At the current rate of growth, will minorities one day become the majority? If this happens, how will this affect our laws of governing as we know them today (such as affirmative action)? Is there anyway to predict around what era in time an event like this may take place? By the way, I am not posting this in order to raise people’s tempers, it’s just a logical question I’ve been pondering. Please don’t take offense to it. Thanks
Define “minorities”, please. I’ve never understood what qualifies as a minority, I used to think that was blackies* but as it turns out they ain’t that minor.
*I truly, sincerely apologise if that is considered offensive these days - it’s hard to keep up. I never quite liked African-American, as many “coloured folks” have absolutely nothing to do with America and *Persons of African origin * is just a liiiiittle too PC for me.
Also, this is quite possibly better suited in GD or even the Pit. (Sorry, but I’m new here and I’ve wanted to suggest moving a thread for a long time now. Feels good.)
If you don’t like “African-American” then I suggest “black” as the alternative as opposed to “blackie.” “Blackie” has been/is used as an insult.
“Minority” in the United States generally means “non-white.” So black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Native American/Indian and blends and combinations thereof.
As for how to predict when that will happen, all you’d need is information on trends in birth rates, death rates and immigration for white and non-white people and do the math.
In some regions (Southern California, parts of Florida, etc.), nonwhites are the majority. Between Hispanics and Blacks, whites occupy a shrinking proportion of the population in those areas.
But nationally? It depends on how you define Black/Hispanic/etc. As the ethnic groups mix, there is less and less of a reason to call anyone a minority.
Besides, trying to seperate groups on ethnic lines is a mug’s game. If you begin with ratio threshholds and divide people based on those, you not only have created artificial groups but you run into people who simply don’t know their ancestry far enough back to be firmly classified. If you go with more fluid classifications, you create arbitrary groups that are open to a hell of a lot of interpretation.
(All of this nonsense goes back to the unscientific method of trying to group cultures on genetic lines. This may have worked back when people didn’t move more than 50 miles from their birthplace in a lifetime, but in the modern world you have Hmong refugees living in southwestern Minnesota and Nigerian-born young men going to college in Havre, Montana. All of these people will become acculturated and assimilated and Americanized, until their genes do not correlate with behavior in any interesting ways. Ethnicity, as the supposed confluence of genetics and culture, needs to be seriously rethought for that reason.)
First of all, current US laws do not distinguish between “majority” or “minority”. The laws themselves only exclude discrimination based on ethnic background, religion, gender, etc.
In making sure the laws are enforced, there are checks into how many of what type you have and if there’s something askew, they start asking questions. Ergo, I have seen the following:
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An College of Engineering that had “too many” women. The newly created Computer Science dept. was added to that college, and back then there were a lot of female CS students, so some forms got filled out, letters exchanged, etc.
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A Nursing program had an “overly successful” AA program to attract men and so more forms had to be filled out, etc.
Each situation is different, what the national norms of majority and minority don’t matter. It’s all about what the particular organization is doing.
So it makes no difference whatsoever in regard to such laws how the demographics of the US change. None whatsoever!
You sometimes see women referred to as a minority even though they are in fact a majority of the population. “Minority” in this context is used as a label for a group that is marginalised or disadvantaged. Most such groups lack power in part because they are small in number, hence the term “minority”, but that’s not strictly necessary. By a similar reasoning Irish people have on occasion been classed as “blacks” in the UK.
It’s perfectly possible that blacks, hispanics and so forth might become a majority of the population and still be relatively disadvantaged. The term “minority” might cease to be used because it would be so obviously inappropriate, but the treatment of the group needn’t necessarily change.
I think, technically-speaking, no “race” now makes up a majority of the U.S. population. If you put all the “non-whites” together, they now outnumber the whites slighly. We’re all minorities these days! So, which minority do you mean? 
Thanks for the replies. From what I gather from everybody’s replies is that “minorities” are becoming a thing of the past. My argument with that is why do certain races still claim to be “minorities” then?
Loopydude is mistaken. Non-hispanic caucasians are in the majority in the U.S. as a whole and will be until sometime after 2050. After that, they will no longer be more than 50% of the population, but will still be the largest ethnic/racial group for some time. Cite
However, in most U.S. cities whites are not the majority. Cite
Any group that is smaller than half the population (or that can be perceived to be at a population disadvantage when compared to several other groups, collectively), is a minority. Currently, there are indications that “hispanic” peoples in the U.S. may become a majority in the U.S. within the next fifty years, but they are currently a minority. (And, of course, there is the whole issue of the artificial category of “Hispanic,” given that there are multiple communities of peoples from Spanish-speaking regions that have very different ethnic backgrounds–and that the political climates within several of these groups are actually in conflict with each other. If “Hispanic” groups were actually categorized by ethnic make-up, none of them would become a majority within the foreseeable future.) By any measure, blacks are clearly a minority now–and will continue to be a minority in the U.S. forever, barring radical shifts away from current projections.
I believe that within the past year non-Hispanic Caucasians became a minority in California. Sorry – no cite. Just something that I heard on television.