Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

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> Whites will become the minority in U.S and the UK in the coming decades

Regarding the US, that's a bit of a misleading statement. US Census Bureau projections have "white" people as a majority in the US until 2060, which is as far out as their projections go [1].

The claim that "whites" are going to become a minority soon is arrived at by redefining "white" to exclude white-identified Hispanic people. Indeed, "non-Hispanic whites" are projected to become a minority in the US by 2045. But "whites" overall are not going to become a minority in the foreseeable future.

In 2060, the US Census Bureau projects the US will be 68% white-identified (white-identified Hispanic people included). By comparison, their actual estimates for 2016 are that the US was 76% white-identified (again, Hispanic people included). Although their projections don't go out that far, it seems likely the US will still have a white-identified majority at the start of the next century.

[1] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popproj/tables/2017...

> The claim that "whites" are going to become a minority soon is arrived at by redefining "white" to exclude white-identified Hispanic people.

You can look at the numbers in your chart and see that basically all of the U.S. Hispanic population is found under this "white" category, 55 million Hispanics. Total Hispanic population in U.S. is at most a few million more. 90%+ of all U.S. Hispanics feel like they are part of a "white" majority? You must be joking.

So I don't think that "white identified majority" in the census numbers means what you think it does. The vast majority of Hispanics in it fully realize and are made to feel like they are part of a minority in the U.S.

"White" in the US Census means someone who ticked the "White" box on the census form. A "White Hispanic" is someone who chooses to tick both the "White" box and the "Hispanic" box. Anyone can tick any box they like, out of the boxes available (and if they don't agree with the choice of boxes, they can write in whatever they like, and the Census Bureau will make its best effort to shoehorn their written response into its categories, or just put them in the "Other" bucket if it can't work it out). If they don't view themselves as "White", why are they putting themselves down as that on the Census?

> 90%+ of all U.S. Hispanics feel like they are part of a white majority?

I feel very hesitant in speculating about the feelings of tens of millions of people whom I don't know–and who of course are not all going to think or feel the same way, but who are going to have a very diverse range of feelings and opinions. Rather than speculating about their feelings, why not just go by what they voluntarily choose to put on their US Census forms?

> The vast majority of Hispanics in it fully realize and are made to feel like they are part of a minority in the U.S.

There are white minorities, so identifying as "white" doesn't necessarily make white-identified Hispanics non-minority. If an (ethnic majority) German or Russian or Finn moves to New York City, they are going to be an immigrant minority in their new home, but they and everyone else will see them as "white". A European-descended person who moves to New York City from Buenos Aires has Spanish as their native language instead of German or Russian or Finnish, but why would their experience be fundamentally different? The Spanish-speaking immigrant will be officially classified as "Hispanic", the German/Russian/Finnish-speaking immigrants wouldn't be, but they are all equally white ethnic minorities.

I'm talking about the experience of being a visible minority in a white country (or for that matter, a homogenous society). I'm just saying - the U.S isn't particularly white and it will only get more pronounced with time. Let's leave all the race discussions aside.

We can talk about the problematic experiences of immigrant minorities without bringing race into it. For example, my friend's father moved from Uruguay to Australia in the 1970s, and my friend told me his dad was teased at work for his accent and gaps in knowledge of English. Like most Uruguayans, he is of European descent, so arguably just as "white" as the English-speaking Australians who were teasing him were.

You chose to bring race into the discussion, when one can make the same point without any reference to race.

Absolutely right. Yet visible minorities usually have it worse. Your friend could at least go to the supermarket without getting stares.

I agree in principle, although exactly who counts as a "visible minority" is a bit of a complex question.

In Sydney, Australia, a woman wearing a niqab is still a rare sight, and she is likely to get starred at, a lot–even other Muslims are going to stare at her. Women wearing hijabs are a far more common sight, so they will get starred at a lot less, although I'm sure they will report being starred at sometimes too. But, a lot of Muslim women don't wear any head covering – like the women in my uncle's family – indeed, in Albanian Muslim culture, women rarely cover their heads, and a woman who starts wearing a hijab is likely to be suspected of religious fundamentalism, which is viewed about as negatively in their culture as in my own. Should my uncle's family be considered a "visible minority" then?

Sydney is over 20% Asian (including East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian people in that term)–Asian Australians are a minority, and obviously a visible one–but do Asian people get starred at in Sydney solely on account of their race? You usually stare at the unusual, but in a city which is over 20% Asian, there is nothing unusual about seeing a Chinese/Indian/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese/Filipino/etc person, you see them every day, you count them among your friends, classmates, coworkers, neighbours, etc.

I remember one time I ventured with a Finnish colleague to a working class bar in Bangalore, and we got a lot of stares there, because nobody was expecting to see people like us in such an establishment – by contrast, in the airport, hotel, offices, shopping centres, tourist sites, etc, nobody starred at us, because Indians are used to encountering foreigners in those places.

So we basically have no argument. All I was saying was that as the West is demographically changing, visible minorities will have an easier time. Your examples just demonstrate my point. Maybe in 60 years the whole notion of visible minority won't even exist in the West. Now all that is just demographics. If some crazy fascist leader rises to power, which doesn't seem so far fetched nowadays, minorities may suffer again.

Right, as I said, I never had a disagreement with your fundamental point, I just think your way of putting it was flawed

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