Hispanics Foil Democratic Race Dreams

You’ve all heard America is destined to become an Hispanic country, right? The Democrats are in fact counting on that to stay relevant. They’re hoping to get Hispanics to buy into racial identity politics and then vote exclusively for their race-hustling party. But there are three flaws with this plan.

Flaw One: Bad Demographics

The argument works like this: in 1980, there were 30 million Hispanics in the US. By 2000, there were 45 million. If you draw a straight line between those points and extend it to the future, there will be 104 million in 2040 and they will be the new majority. But as I first mentioned in May of last year (LINK), there are serious flaws with this.

First, this assumes Hispanics are having huge numbers of children. The truth is that most of the population growth in Hispanic ranks has been the result of illegal immigration, not from births. Indeed, 12 million of the 15 million growth in the last twenty years was pure illegal immigration. So it’s immigration that matters.

But illegal immigration can’t continue at this rate because Mexico is running out of Mexicans. Mexico accounts for most illegal immigrants. But Mexico’s birthrate is in free fall. In the past decade alone, it has fallen 20% (from 24 birth per 1,000 persons to 19), and it keeps right on falling. Mexico, like Europe, is starting to suffer from a birth shortage and, consequently, a worker shortage. That means there won’t be waves of millions of Mexicans sneaking across the border in each of the next 3-4 decades. So instead of having 104 million Hispanics in 2040 as expected, the US is more likely to have 60 million -- which won’t be anywhere near a majority in a country of 350 million people.

Flaw Two: The Race Baiting Ain’t Working

But even beyond the pending illegal-immigrant-supply shortage, something interesting just happened with the last Census. To the race industry’s horror, “whites” suddenly jumped by 12.1 million people (to 223.6 million or 72% of the population). What could account for this?

What happened is the number of Hispanics who identified themselves as Hispanic went down 5% and the number of Hispanics who identified themselves as “white” increased 5%. Overall, 53% of Hispanics now identify themselves as “white,” while 37% identify themselves as “some other race” (the choice on the form) with the rest selecting other races such as black.

What this means is that Hispanics are doing what the Irish, the Jews, the Polish, and everyone else who is now considered “white” did -- they are identifying with the larger group and trying to fit in. They are joining the melting pot. And American-born children of Hispanics are even more likely to identify themselves as “white.”

This is horrible news for the Democrats, because the whole idea behind racial identity politics is to make people think they are part of an oppressed group. If people see themselves as black, white, Hispanic, etc., then it’s easy to get them believing in group rights. But Hispanics aren’t buying it.

Flaw Three: Escape The Plantation

Finally, there have been a number of articles lately by shocked journalists who can’t understand where all these conservative blacks have come from? It turns out the racist Tea Party got them all elected. Oh my! In fact, these articles have pointed out that in each case where a black (or minority) candidate won a Republican primary, it was with Tea Party backing over an establishment Republican honkey.

In effect, genuine diversity has finally arrived on the right and it’s the Tea Party that caused it because. . . imagine this. . . Tea Party people vote for people whose ideas they like, not people whose color they like! The Democrats are shocked.

This is a huge step toward smashing the idea of racial identity politics in this country. As more and more conservative blacks, Asians, Indians and Hispanics get elected into office, the idea that you need to be a Democrat if you are one of these people will simply fall apart. And that will be the final nail in the coffin of the Democratic Hispanic-America strategy.