Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 16 Jan 2022 01:39)
d2post contains blocked Quote ( by Nibthebarb[/URL] )Just a history buff and I've got cartography in my family. Dad's even better at it than I am!
Yeah, and here's the thing. Conceptions of race change over time.
Once upon a time Irish weren't considered white. So when you say "As long as we count all Europeans as white", that's a modern revision as opposed to a real understanding of ethnic trends.
I'd bet that in 100 years "hispanic" is considered majority white if not just accepted as white all together, and somebody exactly like you will be saying "As long as we accept latin america as largely white the demographics have always been about the same"
Oh, hispanics are definitely gonna go the way of "ethnic whites" in the 60s and 70s, when they gradually started being considered white and also started voting as such.
The whole demographic change issue would be far less toxic and loaded if it didn't change the political static of the United States. The backdrop of American politics throughout the recent decades is that Democrats are constantly growing stronger from cycle to cycle without having to work for it, without having to convince any existing voters of their policies or ideology. Romney in 2012 and H.W. Bush in 1988 had similar margins among whites and blacks. This performance was good enough for Bush Sr. to win in a landslide while Romney was comfortably defeated with the same performance.
So you have a trend that is massively benefitting one political party and hurting the other party and this trend is not some sort of inevitability, it is a political choice. Moreover, the party benefiting from demographic change passed the key legislation leading to this trend (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) under the explicit promise that this piece of legislation would not change the demographics of the country and would not lead to "a million immigrants per year". Of course Ted Kennedy was lying his ass off, as usual, and that's exactly what happened after the bill was passed. The second aspect is illegal immigration, which also greatly benefits Democrats with a delay of one generation (via birthright citizenship). Of course Democrats constantly want to legalize all types of immigration, undermine or soften up border enforcement, create new incentives for further illegal immigration and pass amnesty and a pathway to citizenship (what they euphemistically call "comprehensive immigration reform").
Whichever side of these debates one falls on, it should be a no-brainer that demographic change and immigration are contentious and divisive issues in the U.S., a country where the balance of power hangs by a thread and which is deeply polarized not just along racial lines but also along economic, cultural and geographic lines.