inhabit major cities, the cycle will carry on…
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Its’ a shame I won’t be around when that great and glorious day arrives when whites will no longer be calling the shots. I’ll be 68 in three weeks. I only hope this younger generation will stop trying to imitate our white ‘brothers/sisters’ in everything including their racist tendencies but from what I’ve seen I doubt it.
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Abagond, where did you get this info and graphics from? I’m just curious.
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No, they’ll claim just about everyone on the planet not from Africa in order to maintain influence. And those immigrants will fall for it.
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I am curious where the source of this post came from ?
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Stupidity will kill humanity before any desease will. What we should be concerned about is finding ways we can cure desease, end poverty, and do away with all forms of ignorance all of which is killing us.
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I have a question for Abagond about the charts above.
It seems that the 1492 and 2008 and 2100 charts represent the current boundaries of the US, but the 1790 did not. It looks like the figure only represent the part that actually belonged to the USA at that time.
In 1790, didn’t Spain occupy Florida and the western states (which were part of Mexico) and France occupy the Mississippi valley area? Do the population statistics include the entire population of what constitutes the modern day USA or just the land area claimed in 1790 – I think the population was way higher than 4.8 million. Seems like Apples to Oranges comparison to me.
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@ Jefe
The 1790 chart, like the others, represents “people who live in what are now the 50 United States”. That means Hawaii, the conquered parts of Mexico and the Louisiana Purchase are in, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc, are out. DC, however, is in, even though it is not a state.
The 1790 chart does show Mexico and Hawaii. I can assure you that there were not that many Hawaiians living on the east coast!
Here is how I made the 1790 chart:
1. I took the ethnic composition of what was then the US from here (counting “Other” as British, which most of them seemed to be):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States
2. That did not include Native Americans, so I used the estimate of Russel Thorton (1990) of 600,000 in 1800 found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
My own estimate, by the way, was 710,000, assuming a steady 1.1% decline a year from 18 million in 1492 (Dobyns 1983) to 237,196 in 1900 (US Census). In the chart I used Thorton’s number since he does not seem to be way off and he has presumably given it some thought. (Actually, it would be lower than 710,000 since most Natives lived in the east, which was hit hard first.)
3. Hawaii uses the 250,000 of 1800:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_hawaii
That is on the low side for 1790 since Hawaii at that point was already being ravaged by European disease.
4. For “Mexico” I used the number of Spanish-speaking people in (the then geographically bigger) New Mexico from the 1800 Spanish census. That was 25,000:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico
I could not find comparable numbers for California or (East) Florida, though they probably exist somewhere. Therefore I doubled the 25,000 to 50,000. I called it “Mexico”, since what became Mexico governed those areas then and Mexico appears on later charts. The Natives of that region are covered under #2.
5. For Lower Louisiana I used the Spanish census numbers for 1800. It counted 19,852 free people and 24,264 slaves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Louisiana
I counted “free” as “French” and “slave” as “Black” on the chart. Yes, I know that is a simplification (some free people were Spanish or Black by current standards, some slaves were probably Native), but a more detailed breakdown would not shift the overall 1790 numbers by much: each square represents 48,500 people.
“French” in the chart also counts the French from #1, mostly Huguenots on the east coast.
6. Other white people: Whatever white people were in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase or in what became Alaska and the Oregon Territory are not counted. I cannot see it being more than 25,000 and thereby affect the chart.
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@ Jefe
I wanted so much to do a 1890 chart, the supposed golden days of “American homogeneity” in the eyes of the 1924 immigration law, but could not find enough data. Even Madison Grant did not break down the current scene like that.
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@ Brothawolf @ Mary
I just added the sources to the post. I was not in a position to do it yesterday.
The charts I made myself since I could not find anything like them on the Internet. I made the 2008 chart for fun and the post grew from there.
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@ Solesearch
When people in the US say that they mean non-Hispanic whites. That demographic will start shrinking in the 2020s and become a minority by 2043. They are already a minority in maternity wards nationwide.
Half of Hispanics, though, self-identify as white. In time the Republicans will either stop treating them like alien scum or go out of business. Whites will accept them as “regular Americans” (= white) and thus hang onto their majority. They have done this twice before: with the Irish and Germans in the late 1800s and with Italians, Poles and Jews in the middle 1900s.
You can think of 2100 this way:
11.3% First Wave Whites: British
18.7% Second Wave Whites: German, Irish, French
8.8% Third Wave Whites: Italians, Poles, Jews, Other
15.3% Fourth Wave Whites: White Hispanics
total: 54.1%
That 54% is a little too close for comfort, so probably once some Hispanics are accepted as white most of the rest will be too. That will be helped by two things:
1. Mexicans will by then be the largest ethnic group in the country, which no politician in his right mind will ignore.
2. Most immigrants by that time will be from Africa (the main part of the world that will still be demographically booming by that point).
So the country will probably be at least 64% “white” by 2100.
I think the US will go through a round of multiracial reforms in the middle 2000s when the racial demographics will be soft, but then harden back into a white racist society by 2100. That is just what took place in the 1800s. The acceptance of Germans and Irish into the white club is part of what drove the country into a racist nadir of Jim Crow and lynching and much else.
Asian Americans, though, could affect the outcome, for good or ill, since they will (on present trends) probably be a big part of the professional class, like Jews (whose record on racial issues has been mixed).
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Wow, it seems that, according to the assumptions made in the charts, the present day area of the USA in 1790 was largely unpopulated outside of the actual United states of America at that time. For some reason, I find it hard to believe, esp. the Native American numbers (but also the Spanish and the Mexicans), which do not look much higher than Hawaii. Otherwise the Anglo-Americans could have easily taken over Florida, New Mexico, and all American Indian occupied territory without a hitch. They only needed a small number of people of that to take over Hawaii.
Also, immigration from Asia has been exceeding Latin America for the past few years. Of course we don’t know how long this will last, but the situation in 2100 could look very different. Who would have guessed in 1900 that we would have the USA of today.
Yes, a map of 1890 or 1900 would have been interesting.
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@ Jefe
I was hoping for a Native population of like 2 to 5 million, but by 1790 I think that is wishful thinking. I would love to be proved wrong.
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I would love to be a fly on the wall in 2050 when recently incorporated “white ” Hispanics began admonishing Black Americans for not working hard enough to become part of the American dream. “When my great grandfather came here he had nothing. Just a crate of oranges by the road side and a dream. But, he kept working. He wasn’t like YOU people always complaining. He kept his head down and worked hard, and look at us today. I guess it all boils down to culture and work ethic. Something you people obviously don’t have or you would be doing better for yourselves after all of your time in this great country. God bless America! WE Whites aren’t going to always carry you people. You should just go back to where you come from if you don’t like it here. See how you fair in Africa. WE Whites treat you better than your own kind ever would. Why don’t you get off your lazy butts and get a job and stop over burdening a system the rest of us have to pay for. Get off welfare you lazy c**ns!”
That is going to be something to see! Once they’re finally ALLOWED into “Whiteness” they will chalk it up to their SUPERIOR culture and work ethic, not to the fact that they were simply co-opted to maintain the staus quo. TOTALLY NEGATING how that work ethic was COMPLETELY ignored when they weren’t needed and were toiling away at menial jobs right along side the same Blacks they now look down upon and despise.
Black people, please remember that when you’re marching for THEIR civil rights and fighting for THEIR immigration today because by 2050 they will have TOTALLY forgotten your efforts on their part and assume that everything they got they EARNED on their own.
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I love the graphics and all the work you put into this Abagond! Kudos!
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[…] The mix of people who live in what are now the 50 United States (and DC) has changed greatly over the past 500 years and will probably keep on changing till at least 2100. Here are four snapshots (… […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Hispanic whites would never be part of whites. Their backgrounds aren’t from Europe and they don’t share the same foundations with Europeans. All of the white Americans are original Europeans. England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain. They are from the same foundation, Europe. like Africa, Asia. They weren’t acceptted by the British, nor taken in each group after an other. They simply came later after the Britsh. And because we were all Europeans, we were eventually classified as whites. Hispanic white are latinos who look whites but share the same foundation with Latinos, South America. It is not a matter who they side with, white middle easterns are still middle eastern. Jewish are still jewish. Black and white Mix are still black. They would never have the same foundation with Europeans(white american). The reality is white America is coming to an end. The now minority will be the majority. When people think of America today, they think of white. In the future they will think of it as other color. It is just coming of time. America will truly not be America then.
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@Jacobb-Krit….
What does it mean to “truly be America”?
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People who like to throw about the terms “white Hispanics/Hispanic whites” need to be very careful to clarify who exactly you are talking about. The very term “Hispanic” was created in the 1970s as a hegemonic racial project to derail the Chicano racial project, which worked to align Mexican Americans with Native Americans. One of the aims of the Hispanic racial project is to work as a subliminal message that all “Hispanics” who aren’t Black are “white” and thus prepare for incorporating “white Hispanics” into whiteness.
Food for thought: why does the government and mass media love to throw around the term “non-Hispanic whites” but barely mentions “non-Hispanic Blacks” or “Black Hispanics” and never mentions “non-Hispanic Native Americans” or “Native American Hispanics”?
Do YOU want to see Mexican Americans incorporated into a future expansion of whiteness? If not, then why are you supporting that racial project by reifying the idea of “white Hispanics”?
The Chicano racial project is still going on, although if you are not Mexican American you wouldn’t know that, since the government and mass media do everything they can to erase it.
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@ Jacobb-Krit….
“America” as “European” only goes back to the 1930s, at best. Before that it was seen as northern European. Italians and Jews were then the “threat” to “America as we know it”. They were “alien races” – science proved it!
But that idea only goes back to the late 1800s. Before that “America” was seen as Wasp. Back then Irish and German Catholics were the “threat”.
But that idea only goes back to the late 1700s. Before that “America” was seen as Amerindian, as North and South America. William Bradford, for example, in his book “Of Plymouth Plantation”, written between 1630 and 1651, never calls the Pilgrims “Americans” or “whites”. That stuff was made up later.
You are talking about a political and cultural identity that is ALWAYS changing.
If the US ever lives up to its ideals in the Declaration of Independence, then “America” will mean ALL of its people.
More:
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#brownandproud to see what brown pride means to Mexican Americans.
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https://twitter.com/TheTaniaFonseca/status/587108785610698754
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Thank god I’ll be dead by 2100
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@ Big Jack
“Thank god I’ll be dead by 2100”
Agreed.
I suspect your anti-Black bigotry will live on in your descendants.
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In the diagrams there appears to be no Spanish in the U.S.A.
It baffles me how Hispanics are not classed as white, like Greeks or Italians or other Southern Europeans.
The U.S. Will always be at least 70% European in origin.
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