Thursday, June 10, 2010

Demographics and Multiracial Americans

The Huffington Post posted this article about the latest demographic numbers and America's path to becoming a minority-White nation. It is mostly information that we have all heard before, but what caught my eye was that multiracial is the largest growing demographic in the United States, I assume, it is growing fast than even Latinos.

Does this bode good news for race relations? With a growing number of people who belong to different ethnicities or who have family members of different ethnicities will we see an increase in acceptance of differences? Studies show that people with gay family members are much less likely to discriminate against gays; does it work the same for racial issues? Do you stop seeing other races as “the other” if your grandchildren belong to their race as well as yours? It is very easy to dislike or fear those lousy, no good, fill-in-the-blanks, but it is much harder to hate your nephew, or sister-in-law, or cousin.

Maybe I am hanging a lot on very little data, but made me hopeful for our future.

2 comments:

  1. I think you're right. As far as I know that's true and also true is that as the society moves and enough folks change their minds about things, there is a tipping point. I don't know what the number is but at some point multiculturalism in the US will be the norm

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