South American/Central American/Latin American countries either have a majority of, or a significant population made up of Mestizos (part white, part Native American). The only exceptions I’m aware of are Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Argentina. And Cuba has a majority of half black/half white people.
So why do most of these countries have a sizable population of mixed ethnic groups, but America and Canada are predominantly white?
Where more Native Americans, due to disease and wars, wiped out in North America than South America? Where the Spanish and Portuguese more open to mixed marriages than the British and French? A little of both? Something else?
No reason for this question other than curiosity. I’m kind of thinking that there might not be an answer, but if there is, I’m sure you guys will have it. Thanks.
In a place like Mexico, given the presence of a large native civilization, Spanish conquistadores aimed to take over control of the civilization and exploit the population (and convert them, etc.) rather than push them aside or wipe them out. That’s not to say a lot of people didn’t die, of course, but essentially the native population remained and eventually their numbers rebounded. In the present-day U.S. and Canada, I think native populations were much smaller and therefore less “useful” to Europeans. I don’t know anything about cultural differences in terms of being more open to mixed marriages, but different goals with regard to the natives in the beginning probably has something to do with the later ethnic makeup.
So maybe that’s part of the reason. I’m just regurgitating things from history classes, so I may not know what I’m talking about.
The short answer is that America and Canada were colonized by the English and not the Spanish. The Spanish never saw the Americas as a place for individuals to settle. They looked to them as classic colonies, with a small number of exploiters running mines, plantations, and other sources of wealth.
The French operated more or less in the same vein, although the hunters and trappers were less exploiters of others than individual entrepreneurs. But the first Treaty of Paris after the French and Indian War gave most of Canada to the English and the emigration of Tories there after our Revolutionary War gave it a similar culture as a place for settlers.
I can’t say whether the mores of the Spanish and the English with regards to what they would call miscegenation were truly any different, but the demographics of the colonies most certainly were. With tiny numbers of Spaniards, and mostly men at that, the need for sex, and eventually interbreeding and marriage, with the native populations was much higher than it was in non-frontier American colonies where the percentages of men and women were much closer, and larger towns and cities made finding mates easier within their own cultures.
Later, slave owners used their owner’s privileges to have forced sex with their female slaves, with the result that most black families in America have “white blood” in their heritages. A large, though not as large, percentage of Native Americans do as well. If these were the only groups to think of, then the percentage of mixed race individuals would be much higher. But America, more so than Canada, and hugely more so than Latin America, became the magnet for tens of millions of white European immigrants who did very little mating outside of the immigrant populations. These huge numbers of white immigrants added to the older segment of white immigrants, passed strict rules after the Civil War against miscegenation and so turned the U.S. into what appeared to be a white Christian country with some outliers who could safely be ignored.
That didn’t last either, and in some states whites are less than 50% of the population and fading fast. Like most things we think of as being a permanent descriptor of America, the white/minority balance was just a temporary aberration and will soon change.
Yesterday, a close friend told me, “There are no purely white people in America. We’re all mongrels.” I don’t believe he’s entirely right. In his family, his great-grandma was Native American, and, according to somebody’s research, he had an African-American forebear among the Swiss and Irish branches.
Both sides of my family had somebody who cared about geneaology. As far as they can tell, I have no ancestors who weren’t white Europeans. I don’t know how unusual that makes me. I don’t have any conversation-fodder when my friends talk about their Cherokee grandmas. My family tree is kinda boring. I had no choice in it, so I don’t really feel connected to my lineage. I was born human, and that’s nothing special.
If I were part Martian, like some of my pals, now, that would be cool.
That’s quite similar to me. As far as I know, I’m british and partly italian on my father’s side… (he was born in england and emigrated to canada after getting his doctorate at oxford Someone on his mother’s side, I can’t remember who, was born in england to two italian immigrants, I can’t remember if that’s my granny or one of HER parents.)
On my mother’s side, she’s found ancestry that traces back to United Empire Loyalist… (who would presumably be also of british derivation… british sympathizers who left the US for the canadian colonists after the revolutionary war,) pennsylvania dutch (ie german mennonite settlers in the US,) and welsh. Quite a hodgepodge, but all pretty much fitting the definition of ‘caucasian’. My sister and I are both about as milky white as you can get, my brother’s a little darker and says he got the latin genes.
> That didn’t last either, and in some states whites are less than 50% of the
> population and fading fast.
Where? The only states with majority nonwhite populations are Hawaii (with a majority Asian/Pacific Islander population), D.C. (with a majority black population, assuming we’re going to count it as a state), and maybe California (if you don’t call Hispanics white, then it’s a touch less than 50% white). D.C. is slowly becoming more white again and will probably become majority white again about 2030. I believe the next closest state to being a nonwhite majority state is Louisiana with a 36% black population that isn’t changing much one way or another.
WW:The only states with majority nonwhite populations are Hawaii (with a majority Asian/Pacific Islander population), D.C. (with a majority black population, assuming we’re going to count it as a state), and maybe California (if you don’t call Hispanics white, then it’s a touch less than 50% white).
AFAIK Hispanics are usually considered “nonwhite” according to census figures. According to that designation, as of 2004, California’s population is 55% nonwhite, New Mexico’s 56%, and Texas’ 49.5%.
I have been hearing for several years that the US is expected to reach a majority-nonwhite population within this century, maybe even within this half-century. You seem to suggest that that’s not so; how come?
How to classify Hispanics has always been a problem when tallying “race.” In the context of the OP, however, putting Hispanics in among other non-white minority groupings is really the only sensible option. “Whites,” historically and currently, do typically distinguish themselves from “Hispanics.”
I’m not going to get into the whole folly of American racial attitudes in GQ, but you can’t talk about the subject without Hispanics being included among minorities.
This is slightly off topic, but I thought I would address the idea of white not being a majority. There are many places in the south that do not have a majority of whites. Note this map.
For example, I grew up in Orangeburg, SC which has a population percentages of 35% white, 60% black and 5% other. I remember being 5-6 years old when my father told me that there were more white people in the US than black people. I had no idea.
Side note to a side note: When I went to college in upstate SC (go Tigers!), it had percentages closer to 85% white 15% other. I was SHOCKED, by all the white people. “Good gosh, they’re breeding like rabbits!”
As a guy that tends to be more attracted to women of my own race, it was wonderful!
Uruguay too. Most Uruguayans are of European ancestry, descended from 19th and 20th century settlers from Spain, Italy and other European countries.
Really there is a fascinating study relevant to this thread about Brazilians they found that 28% have X chromosomes from Africa and 33% from indigenous peoples. But the vast majority of Brazilian males have Y chromosomes of European ancestry. http://publicacoes.gene.com.br/atuais/MEDLINEplus%20Black%20Or%20White,%20Brazilians’%20DNA%20Similarly%20Mixed.htm
-------------------QUOTE------------------------
But together, our result configures a picture of strong directional mating in Brazil involving European males and (indigenous Brazilian) and African females that is in excellent consonance with the known history of the peopling of Brazil since 1500.
“Lay people and even scientists,” Pena added, "often confuse color or ‘race’ with geographical ancestry and use interchangeably terms such as white, Caucasian and European on one hand, and black, Negro or African on the other.
Often the few Indians that remained were too few to resist effectively and shipped off to wherever the benevolent white fathers thought was good place for them - usually resource poor areas far away from white folk. Poor proximity + relatively good pool of mates to choose from (most of the time) = little intermarriage.
It was somewhat different in the southwest. For instance, the Spanish first settled the upper New Mexico region in 1598 and many Indian tribes remained on their ancestrial lands and worked in close proximity to the Spanish. Disease periodically took it’s toll (flu epidemic of 1918 is one example) but not to the extent as in other regions. Spanish mates arriving from the old world were in very short supply. Close proximity + limited choice of mates = intermarriage.
In areas where white settlers first settled - and didn’t bring white women with them - intermarriage occurred. Guys like Kit Carson - three wives (two Indian, one Spanish).
I think another factor is the Indian birth rate. I don’t have a cite but from casual observation it seems to be quite a bit lower than that of white families. And, of course, European immigration played a large role in populating the USA.
> I have been hearing for several years that the US is expected to reach a
> majority-nonwhite population within this century, maybe even within this half-
> century. You seem to suggest that that’s not so; how come?
O.K., you only mentioned blacks in the post of yours that I was quoting from, so I assumed that you were talking about whether black/white ratios in the U.S. were significantly changing. They’re not. Blacks and whites have moved around in the U.S. over the past century or so, but there’s really not much change in proportions, and there’s not much difference in their fertility rates.
If we were to put all whites, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic, into a single group, then the only states with non-white majorities are, as I said, Hawaii and D.C. D.C. is actually slowly becoming more white again and will probably become majority white in about 2030. I wonder if Hawaii is also becoming less proportionally Asian. After all, people are always moving from state to state for many reasons, so I wonder if the proportion of Asians in Hawaii is slowly decreasing. It’s really unlikely that any other state will ever become majority non-white using a definition where one puts Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites into a single group.
Yes, the U.S. has a slowly increasing proportion of Hispanics. If one considers Hispanics a separate group, this makes two more states have a non-white majority, California and New Mexico, and one more that has almost a non-white majority, Texas. The only other states that could plausibly become non-white majority under this definition within the next couple of decades are Arizona and Florida. If one assumes that both Hispanic immigration and the higher fertility rate of Hispanics continue for the next century, only then would there be a non-white majority in the U.S. That’s kind of a big assumption.
(By “fertility rate,” I mean the average number of births per woman over her lifetime.)
Certainly Mexico is considered part of the continent of North America. However, sometimes Mexico and Central America are considered to make up a separate region, Middle America, different from North America, which then only includes the US and Canada. Sometimes Central America is considered to be a separate region, and in this scheme Mexico (or most of it) is in North America.
Actually, the cite to which you linked provided a fairly low estimate of the actual indigenous population before Columbus, most of whom were killed by European diseases, often before the Europeans arrived among them. While the highest estimate of 112+ million people may be too high, few estimates are as low as the 3.8 million in the link and most are much higher than the 10+ maximum estimate in the link.
Wendell Wagner, you were quoting Kimstu in your post, not me.
I’m assuming that what he’s referring to is the conclusion from this classic 1996 article on the subject, that “Non-Hispanic whites will become a minority of the U.S. population in about 60 years.” That puts it out around 2050.
Projecting trends that far out is usually cruisin’ for a bruisin’ but I don’t know of any major dissenters that the trendlines all currently point that way. Obviously lots of things can change fast and make the exercise moot. Maybe our national obsession with race will have abated by then and no one but a few bloggers will even notice when it happens.
> For example, I grew up in Orangeburg, SC which has a population percentages
> of 35% white, 60% black and 5% other. I remember being 5-6 years old when
> my father told me that there were more white people in the US than black
> people. I had no idea.
I saw a poll a few years ago which showed that while many Americans have a reasonably accurate notion of the racial proportions in the U.S., a large proportion don’t. Furthermore, those who don’t consistently tend to underestimate the proportion of non-Hispanic whites. A lot of Americans think that the proportions are something like 45% white non-Hispanic, 25% black, and the other 30% split among Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, etc., while actually it’s something like 72%, 12%, and 16%. The Americans who guess the proportions wrong are spread over all racial groups, so it’s not a matter of consistently overestimating or underestimately the numbers for one’s own racial group.
Someone on his mother’s side, I can’t remember who, was born in england to two italian immigrants, I can’t remember if that’s my granny or one of HER parents.)