The White Minority Myth

I saw an interesting article the other day written by a conservative who tried to dispel the idea that America will soon become a "majority-minority nation." That is, a nation where minorities are in the majority. Unfortunately, he didn't make the case very well. So let me.

The Democrats have been betting on changing demographics making them the permanent majority party. In their view, minorities will soon take over the United States and then whites will be a minority. So if they get enough support from minorities, they will have an unbeatable racial bloc. Backing this up, demographers have predicted that the United States will become a majority-minority nation in 2016 2020 2049.

The guy who wrote the article I mentioned attacked this by noting that minorities don't vote in a bloc. Hence, he concluded, the prediction of a minority-majority nation won't happen. Clearly, he missed the point.

Here's the thing. There are problems with the numbers. Here's what the nation looks like as of 2016:

73% Whites
17% Hispanics
12.6% Blacks
5.2% Asian
3.1% mixed race
0.8% American Indian

111.7% total

Do you notice that we're 11.7% above 100%? There's a reason for that which I'll discuss in a minute. For now, consider this. According to the Census, Hispanics will rise to 28% of the population by 2050 and whites will fall to 60%. Blacks will rise 2%, Asians will rise 2% and mixed race individuals will rise 2%. That's an increase of 7% to 118%.

So let's take this apart.

First, as noted, according to the Census, Hispanics will rise to 28% of the population by 2050 and whites will fall to 60%. Let's assume that's true. Did you notice that still doesn't produce a minority-majority nation? Whites will still be 10% larger than every other group combined. So much for the scare mongering.

Taking this a step further, there's something wrong with the numbers, isn't there? How can the nation have 111.7% of racial groups now and 118% in the future? The answer lies in Hispanics. See that 17% figure for Hispanics in 2016? Well, it turns out that isn't really what you think of when someone says "Hispanic." It turns out that 11.3% of the 17% self-identifies as "white" and then adds Hispanic heritage. That's people like Tony Romo and Marco Rubio and millions of others who don't even speak Spanish. What the Census Bureau is doing is counting them as "whites" AND then again as Hispanics. If we count those only as whites, because that is what they are culturally, then ethnic Hispanics really are only 5.7% of the population today. So America really looks like this:

73% Whites
12.6% Blacks
5.3% Hispanics
5.2% Asian
3.1% mixed race
0.8% American Indian

100% total

What's more, when we project to 2050 using the Census Bureau's own numbers, we find that while 28% of the population will have Hispanic heritage, they are estimating that 15.2% of those will be whites. Hence, the future looks like this according to their numbers:

70.8% Whites
14.1% Blacks
12.8% Hispanics
7.7% Asian
5.4% mixed race

110.8% total

Take this at face value for the moment and you will see that there is no change of the minority-majority nation. That idea is only about 2% closer.

Moreover, you may have noticed that we're still 10.8% above 100%. This comes from double counting minorities who are also Hispanics and mixed-race. In other words, each of the minority groups will be slightly smaller than presented.

Now there's one more bit of data to consider. To get Hispanics to rise so high, the Census Bureau estimates a higher birthrate for Hispanics. It notes the following birth rates by race:

2.1 Hispanics
1.86 Whites plus white Hispanics
1.85 Blacks
1.76 Whites (without Hispanics)
1.6 Asians
1.2 American Indians

However, the Hispanic birth rate dropped by 26% from 1990 to 2007. It dropped by 14% from 2007 to 2010. It dropped by 36% from 2010 to 2014. If it drops another 17%, it will be equal to whites. These are not numbers that suggest Hispanics will ever reach 28% of the population by any stretch, especially as the primary source of Hispanic immigrants (Mexico) is undergoing a demographic shortage with a current (steadily falling) birth rate of 1.8. In fact, it sounds like Hispanics are going to peak in the next ten years.

As an aside, Asians actually outgrew Hispanics from 2007 to 2014.

All in all the idea of the minority-majority nation sounds like a pipe dream fed by past rates that no longer apply and a misunderstanding of the term "Hispanic" which didn't grasp that the majority of Hispanics in the US are basically whites.

Finally, let's add one little political piece. The Democrats are counting on all of these minorities to form a voting bloc. This is what that other guy was taking about. But that's not going to work. Not only will minorities be only 29% of the population, but it seems that somewhere between 20% and 33% of minorities will vote conservative. The assumption that you can build a majority voting block starting from 18% to 26% of the population is a very bad strategy.