21st Century Demographics Will Force Change in Power Structure

One of the more bizarre stories that has come out of an already ground-breaking political campaign was the story that some white supremacists where hoping for an Obama victory. They were under the erroneous belief that an Obama victory would spur white people out of complacency and finally make them realize that they are losing ground in this country. 

According to white nationalists, seeing a black man in the White House would send white people scurrying to join the KKK to prevent their children growing up as minorities in their own country. They are not the only racial purists who see the rise of Sen. Barack Obama as a sign of on-coming apocalypse. Pat Buchanan, America’s favorite neo Nazi, recently penned an article warning white people their children would grow up in a world dominated by blacks, Latinos, Arabs, and other undesirables. 

It’s amusing to read these doomsday predictions. The funniest thing is they are right, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. White birth rates have been falling, or stagnating, in the Western world for several years. In Europe, it’s so bad that many of the EU countries have to import workers to sustain their economies. Years of declining birth rates and ageing populations are threatening to bankrupt the economies of many Old World countries. The United States still has a healthy birth rate, but that’s largely being kept alive by immigration from Latin America. Without this influx of new blood, the United States would be looking at an even greater social welfare crisis, with a growing elderly population putting an immense strain on programs like Medicare and Social Security. 

Why is this happening? I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with greater economic freedom for women, maybe it has something to do with many European cultures not being family friendly. A few years ago, “60 Minutes” reported that many Italian women were shunning marriage because they didn’t want to wait on their men hand and foot, the way their mothers had. American society seems to be driven by individuality and money. And with the mercenary divorce laws, an increasing number of American men are shunning marriage all together. Black and Latinos cultures tend to be more family oriented. The black culture, and most African cultures, tends to be more tribal, with large nuclear families all pulling together to help each other. Latino culture also puts a great emphasis on producing children, and combined with religious taboos about contraception, their birth rate is also high. Due to these factors it’s not surprising that United States will eventually become a majority “minority” culture. Census figures estimate that by the year 2050 Latinos will be the majority ethnic group in the United States. 

Although crackpots like the white nationalists and their country club companion, Pat Buchanan, may see this as the end of the world, most ethnic people simply shrug. Many of them lived and thrived for years in societies where they were the minority. California, which has always been a predictor of where America is heading, is still thriving even though Latinos are the largest ethnic group in the state. Orange County is a great example of how California has changed. Although the OC has a reputation for being ritzy and white, there is a large Latino population.  However the population change has resulted in increased Latino political might, when you are two-thirds of the population it means that you become an effective voting force. In Orange County, this has resulted in the election of Loretta and Linda Sanchez, who are the children of Mexican immigrants. The Sanchezes are the only sisters serving in Congress. In LA, Antonio Villaraigoisa is looking at his second term as mayor. His victory was largely inspired by his popularity in the Latino community, although he built political alliances with suburban white and black voters. 

I suspect that most of these fears of a “Black Planet” coming from white guilt. White people realize that when they were the dominant ethnic group they treated anyone who was non-white and different from them as second class citizens. For years, they manage to keep a stranglehold on the top political and financial jobs and created a cosy, good-old boys club. They have also managed to create an atmosphere where they covered for the sloth and ineptitude of their sons, through fraternities and other social groups which were exclusively white male only. Sen. John McCain and President George W. Bush are two clear examples of people who benefitted from white male priveledge. Bush got into Harvard and Yale, even though he admitted he was a below average student. Bush scored 25 out of 100 on the aptitude test for the Texas National Guard, but still managed to get in. John McCain was fifth from bottom of his graduating class at the Naval Academy, yet still managed to get into the Flight School. In both cases, these two slackers were bailed out by their powerful fathers. 

Buchanan sums up this fear best in one his recent columns titled “The way our world ends,” He writes: “Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.” 

Payback’s a bitch