Minority Majority

A few days ago, the Census Bureau announced that non-whites now make up 50.4% of America's birthrate. In other words, white Americans are no longer the majority. So what does this mean for the US? According to Bloomberg Businessweek, "the trend is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the country's political alignment, the nature of its workforce and on its economic future."

Minorities have been known to follow the Democratic Party. According to Zoltan Hajnal and Taeku Lee of Princeton University, "in recent contests Democrats have garnered about 90 percent of the black vote, two thirds of the Latino vote, and a clear majority of the Asian American vote." So now that the majority of America consists of the minorities, the Democratic Party has a much stronger future than the Republican Party, unless the Republicans start now to make themselves more appealing to people besides white Americans.

An increase in non-whites also changes the "nature" of the American workforce, which directly relates to America's "economic future" because these minority children will be the ones making the money for the older white generations during their retirement. This means that the older white generation will have to rely more on the growth of Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. for a secure future rather than their white descendants.

2011 was the first time in the history of America that the minority birthrate outnumbered the white majority birthrate, which was much earlier than anyone had predicted. What does this mean for the future of the United States? "[Immigration] is at the root of how we became the country we are today, and more importantly, it's our destiny," Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a professor at NYU, says to Neal Cohen of NPR. Is America en route to becoming a true "melting pot"?