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America’s white majority is aging out
Generation Z will be the last generation of Americans with a white majority, according to census data. The nation’s so-called majority minority arrived with Generation Alpha, those born since about 2010.
Barely two decades from now, around 2045, non-Hispanic white people will fall below half as a share of the overall U.S. population.
Those conclusions, and the numbers behind them, seem simple enough. Yet, some scholars contend that the numbers are wrong, or at least misleading, and that the looming ascent of a majority-minority America is a myth.
America’s white majority, and its numbered days, is a lightning-rod topic, given the nation’s history of slavery and enduring patterns of discrimination against minorities and immigrants.
Demographers and economists celebrate the nation’s growing diversity as vital to a prosperous future. Other voices vilify racial change as a threat to the nation’s white heritage.
“Race is the most complicated variable in the census, and it’s the one that draws people like moths to the flame,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and demography at the University of Southern California.
Generational data from the 2020 census shows the upward march of racial diversity by age group. Non-Hispanic white people make up 77 percent of the over age 75 population, 67 percent of the age 55-64 population, 55 percent of the 35-44 cohort, and barely half of the 18-24 age group. America’s children are only 47 percent non-Hispanic white, according to an analysis released this week by William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
In the decades to come, that wave of diversity will wash across the generations, yielding an America with no single racial group that can claim a numerical majority.
By 2045, according to census projections, non-Hispanic white people will fall below 50 percent as a share of the American population. By 2050, non-Hispanic white people will represent less than 40 percent of the under-18 population.
Demographers warn, however, that those milestones vastly oversimplify the story of a diversifying America.
For a start, millions of Americans no longer embrace a single racial identity. How many? It’s hard to tell.
Getting back to those census projections: By 2045, more than 18 million people will claim two or more races. Subtract them from the total, and the population of non-Hispanic white people leaps from 49 percent to 52 percent of the remaining population, their majority status restored.
“Whites are going to be the largest group in this country for a long time,” said Richard Alba, distinguished professor emeritus in sociology at the City University of New York.
“In a sense, we’re forming a new kind of mainstream society here, which is going to be very diverse. But whites are going to be a big part of that. It’s not like they’re going to disappear and be supplanted.”
Alba argues that the census itself is “locked into a way of thinking that dates to the 20th century, and that’s the idea that people are only one thing when it comes to ethnicity and race.”
It makes sense: Back in 1980, non-Hispanic white people made up about 80 percent of the American population. Black and Hispanic people, Asian Americans and others split the remaining 20 percent. They were the statistical minority, and demographers used that term to describe them.
Today, multiracial Americans are the fastest-growing racial category in the census, a group projected to double in size between 2020 and 2050.
Alba and others said they believe even that number is a dramatic undercount.
People of mixed race “have relatively fluid identities,” Alba said. “They can think of themselves as white, they can think of themselves as minority, or they can think of themselves as mixed.”
Consider an American with three grandparents who are non-Hispanic white people, and one who is Black, Hispanic or Asian. Simple math suggests labeling that person as white. But long-standing American tradition might favor a “minority” identity.
The practice of labeling mixed-race Americans as minorities dates to the 1600s and the racist “one-drop” rule, which held that a person with any Black ancestry should be counted as Black.
The nation engaged in racial reductivism as recently as 2008, scholars say, when America unblinkingly identified its new mixed-race president as Black.
Demographers point to other curiosities in how the census handles race. The agency counts people of Middle Eastern or North African descent as white, even though many of them do not see themselves as white. Americans from nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan, meanwhile, are termed Asian.
Writing in The Atlantic in 2021, Alba, Myers and Morris Levy reasoned that the “myth” of a coming majority-minority America was both false and divisive.
“In the minds of many Americans,” they wrote, “this ethno-racial transition betokens political, cultural, and social upheaval, because a white majority has dominated the nation since its founding.”
White nationalists have seized on “replacement theory,” which holds that liberal elites are promoting immigration and interracial marriage to “replace” non-Hispanic white people with people of color, all to disempower whites.
When white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, some of them chanted, “You will not replace us.”
Outside the racist fringe, the researchers say, most white Americans are receptive to the idea of expanding mixed-race families and a growing multiracial population.
“Despite what many people say, segregation has weakened,” Alba said. He notes that the average white American now lives in a neighborhood where roughly 1 in 3 residents identifies as a race other than white.
In any case, demographers say, America will need a diverse population if it is to prosper in the decades to come.
The nation’s median age is 38.9, the highest it has ever been. Median age is rising because the national birthrate is falling. These trends threaten to deplete the American workforce: Fewer workers means less growth.
For America’s economic growth to persist, demographers say, the nation needs a steady stream of immigrants. New arrivals, especially from Latin America, keep the nation young. The median age for non-Hispanic white people is 43, according to census data. For Hispanic people, it is 31.
“Immigration is a good thing for America,” said Frey, the Brookings researcher. “You’re going to want a country that’s growing and robust and has a lot of energy and people who will contribute to Social Security and Medicare. And you can’t just count on whites for that.”
Frey and other researchers hope future censuses will do a better job of capturing the full depth of multiracial America.
Starting in 2000, the census allowed respondents to choose more than one race. A separate question asks about Hispanic origin, yielding separate and somewhat confusing data sets.
Frey favors a new set of categories, starting with the 2030 census. The separate “Hispanic” question would be cut. Instead, respondents could check any of several “origin” categories, and they could write in any number of specific racial or ethnic identities, such as Lebanese, Guatemalan, Nigerian or Navajo.
Such an exercise might yield a richer understanding of ethnicity and race in America. Then, perhaps, the “majority-minority” conversation would fade away.
“We should plan ahead,” Frey said, “because this is our future.”
注释：
Hispanic: adj; n
1. adj表示" 西班牙的"，means "elated to a Spanish-speaking people or culture"，如：Hispanic immigration has brought more Catholics. 西班牙移民带来了更多的天主教徒。
2. n表示"美籍西班牙人"，means "an American whose first language is Spanish"，如：Not a single black or Hispanic is to be found among the nation's sitting governors. 在美国的现任州长中，没有一位是黑人或西班牙后裔。
loom: v
表示" 隐约可见；迫近"，means " come into sight without a clear form, especially so as to seem very large and threatening, causing fear"，如：The mountaintops loom through the clouds. 山峰在云雾中若隐若现。
vilify: v
表示" 诽谤；中伤"，means "spread negative information about"，如：She was vilified by the press for her controversial views. 因她持有异议，新闻界对她横加挞伐。
cohort: n
表示"一群人; 同伴"，means "a company of companions or supporters"，如：The gangster walked into the room surrounded by his cohort. 一名匪徒走进被他的一帮人包围的屋子。
supplant：v
表示" 取代；排挤"，means "take the place or move into the position of"，如：She's been supplant in her aunt's affection by her brother. 她在她姑母心中的地位已被她兄弟取代了
emeritus: adj
表示" 名誉退休的"，means "honorably retired from assigned duties and retaining your title along with the additional title `emeritus' as in `professor emeritus'"，如：Perhaps I can introduce Mr. Lake Kirby, an emeritus professor from Washington University. 请允许我介绍华盛顿大学名誉教授莱克柯尔比先生。
reductivism: n
表示"极少艺术"，means "an art movement in sculpture and painting that began in the 1950s and emphasized extreme simplification of form and color"，如：Here, modern art's vaunted reductivism is stopped just short of an essentialist zero-degree; rather, it takes shape as stylization. 现代艺术所吹嘘的极简主义没有到达实在程度，而是以风格化的样式存在。
betoken: v
表示" 预示；是 ... 的预兆；"，means "indicate by signs;"，如：Those black clouds betoken rain.那些乌云预示即将下雨。
supremacist: n
表示" 至上主义者"，means "a person who advocates the supremacy of some particular group or race over all others"，如：Now the environment crisis of the human settlement in the final analysis is the humanism flaw which the science supremacist creates. 当今世界的人居环境问题说到底是科学至上主义导致的人文精神缺失造成的。
fringe: n; v
表示" 流苏；边缘; v用流苏修饰"，means "decorative edge on a garment, rug; act as a fringe or border to "，如：The edge of the carpet was frayed into a fringe. 地毯的边缘被散编成一绺绺流苏。Coconut palms fringe the shoreline. 岸边点缀着椰子树.
deplete: v
表示" 耗尽；使空竭"，means " lessen greatly in amount,contents"，如：Our stock of food is greatly depleted. 我们的食物储备已消耗殆尽。
Guatemalan: n
表示"危地马拉人"，如：One of the two Guatemalan twins is suffering from a cerebral infection. 一对危地马拉孪生女婴中有一人脑部受感染。
Navajo：n
表示"纳瓦霍人"，如：The Navajo are noted as stockbreeders and skilled weavers, potters, and silversmiths. 纳瓦霍人以豢养家禽，技术熟练的纺织者，制陶者和银匠而著名。
中文简要说明：
美国布鲁金斯研究所（Brookings Institution）上周公布的一项人口调查分析显示，至2045年，美国将不再是白人国家，白人人口占比将低于50％，不再是多数族群。
综合美国「国会山庄报」（The Hill）、英国《每日邮报》（Daily Mail）报导，布鲁金斯研究所资深研究员佛雷（William Frey）上周公布针对2020年人口普查数据的分析，结果显示，美国族群多样性按年龄层逐渐递增，75岁以上的非拉美裔白人占77％，55至64岁族群的白人占67％，35至44岁族群的白人占比为55％，白人仅占18至24岁族群中的一半，目前美国幼童中，白人仅占47％。
这份分析预估，至2045年，非拉美裔白人将占总人口49.73％，低于人口数一半，这也是美国史上，白人人口首度低于50％。至2050年，18岁以下未成年人口中，非拉美裔白人将不到40％。
若以各族群分布来看2045年，拉美裔将占24.6％，非裔占13.1％，亚裔占7.9％，3.8％为多种族，0.9％为其他，届时将会没有任何一个单一族裔成为美国的多数族群，不过「国会山庄报」指出，届时将是「少数族裔占多数」（majority minority）的情形。
部分人口统计学家批评这份分析太过简化，其中一个大问题在于，数百万美国人不认为自己是单一族裔，至2045年，将会有多达1800万美国人认为自己横跨2至3个族裔，若扣除这些人，实际上白人仍占剩余人口的52％。
此外，多种族（multiracial）族群才是美国成长最快的族群，至2050年，这个族群的人数将倍增。纽约市立大学（City University of New York）社会系名誉教授艾尔巴（Richard Alba）表示，拥有多元种族的人通常有变动的身份认同，一会儿认为自己是白人，一会儿认同自己是少数族群。
这份人口普查的族群分类也受人诟病，包括将中东、北非族裔的人口归类为白人，不过这类族裔的人通常不认为自己是白人。
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