This is how I currently see the likely future of race in the US. This is not what I hope for, but what I think is most likely. The dates are just to give you a rough idea. The order of events is what matters.
The future started in 1980:
1980-2015: The Fourth Wave of immigration to the US reaches its height. It comes mainly from Asia and Latin America, which boom as Europe greys. This sets the stage for what follows:
1995-2025: Nativist Backlash sets in against the Fourth Wave. This is driven mainly by Republicans, whose Southern Strategy, based on White racism, is starting to fail. President George W. Bush, for example, would have lost in 2004 if the election had been held with 2012 demographics. To limit the effect of the new demographics, they:
- limit the vote (voter ID laws, weakening the Voting Rights Act, etc),
- limit immigration,
- set no limits on money spent in elections.
Republicans make increasingly stronger appeals to the racist fears of Whites to get more White votes. “They are destroying our country.” They. Our.
But it is too little, too late: Whites have been having too few babies. For the Republican Party to stay in business – or any right-wing party that takes its place – it will have to take part in:
2020-2060: The Fourth Enlargement of Whiteness: Non-Hispanic Whites will become less than half of the country during this period. They will maintain power by broadening the idea of who is “White” to take in about two-thirds of Latinos. The term “non-Hispanic White” will become a historical curiosity, something that will have to be explained to my grandchildren. The enlargement will seem almost natural: by then most Latinos will have been Americanized – they will seem like “normal” Americans – while American mainstream culture will itself have become more Latinized.
Asian Americans will be honorary Whites – at best. China during this period will be a growing threat to US power. Asian Americans will be way too easy to scapegoat. Their “success” will be used against them. If things get bad enough, like losing a war to China or an attempted revolution, it could lead to genocide.
2045-2060: Multiracial Reform: Latino politicians, who grew up under President Trump (or whatever form the Nativist Overreach took), will have risen to power and want to push through reforms to make the US less racist. Along with Black, Asian and Native Americans, they will have a majority. But this multiracial moment will not last:
2060-2120: The Fourth Nadir of Race Relations: a White backlash sets in against the reforms. It is two steps forward, one step back. Now that most Latinos are fully White, they benefit from racism and no longer wish to reform it. The new White majority closes ranks against Asians, Natives and especially Blacks:
2070-2100: The Fifth Wave of immigration to the US reaches its height. It comes mainly from Africa, which booms as Asia and Latin America grey. This sets the stage for what follows.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Other possible racial future for the US:
- White America: a brief history
- The ten largest countries by population, 1900 to 2100
- The eight steps of genocide – watch for this
584
55 years to go
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Most interesting.
Question please: how are you defining the first three nadirs in terms of chronology, etc? Thanks!
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If a revolution was attempted, what followed would NOT BE genocide, it would be killing the rebels.
Why do people keep overusing the word “Genocide”?
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There is another possibility.
A war with China might have a similar effect as did the world wars involving Germany. It destroyed the independent culture, language, and culture of Germany Americans. This forced assimilation and was during an era of the broadening of whiteness, along with bringing into the fold of southern and eastern Europeans. Similarly, Chinese-Americans might be forced to assimilate.
This seems hard to imagine now, but earlier forced assimilations also were hard to imagine for earlier generations.
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That sounds more like people trying to prove they’re not spies and traitors rather than “forced assimilation”. Besides if they came here of their own free will, assimilation is the LEAST they could do.
If you do any research whatsoever into the Japanese-American internment, you’ll find out some of them really WERE traitors and spies.
And I’m sure if you google “Chinese Spies In America”, you’ll find enough reading material to keep you busy for a week. Our open culture–espeically the “Multiculturalism” BS, makes it REALLY easy to slip in a spy or turn one of our own into a traitor.
ALSO: Nowadays, traitors are almost “heroes”! THAT should be hard to imagine for ANY generation, but there’s one high-profile traitor we caught, didn’t kill, and paid for a “heroic” transform from male to female!
Where’s the similar traitors in the Chinese or Russian hierarchies?
They just kinda…disappear, don’t they? Can you Name one?
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Indeed, it is really difficult to figure out how Asian Americans will fit into all this. Will they be forced to assimilate into whiteness?
IF not, what do we do about multiracial Hapas? Will it come down to what they can pass as, either socially or phenotypically? It will only be one more generation until we get to the point that most Americans will have multiracial relatives.
I also know many young kids now who are triracial or quadriracial, who are, say, 1/4 to 5/8 European, but where the rest is mixed black, Asian, Native American and Latino (eg, mestizo Mexican, itself possibly a triracial or quadriracial mixture). They cannot pass as white, but may refuse to identify as black or feel closer to an ethnic group or race that they don’t really phenotypically pass as.
As Abagond points, relationships with Asian countries, esp. China will play a role. But something else, eg, how politicized Asian Americans themselves become will also be a factor. They will soon be forced to decide if they will play the enlargement of whiteness game (like Jews, for example), or if they will try to rewrite the rules.
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This guy needs to get on with his life and do something productive. A good troll wouldn’t be spamming with so much nonsense.
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EPGAH said:
“Nowadays, traitors are almost “heroes”! THAT should be hard to imagine for ANY generation, but there’s one high-profile traitor we caught, didn’t kill, and paid for a “heroic” transform from male to female!”
In your opinion is Eric Snowden a hero or a traitor ?
Do you think justice was served giving Ross Ulbricht life in prison without parole for creating the “Silk Road” web site ?
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I think Abagond is underestimating the Asian rim. That is where the new empire will come from as the West declines. I don’t see Asia becoming “grey”.
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@MJB,
The guy has been banned, at least for the time being.
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/the-broken-africa-stereotype/#comment-296176)
Good riddance.
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@MJB,
Asia is already becoming very grey. Japan is already greyer than most of Europe. China (plus HK and Taiwan), S. Korea, SG are not too far behind.
Most of Southeast Asia and India is still quite young. Is that the part of Asia you are referring to?
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Benjamin David Steele said:
“A war with China might have a similar effect as did the world wars involving Germany. It destroyed the independent culture, language, and culture of Germany Americans. This forced assimilation and was during an era of the broadening of whiteness, along with bringing into the fold of southern and eastern Europeans. Similarly, Chinese-Americans might be forced to assimilate.”
That’s true but it’s also possible if the U.S. lost world political and economic dominance to China that the assimilation would be white to Asian not the other way around. A decline in white privilege and an increase in Asian privilege.
In Southern California, Asian communities like the Koreans and Vietnamese are heavily armed. Remember Hitler confiscated guns from the Jews before he went about rounding them up. That’s not going to happen here.
Its possible that a white/Latino alliance might counter that but were in uncharted speculative waters.
If the economic dominance around the world becomes more horizontally dispersed with the decline of the West that might weaken white supremacy enough to where the threat levels against non whites are similarly decreased.
That would be my best case scenario.
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@ jefe
From what I can tell here in Southern California Asians are doing quite well within the economy. One in five of my clients are from the Asian rim, about half born here and the rest as immigrants or just here temporally to make money. I have clients who own homes and business here but don’t have American bank accounts. I get paid from credit cards that originate in Hong Kong or Singapore. During the great recession here the Asian community seemed unaffected by it. They keep their money within their community and are very good at bringing money in from other groups. All I see is economic dominance. China is quietly laying a foundation far an empire in South America and in Africa. Unlike the Americans they aren’t pushing their ideology onto their trade partners. China has its own version of the World Trade Bank.
http://www.rt.com/business/168620-china-world-bank-own/
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The guy has been banned, at least for the time being.
“Good riddance.”
Agreed.
China not Chins in my comment above.
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To your very first point: the situation in Alabama is infuriating. The state is so clearly doing everything they can to undermine black voters. Sick, twisted, evil and blatant.
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@ Abagond
What a brilliant piece of writing. This article suggests a mind of great insight and incredible far-sightedness.
I am out of my depth with American politics, so I shan’t comment.
I can hold on to this, though, and show it to my future grandchildren how Julian “Nostradamus” Abagond predicted the future.
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I find Abagond’s thoughts about the next decades (close to a full century, I guess) interesting.
The “predictions” presented in this scenario seem to me more plausible than the alternatives in the links at the end of the post.
However, I think that to be closer to reality one must factor in also technological changes that, being already on the making today, will affect drastically how humans will live in the next decades, specially after 2050.
I’m thinking here in the evolution of “electronic devices which process information” and biotechnology, and, above all nanotechnology.
I cannot pretend to know what will happen then, but I suspect that we will enter after 2050 fully in the “age of the machines”, aka, “era of robots”.
The implications for the workforce will be drastic: far less humans will be needed to carry out tasks which by now are being done by them. The robots – full populations of robots – will do those tasks better and tirelessly. And do not assume that the tasks that will be moved to robots will be only simple tasks. Surely, even the most demanding mental tasks will fall also to robots hands (I mean, “robot’s heads”!). This includes “knowledge production”, aka, scientific and technological creation.
The implications for human migrations processes will also be drastic: probably some advanced nations, meaning, “more robotized nations”, will want to depend more and more on robots than on humans, I mean, “humans imported from somewhere else”. This will have probably an implication: the migration of Africans to the United States will be less needed and will encounter even more resistance than previous ones.
Let’s not forget also that at some point humans will surely be “produced” in labs like in “Brave New World” of Aldous Huxley.
Just a few thoughts!
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@ MJB – Yep, I think China’s Silk Road project could change a lot of things. It seems that the cultures with the most diverse trading partners become those which are most dominant.
If the project comes to fruition, China could become more ethnically diverse and, over time, maybe less Chinese.
With a larger global footprint, I think Asians could even have a bigger impact on the racial makeup of America.
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@ Death the Kid
A big mistake to rely on the benevolence of other peoples. Black Americans can’t afford to wait for ethnic relations to shake out in their favor. By then, there might not be any black Americans left for it to be a concern.
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@munubantu
I doubt whether America will still be the country to go to for freedom by 2050. By then most Asian nations will be just as capable to influence the world. Not all African countries are growing at the same pace. So, Botswana or Rwanda will have good economies and no one will need to migrate anywhere. Right now African countries are creating mechanisms that will make trade within the continent easier, and more people are getting educated and more people are coming back home from Europe and USA.
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Reblogged this on Boycott.
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“Black Americans can’t afford to wait for ethnic relations to shake out in their favor. “—I agree. If others want to help and be involved, then so be it but black people do not need to wait around for it. We need to act now.
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@Michael Jon Barker
Another one will take his place. The thing about it is they really are a joke. So much so I honestly thought he was doing it all for the kicks and giggles rather than being serious.
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I believe the mullatoes will join the whites
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Interesting…
But, the Asians will be considered white..they are already honorary whites now. Latinos will be considered white….they already see themselves that way now…..The multi ethics with European mix will be considered white too depending on how they look. So, to be brutally honest ( and I hope to God I am wrong) but it will be a” light” vs brown thing. In terms of educational,financial and and status building. Intra racial colorism is not gonna go away. It will meld into new racial policy/hierarchy of the US culture.
It will be Jigaboos and Wannabees forever (ref Spike Lee)
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“I doubt whether America will still be the country to go to for freedom by 2050.”
Ha – Amerika isn’t the country to go to for freedom, NOW.
The wolves for all intent and purpose have the sheeple curtailed and surrounded with YEARS of nonsense news, unconstitutional executive orders, bought politicians, judicial legislation and more.
It the corruption some here like to point out in Africa doesn’t begin to hold a candle to the blight and dead man’s bones found here in Amerika.
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Agabond,
What do you see happening in 2100?
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@ Pumpkin
Most of those Eurasians who can pass for White will become White, but not the others.
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@ Pumpkin
I think Trump could win. He leads in the polls and has more money than anyone else. He has turned off probably most Latinos, but if he can bring out enough politically apathetic Whites or if his challenger goes down in flames in some scandal, he could make up for that and win.
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@ Anne
After 2100 I think the country will become deeply divided between Blacks and Whites. It could tear the country apart or lead to revolution and a new start. Hard to say.
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@ Kiwi
Latinos who can physically pass for White will become White. But I think the idea of what White looks like will be extended somewhat too. That will allow more of them to pass.
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@ Kiwi
For Whites to keep their majority till 2100, at least 35% of Latinos will have to become White. So two-thirds might be too aggressive. Maybe it will be more like half. I do think there will be a Mestizo “race” when the dust settles by about 2070.
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@ Abagond
“Latinos who can physically pass for White will become White. But I think the idea of what White looks like will be extended somewhat too. That will allow more of them to pass.”
And what about Blacks “who can also pass for White” (some Mulattoes, Biracials, whatever)?
I notice some asymmetry in the way you handle the transformations that eventually will occur until 2070 (or 2100?): you “see” part of the Asian population and part of the Latino population merging in the White (the “new White”) population but, you don’t (explicitly, at least) see some light-skinned Blacks becoming White!
Maybe I’m wrong, but living in a country where there is a social significant Mulatto minority and observing their behavior I cannot escape the conclusion that, given the opportunity to “become White” some of them would choose to try.
The point is: this enlarging of Whitness will probably occur in a environment of a deep division of the Black American community as it is defined today (where it includes “all shades of grey”), and therefore, the “real or official Black will be in a even deeper minority status” because some of “today’s Blacks” would have deserted the group, so to speak. Maybe Ward Connerly types?
The Black population could, in principle (in such future), boost its numbers through immigration of Blacks from outside the country, particularly from Africa. But I don’t believe that such immigration will occur in large numbers at that time because probable technological changes will prevent it: the American economy will probably become less and less reliant on humans in general!
Just a few thoughts!
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@ munabantu – I think some Creoles will try to pass for the new (more brown) version of white. But it’s not as common as some would think. Out in Louisiana most that could pass make it a point to tell everyone that they are, in fact, Black.
I don’t see many light-skinned Blacks marrying other light-skinned Blacks. It seems that the lighter they are the darker their mates (and vice-versa).
I think that it’s more common for the more affluent light-skinned Blacks to marry light but I at my clubs I see the pretty and fit dark women getting more attention from all races and all social strata. Everyone looks at the Beyoncé types but the Roshumba Willams types seem to be the real show stoppers. And don’t even get me started on Serena Willaims. If one of her matches is on TV – women get mad because most of the men don’t dance, they want to watch Serena. (But this may be due to us seeing so many Beyoncé types in our families that the fascination with skin tone gets lost.)
In all honesty – America will always have Blacks.
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I really do think over the long term that Asian-Americans will be assimilated.
It doesn’t matter that we now think Asian-Americans don’t look white according to present views of whiteness, as earlier assimilated groups didn’t look white to early Americans either (e.g., southern Europeans with their on average darker skin, eyes, and hair). It doesn’t matter that many Asian-Americans marry among themselves for the time being, as the same was true of every other immigrant ethnic population that was assimilated. And it doesn’t matter that China is a rising global power, as so was Germany and Italy when German-Americans and Italian-Americans assimilated, even though in the case of German-Americans there were many waves of new immigrants over the entire history of the country.
It might take a century or so for full assimilation to happen, but I think it is more likely than not. Latinos will probably be fully assimilated more quickly as they are already well on the way. I even think the same will happen for light-skinned ‘blacks’. That has a long history in this country already. No one knows how many light-skinned blacks pass as white because they look and identify as white, which is the whole point.
Still, none of that will change that color and shade of color will continue to matter. I suspect that it still even matters for supposed ‘whites’. I bet if a study was done that it would find that darker-skinned whites experience higher rates of bias than lighter-skinned whites, because there has always been a fear of what darker skin indicates, maybe even African ancestry (and indeed some southern Europeans do share genetics with northern Africans). It’s possible that, with an increasing Latino population, we might develop a hybrid racial order that mixes the English and Spanish systems of racial hierarchy that allows more gradients in between.
Whatever the case, the racial order is unlikely to either disappear or remain the same.
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@Abagond
Do you think that whiteness will still be the race to aspire for in 2050? I am of the view that whiteness is celebrated more because of brainwashing than anything else. For instance, television shows that feature white people as beautiful, messiahs, heroes and so on, have been the most effective brain washing agents in the world. But making movies is becoming cheaper and cheaper and as the years go by, we will have more diversity on television. Another agent for spreading white supremacy has been beauty magazines. Are we still going to see magazines with white people as models or are they going to feature more diversity?
I think that whiteness is going to lose its appeal and beauty is going to depend on the beholder. Magazines are going to show more diversity in beauty and we are going to watch shows that do not glorify whiteness
@Munubantu
Robots still have a long way to go before they replace all humans in the workplace. We haven’t even scratched the surface on the possibilities that they will offer. So, maybe in a 150 years will we start seeing such a great impact.
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Agabond,
Is that what your really believe will happen or what you believe the American public would like to see happen? Human relationships are not as binary as people in North America would like for the rest of the world to believe they are. There is the possibility that In the future, tastes will change and lean more toward darker, less European features. I mean you can only beat a dead horse so many times.
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Take a look at traditional African music that was once vilified by Europe. But as more and more Europeans got into contact with it, it has become so popular in Europe that their are concerts where only traditional Malian, Kenyan, Senegalese, South African music is played.
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@Benjamin Steele
I completely disagree. For 1 thing the East and South East Asian facial bone structure is vastly different from those of whites. Studies have shown that whites are more comfortable with people whose facial bone structures and facial features are more similar to their own despite even skin tone or color.
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@TeddyBearDaddy
I don’t mind disagreement. I have no strong attachment to these opinions. They are just possibilities to be considered. I’m not trying to predict the future, as I suspect the future will surprise us all.
As with Kiwi, I’d also love to see that research or anything else along those lines. I’m a naturally curious person. Depending on the data, I might change my mind. It depends on many factors. There are a diversity of facial bone structures even in Europe. I’m not sure what any of those differences matter or how big the differences need to be in order to matter. But it is all info to be considered.
I suspect the differences aren’t as great as you might suspect. Consider the fact that some half-Asian people don’t look all that Asian. Plus, there is great facial bone structure in Asia as well, not to mention western Asians and eastern Europeans having no dividing line. It’s a gradation of differences and that gradation would be upon which whiteness would expand… or maybe upon which Asianness would expand.
It’s all just speculation at this point. There are too many unpredictable and confounding factors involved.
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It is funny how people turn their attention to stuff like vast physical differences between races as the main factor to keep races apart.
I don’t think that Asians will assimilate into Whites anytime soon. But I also don’t think that the racial differences (whatever one might imagine they might be) are so vast such that the boundaries between races would not shift.
The definition and boundaries of whiteness are definitely going to shift. No one will continue to enforce the one-drop rule to its final conclusion. There will be no new Walter Plecker to enforce racial integrity again as he did in the early-mid 20th century.
In 2-3 more generations, it will be possible for someone with a Korean great-grandmother and a black great-grandfather, but who is mostly white to claim to be white and be accepted as such, even though that person might not look completely white by today’s standards. People will not be enforcing the one drop rule on them as they themselves will have a mexican great grandmother and a triracial Indian great grandfather too.
What will be required of them is to accept and express their acceptance of white ideology, ie, they have become “better” and recognized social progress by becoming more white. In essence, they would have followed what Jerry Hough taught them.
At the same time, those who identify as Asian American will also become more multi-racial.
This interestingly, is nothing new. Multiracial Cherokee in the mid-1800s became “Black Dutch” and married white to avoid being removed. People have been passing into white for generations. The only thing new will be that people no longer would have to keep it a secret.
Not all multiracial individuals decided to try to pass as white in the past. Some decided not to be white and stick with colour communities. That also, will continue in the future.
I certainly hope that the strengthening of whiteness by expansion does NOT happen. I personally want to see the ideology of whiteness dismantled. I suspect it is just wishful thinking.
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@ jefe – That was an excellent comment.
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Kiwi, that is not at all what I said.
I did not say express incredulity. I did not call it a “notion”. I did not specify the primary ranking of the factor in dividing races. Please don’t change what I said into something completely different.
I do feel that physical differences between races are perceived to be very real and significant to many people. What I am saying is that these difference are not so vast that they will not cause the boundaries between races to shift so that the definition of “white” will expand to include some multiracial people. Even you have expressed sympathy with that notion in the concept of the next enlargement of whiteness.
However, a point that I might not see fully eye to eye with is whether it will depend so much on how they pass as white PHYSICALLY or PHENOTYPICALLY. We will see more and more people who do not pass as full white, but accepted more or less as white because they have embraced white ideology. There will be less strict enforcement of the one drop rule.
I did say that I don’t think Asian Americans will not assimilate into white anytime soon, so I never expressed that I agree with Benjamin David Steele. I do think he got that wrong.
Asian Americans marrying back into Asian groups will include some Eurasians, Latino Asians and perhaps even a few blasians (as it always has, by the way). What will expand will be intermarriage between Asian ethnic groups (Which was not quite so common in the 1900s). The Asian American in 2100 may be more multi-ethnic, with some white or even Native or black ancestry somewhere back in their family tree.
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This is an interesting analysis. One thing to add, though: it’s not about numbers alone. Being majority in terms of numbers does account for something, but what matters more is power. This is the main thing with whites as majority. Whites simply becoming minority in terms of numbers will not matter much if they keep the most of the power. Now, disclaimer: I am not American so I might be talking nonsense. It’s just that it seems to be like this in most cases.
Re: Trump, I sincerely hope he doesn’t stand a chance. He might win a republican vote (as in, to be their candidate) but I kind of hope that people will realize the joke’s on them at that point and vote for whoever is the other candidate. However, I know that many hate Hillary so I don’t know. I sincerely hope Trump can’t win – I mean, come on. Then again, I don’t know anyone who takes him seriously, which might be one of his biggest strengths – it’s easy to make him into a joke until it’s late.
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Just to edit: I am not saying Hilary will be the other candidate – I just meant if she is, I know people who hate her so much they’d never vote for her. Hope it makes sense.
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@munubantu
As I said earlier, we shouldn’t rely on others to help us help ourselves. Instead of stagnating at around 12-13 percent, we should have done what so many others around the world have done – boost our population by boosting our birth rates. After all, demographics is destiny…
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@ Kiwi @ munubantu @ jefe @ Benjamin David Steele
I do not see Asian Americans becoming White, apart from some of the Whiter-looking Eurasians. Not before 2100, at least.
Unlike Latinos, Asian American numbers will not be big enough to make or break White majority rule. They will be far more useful as a unifying scapegoat, like Blacks, especially if things get ugly between the US and China.
Some Blacks will pass into White America, but many who can pass will choose not to, as Uglyblackjohn pointed out. This has been going on since at least the 1800s. I do not see it changing.
I like Jefe’s idea of the enlargement taking place through dropping the One Drop Rule, or applying it less strictly. I could see having three White grandparents would be considered enough, with the fourth considered “interesting” rather than disqualifying – so long as you otherwise abide by White club rules.
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@ villagewriter
By 2050 in the US, Whiteness will probably have lost its appeal for most Asian Americans, but probably not for most Latinos. Brainwashing by Eurocentric schools and the media goes into it, but so does experiencing racism over long periods. Most Asians and Latinos have not been in the US long enough for Whiteness to lose its shine. Most Black, Native, Japanese and some Mexican Americans have been.
More here:
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@Kiwi
Sorry, but no.
@everyone else
I concur with Abagond’s conjecture that the one drop rule will become increasingly less strict, and “white” will continue to include more persons who are mostly white, have an interesting non-European recent ancestor, but abide by the rules of the white club. I see my brother trying to raise his youngest son that way. To me it feels sad, but I think many will be doing just that.
Not just for Asian Americans, but for many multiracials, whiteness will also lose its shine, and many may wish to plug back into communities of colour, or form new ones on their own (eg, Eurasians marrying biracial blacks and not raising their kids as Asian or Black OR white). I now already have a quadriracial great nephew, who looks ambiguously quadriracial, who will grow up around other triracial families.
Many Asian-Americans in 2100, even if they are mostly Asian, will be multi-racial and multi-ethnic. A typical example would be my godmother’s nephew who had a Filipino father and a white mother and married a Vietnamese-American woman. Or the woman who runs the hapamama blog who is Taiwanese-American from the US mainland and married a 4th generation Japanese-German husband from Hawaii.
I see them becoming more like, for example, the “Eurasians” in Singapore, who often have 3 or more mixed Asian ancestries and 1-2 European ancestors 3 generations back. They are mostly Asian and “pass” as Asian most of the time, but identify as part European and adopt English as their first language.
Whiteness means more to Latinos because it has meant more to them for hundreds of years already. Latinos who are mostly of European descent will elect to be white (and be accepted as white by other whites) way before Asians do.
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I find it a bit amusing all the declarations about who agrees and disagrees with whom. The only prediction that is likely to come true is that all of us will be in various ways and to various degrees proven wrong by what eventually develops. These are such vast and complex issues with numerous overlapping and confounding factors.
I think all racial categories will change, likely broadening and becoming more porous. No one has said anything that I necessarily disagree with. I just simply don’t know. I’m just confident that it won’t be the same and it will go in directions that we can’t imagine. If whiteness survives, it will be an entirely new beast.
I don’t think Asians would assimilate in the next decade or something. If it happened, it would be a slow long term process. From the time the English first identified as white, it required a number of centuries before the Irish were finally and fully accepted as white as well. German-Americans resisted assimilation for centuries and only were forced to assimilate because of the world wars.
I see things in the long view. And the longer the view one takes the less certainty there is of the future results.
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@Abagond
Thanks for the link. America’s view of race is just so complicated. I know about Asian worship of whiteness; I think it has something to do with them not going through the type of colonization we went through in Africa-I think. This is how different Asian communities behave in Kenya:
Indians (from India)- keep to themselves most of the time and frown on inter-racial marriages(although I hear its mostly due to religion. The privilege they enjoyed under British rule is quickly waning though.
Chinese- recent migrants. They tend to be racist but we tend to remind them they are in Africa (So no problem there so far). They also marry African women and are less conservative compared to Indians.
Japanese- Too few but mostly racist.
Koreans- Nicest people so far. Own television stations and even churches in East Africa. (I love their movies)
This, I think, is the case in most of East Africa.
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I thought of something that is relevant here and connects back to the Irish post.
Everyone here knows how racists are obsessed with violent crime data. It is a topic that interests me, but it is hard to find good data and to make sense of it. I actually found older data to be more interesting, even though more narrow in area of focus.
Crime data early on was most systematically and in most detail kept by big cities. This was particularly true in the early 1900s. This was because of an increase in urbanization and immigration, with the highest rate of foreign born ctizens since it began to be recorded. As such, crime stats broke everything down by ethnicity where there was no distinction between ethnic and racial catgories.
I’m not sure when official record keeping was standardized according to dour present usage. It seems that WWII did more than anything to solidify the racial order.
Before that time, groups like the Second Klan were more worried about non-English and non-Protestants than about blacks. In the North where the Second Klan was concentrated and centered, Northern whites in some ways felt more threatened by and more animosity toward Southern whites than Southern blacks, because they were more of a direct competition for jobs.
The sense and solidarity of whiteness was slow to form. The Civil War tore apart not just national unity but also the tenuous beginnings of white unity. To make that conflict even more contentious, the war was won largely because of a massive influx of ethnic immigrants into the North. It required the later Southern Strategy to once again more fully bring back together a national sense of whiteness, which was aided by the lowest point in immigration numbers in US history.
Whiteness has only in recent history become a relatively stable category. That stability and hence unity is being challenged once again by decades of increased immigration and especially growth of Hispanics. These periods of seeming stability are brief in the larger historical perspective. It takes the right conditions and a lot of effort to turn a social construct into a semi-coherent racial group identity.
We too easily forget that division among so-called whites is closer to the norm than is unity. That is why I suspect it will be hard to predict and imagine what race will mean and look like in the future.
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@jefe,
Do you see a difference between: people identifying as white to show status and people identifying as white to show membership of a group? I would imagine that in the future you describe the term white would be used to signify a person who identifies with American culture rather than someone who actually claims pure European ancestry.
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Anne,
Did you read Abagond’s link about the White Club? I think the rules of being white will still apply, save for a relaxation of the one drop rule and some minor shifting of what it means to “look white”.
There is no way that I equate identifying with American culture and being “white”. The only thing that would happen is that claiming “pure European ancestry” will not be an absolute requirement to join the white club as it was 100 years ago.
Those without full European ancestry did become “white” a hundred years ago too, except they had to figure out a way to claim “pure European ancestry” and get away with it (eg, changing their names, moving to another town, cutting off ties from their family, marrying a white person and teaching their kids that they were white, etc.).
I just hope that some day, being “white” would lose its shine, but it has never lost its shine for Latinos, so that white America’s best hope for enlarging whiteness would be to relax the one-drop rule and to woo the white or mostly European Hispanics to join their club (which they are inclined to do anyhow).
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..Great futuristic “prediction” post, Abagond-and for the record, I largely agree with the points you listed as to what will considered “acceptable/enlarged” whiteness as well. Here’s to wishing for the Permanent Dis-mantling of white worship/false ideology, *fingers crossed*!
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This past week, I was looking again at Sundown Towns by James W. Loewen. I was wanting to write about racism in Indiana (where my family comes from), specifically in the early 20th century (when my parents were born). That wasw the time during which the Second Klan ruled and sundown towns became increasingly common.
I wasn’t thinking about this post while reading. That book just happened to be on a related topic. But in my reading, I came across a gem that offers support for the point I was making above. Loewen writes (Kindle Location 4530):
“Audiences cackle at the last line on this bust of Christopher Columbus. They “know” Italians are not a race. It seems obvious now that there are only three races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid), or four (Australoid), or five (American Indian). This was not Hitler’s understanding, who “knew” Jews to be a race; nor was it Italian Americans’ in 1920 when they erected this bust at the Indiana State Capitol. At that time eugenicists ranked Greeks, Italians, and Slavs racially inferior and aimed the 1924 immigration restrictions largely at them. By 1940, however, these races became one—“white.” Jews, Armenians, and Turks took just a little longer. Now “white” seems to incorporate Latin and Asian Americans, which most sundown towns have long admitted. In 1960, Dearborn, Michigan, called Arabs “white population born in Asia” and Mexicans “white population born in Mexico” in official documents, thus remaining “all white” as a city. Sundown town policy now seems to be: all groups are fine except blacks.”
Erecting that bust was an early attempt of Italian-Americans to stake their claim as “real Americans.” Not just as a darker-skinned immigrant group and hyphenated Americans. Not just as one among many non-WASPs.
The year after this bust was put up, the Second Klan formed who wasn’t friendly to these Italian-Americans and their claim on America. But the Second Klan only lasted a couple of decades. Ethnic Americans like those of Italian ancestry won their right to assimilate, which largely meant losing to their distinct ethnic identity and just became white.
That is less surprising. It almost seems inevitable in retrospect, as it is hard for us to imagine the hatred that once existed between these groups. The Second Klan fought many bloody battles for political power and social influence with ethnics and their groups, from the Italian Black Hand to the German Bund.
What seems more surprising to us now is what implies about the distinction of white and Asian. Apparently, Arabs were once considered as Asian by many people or else their whiteness wouldn’t have needed to be officially declared at that point (post-WWII I’d note). Whiteness expanded to include part of what used to be considered Asian.
Practices like sundown towns weren’t just about reinforcing the race line but also played a role in redefining it. There were simply too many Americans at that point that were both not WASP and not descendants of ‘black’ slaves. Despite WASP resistance, the massive wave of European immigration forced whiteness to expand. But even so, it could only expand so far, for the time being. Still, the extent of that expansion is impressive.
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Hi Abagond Nice article about an interesting important and usually misunderstood topic.Michael lind wrote an article about it back in 1998 called The Beige And The Black, in which he comes to a similar conclusion of yours and Eduardo Bonilla silva and it seems the most realistic one when you take into account Immigration and assimilation patterns as well as intermarriage rates and history of America and other societies in the americas.The whites as a minority scenario probably wont materialize given the assimilation of hispanics and to acertain degree asians.Do you think the descendants of modern hispanics will look like them? seems unlikely in my opinion. when you see Black america’s experience it is one of Black exceptionalism and in which other groups assimilate and form a mainstream in opposition to being black.Lind Talks about black people considering themselves as a nation as french canadians as opposed to minorities who might be assimilated. BTW Do you think Blacks can be assimilated? how do you think blacks must react to this possible developmentsin your opinion? I would love to hear your thoughts.
PD.Link to linds article:
Link to an interesting debate when they talk about diversity and Black exceptionalism:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnKZtSQZpfM)
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@ mattrod
The descendants of present-day Hispanics will look Whiter, for two reasons:
1. Genetic: Plenty of them will have married Old Whites.
2. Social: The idea of what “White” looks like might extend to take in some Mestizos and Eurasians, just as it had been extended in the 1900s to take in Jews and darker Italians.
That assimilation, though, will be built on anti-Black racism. That makes it impossible for Blacks to assimilate, almost by definition. White, whatever it is in the future, will be “not Black”. Blacks who try to assimilate will, like now, poison their soul.
Ideally, the US should move towards a multiracial model, where assimilation does not matter, or at least a transracial one, like the Romans, where racism does not shape culture and identity.
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@ Benjamin David Steele – The funny thing, to me, about people who live in Sundown Towns is when they say, ‘You can’t live here.’.
There is a town right next to my current city where many residents are proud to tell Blacks this.
I was told by a group that this (their) town existed and their rules.
‘Dude, you have a double-wide as your city hall. Your sister and your aunt are the same person. Do y’all have indoor plumbing yet. Have you taken the wheels off of your house? It’s not I CANT live there – that wouldn’t be an issue because I don’t WANT to live there.’ I joked. (Well, half-joked.)
The group just looked at me.
One lady replied, ‘That’s not nice, we’re just recovering after hurricane Rita and we have a real city hall now.’.
It’s odd, to me, that people think that others WANT to assimilate.
I’ve been told by lots of white people, ‘You know, YOU don’t HAVE to date just Black girls. Lots of women like you.’
And I’m not even sure that it’s about just looks.
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@Kiwi,
Your argument sounds like it supports Abagond’s hypothesis.
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@Uglyblackjohn – I would point out that there are a variety of towns that have been sundown. Also, many suburbs.
Most of them aren’t or weren’t small towns in poor rural areas. That was particularly true earlier last century. These towns often were thriving, not always but often. Racism in a racist society can be quite profitable for those in the dominant group.
That has changed some, though. The former sundown towns that have thrived tended to do so by getting past their racist histories, one way or another. As an example, West Lafayette where Purdue is located used to be sundown. But the university has forced diversity over the decades and so maybe that saved the racists from their own regressivism. But it is still Indiana, not exactly the Mecca of diversity.
The problem with places that are impoverished and backwards is that you are only seeing the people left behind when so many others moved away over the generations. Such places may or may not have always been that way. Few people of any race would want to assimilate into such places that don’t have much going for them, besides maybe misplaced pride.
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My father grew up in Alexandria, a sundown town in Indiana. According to Loewen’s informants, there were sundown signs there and in nearby towns when my father was growing up.
He says that he never saw any of these signs and that might be true, as he would have been quite young when most of them disappeared, very few remaining after WWII for some reason, maybe because their reputations were already well enough established.
Alexandria had a black population of around 65 in 1920, which for a small Midwestern town would have made for a decent sized neighborhood. But by the numbers of blacks kept declining over the decades, even though the population had grown. There were only 2 blacks left there in 1970, in a town that had grown by about 1500.
Like my mother, he went to Purdue. I don’t know if the town, West Lafayette, was sundown at the time. The university housing, however, had been desegregated. But there weren’t many blacks there in the early to mid 1960s when my parents were there, slightly over a hundred in 1965.
I mention this because my parents grew up to be socially conservative Republicans, as did many people who grew up in or around sundown towns and suburbs. They aren’t overtly racist or at least not most of the time, but they hold many typical mainstream views about race. They are respectable white people who have moved up in the world, riding the way of the post-war boom that raised so many white boats.
My father eventually became a business management professor, after years of being a factory manager. Business management colleges are known for attracting lots of conservatives. On the other hand, there is a kind of tolerance for diversity within the business world. My father has had many close friends who were Cuban-American and Indian-American, although I would note that they were lighter-skinned.
What was the defining feature in this case was less to do with race and ethnicity. It was rather about class. These Cuban-Americans and Indian-Americans were immigrants who had been born into the upper-middle-to-upper class. They were the good kind of minorities, especially the Cuban business elite who escaped communism.
Those minorities find it fairly easy to assimilate or at least be accepted. They really don’t even need to try to assimilate. These close friends of my father all had strong accents and maintained some of their ethnic cultures, but none of that was held against them as a refusal or inability to assimilate. Being relatively more well off was the main thing. Lighter skin, of course, also helped.
The children and grandchildren of those kinds of minorities will find it easy to marry whites, if they so choose.
I have a cousin who works in a tech company in California, another kind of business world also known for attracting certain kinds of minorities. My cousin married a Middle Eastern lady who he met in the tech field. She came from old money, actually deposed monarchy from a few generations back. Money can be the great equalizer.
That is how many Jews were able to assimilate. Many Jewish immigrants earlier last century were middle class professionals. Class can be a major factor in assimilation. You see the same thing for many Asian immigrants who these days tend to be wealthier and more well educated on average. Depending on the area of Asia, many of them won’t find it hard to assimilate, especially those from places like India.
A central part of this is that the US has maintained its racial order by class. It’s not just that money helps one to assimilate, although money can only go so far the darker one’s skin. It is those who control the rules of the game who determine who gets most of the money. The point is that those with darker skin have intentionally been kept poor. The only thing more threatening to the social hierarchy than dark skin is dark skin with money.
Immigrants who come with money have to be fit into the social hierarchy. That can be difficult sometimes. It’s a tricky equation of balancing the shade of skin and the color of money. Wealth and class privilege is a great force. The racial order will be forced to conform along the color line of money. The immigrants with wealth will be one of the greatest determining factors for what the racial order will look like in the future.
Even for those who grow up in sundown towns, class identity can often trump narrow notions of whiteness.
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@ BDS – Oh, I agree with everything you’ve written.
Back home I lived in a couple of towns or areas that were pretty close to being Sundown in Cali.
(The town which I currently live is integrated but still segregated.)
But as it relates to this post:
Lots of the people I’d met from these towns would end up meeting and asking about dating some of my non-white friends.
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Why assume that the US will remain a democracy, with the same open immigration policies from here to infinity? I see a partly hispanized US moving towards a Brazil style society – with huge wealth disparities (mostly along racial lines), little to no social safety net, and democracy in name only.
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I forgot this part – an expulsion of muslims this century or even a genocide is plausible. Certainly a ban on their immigration will occur in our lifetimes. This cultural factor – there is a palpable hatred of muslims – needs to be taken into account.
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Concerning the how the Asian Genocide will come. It’s when the members of the Abrahamic Religions (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) unite under one flag to carve out a racial/ethnic genocide against the Asians who are majority Buddhist, Hindus, Taoists, Shintos, & Shamans..
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I was more expecting a post on the future of worldwide racism, but hey, this’ll do.
I think there will be a Middle Eastern George Zimmerman in the near future. I am quite positive race will be appearance not ethnicity, and light-skinned Middle Easterners like Casey Kasem (in retrospect, R.I.P.) too will become white.
In addition, I doubt another genocide will happen in America, at least not on a large scale, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it occured. Russia, France, and maybe China are more likely places it’d happen. Also, with the advent Americanization and mass communication, the meaning of “white” will be solidified across the globe.
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So-called dark-skinned whites (like Jason Mantzoukas) are at best olive-skinned. I doubt they will become POC. In fact, the “light-skinnedness” required for being white be much more lax in the future.
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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Abagond’s far in the future predictions, but beginning nowadays:
So, now we are witnessing shock-waves reflecting events of the Nativist Backlash. The current POTUS maneuvers fit your description of what would likely happen during this phase.
But the open attacks on the democratic principles point to an attempt to pull the society to an elitist era were not everybody was supposed to vote. Even if the “racial inferiors” become a majority this will not automatically translate in more capacity to reshape the nation.
It seems to me that a certain demographic will fight to the end to make sure America will not “bastardize” itself in a non-White country. Expect their battles to be very, very violent. The territory we know as USA today will more likely balkanize in a set of smaller national entities.
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@ munubantu
The US is currently headed towards White fascist rule. It is pretty clear that half of all Whites will support that too, that their faith in democracy was always a thinly veiled form of White-majority rule. Racism > democracy.
BUT, if you step back and look at US history as a whole, fascism seems like a strange turn, an aberration. What seems way more likely is the assimilation/acceptance of enough Hispanics into the White club to keep the White majority in business. The Republicans already get a third of the Hispanic vote. I wrote the post based on what was most PROBABLE based on the past. Like a weather forecast.
But we shall see. The US is at a crossroads. The next four or five months will be critical, if not the next four or five weeks. Or, who knows, the next four or five days.
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