Is the New "Minority Majority"Also Good News for Blacks?

Like you, I saw and heard the recent news reports that proclaimed that, by 2050, “minorities” in the U.S. would become the country’s new majority population.

Quite frankly, those stories scared me to death.

Hey, I know what you’re thinking… what’s not to like? As highly-visible "minorities," black folks have been on the short end of so many race-based disparity issues -- lack of adequate minority housing, lack of minority scholarships, low-level minority job participation, low-level minority contract participation for our businesses, low-level of minority participation in the “halls of government” -- that, maybe, this recent announcement should be a reason to be encouraged.

If we can just stick around for another 42 years, some of you are thinking to yourselves, we’ll finally get to see how the “other half” has always lived. Won’t that be wonderful?

Here's my problem: As a person who has spent a great deal of my professional life reviewing census data for marketing and communications projects, I’ve learned to be just a little cautious whenever black issues are quantified and “explained” by the U.S. Census Bureau. And, upon closer inspection of what originally appeared to be a rare piece of good news for black people in this country, it’s clear that things “ain’t exactly what they seem,” at least with regard to the focus of the Bureau’s announcement.

According to the census takers, whites will have a modest increase in population, from about 200 million today, to about 203 million by 2050. At the same time, Hispanics will grow from a current 46.7 million people to 132.8 million, from 15 percent of the U.S. population, to 30 percent.

Please remember that for some inexplicable reason, the Census Bureau continues to include 12 million Hispanic “illegal aliens” as part of the U.S. population count. If you reduce the Hispanic population in this country today by those 12 million "undocumented" persons, you wind up with 34.7 million Hispanics, a number significantly lower than the country’s 41.1 million black citizens. But you wouldn’t know that from reading or hearing the daily news coverage.

The Census Bureau also is anticipating that the country’s Asian population, will grow to 40.6 million people, up from 15.5 million, today. That would be an increase of 162 percent over their current population level.

“Mixed race” people, those claiming “two or more races,” are projected to grow from 5.5 million in 2010 to 16.2 million people by 2050, an increase of 194.5 percent.

At the same time, we find that the Census Bureau is projecting far more modest increases for the black population than for the other major groups of “people of color.” The current black population level, at 41.1 million people, is expected to grow only to 65.7 million people, or by just 59.8 percent. That's especially strange to hear when we already know from previous census reports that the black birth rate in the U.S. is 17.0 percent, as compared to the 14.4 percent birth rate, for the nation, as a whole.

When you look at the numbers, maybe you’ll realize that it’s not time, yet, for a celebration. Perhaps, you'll want to put away the balloons and turn down the music.

Remembering that black people have the highest birth rate in the country, by a significant margin, it is logical to raise questions about the Census Bureau's assumptions for comparative population growth. When you look more deeply into the Bureau’s own data, however, the answers to those questions become very clear. For example, in what is referred to as “Table 11, Projected Infant Mortality Rates by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for United States 2010 to 2050,” the infant mortality rates for blacks is projected at 10.9 percent, as compared to 5.4 percent for whites, Asians, and Hispanics and 5.3 percent for those claiming "two or more races." By 2020, the black infant mortality rate is expected to drop to 8.8 percent, but, even, at that level, it will still far outstrip the 4.8 percent rate for whites and "mixed race" persons and the 4.9 percent for Asian and Hispanic infants.

What’s that about?

It’s clear that government statisticians are expecting our babies to die at an alarmingly higher rate in order to arrive at their projected population count. How about on the other end of the life cycle? Unfortunately, in order to “live up” to the Census Bureau’s exciting news about minority population increases, the government is also anticipating a dismal black life expectancy. In 2010, it’s expected to be 73.8 years, as compared to 78.9 for whites, 78.8 years for Asians, 81.1 years for Hispanics, and 79.4 years for "mixed race" persons.

Here’s the part that really confuses me … “Hispanic” designation is not a race, or even national-origin-specific. There are Spanish-speaking people from a wide number of races and ethnic groups, including substantial numbers of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Mexicans and Colombians of clearly African descent. Nevertheless, it seems, that all a black person has to do is learn to speak Spanish, according to the government, and you cut your infant mortality rate in half and add 7.3 years to your life expectancy.

Guess who’s going directly to the book store this afternoon to buy a Spanish language, self -instruction CD …

On a more serious note, the Census Bureau has an interesting and dubious history of treatment of black people, so we shouldn't really be so very surprised by this recent report.

The first post-Revolutionary War U.S. Census was done in 1790 and, by the time of the Seventh Federal Census, in 1850, the survey included schedules of slave inhabitants by households, including whether the slaves were “black” or “mulatto,” and their sex and age. In fact, in that survey, the only racial designations were “white,” “black,” and “mulatto.” By 1880, the Census had expanded its racial/ethnic purview to include “Chinese” and Indians.” It’s also interesting to note that, according to University of Illinois professor David R. Roediger, the “social construction” of the concept of a white race in the U.S. was a conscious effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves.

Hence, in several early Census reports new immigrant groups such as Irish, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Slavs, and Greeks, among others, were not considered "white," at all, and had to "earn" such status over time in subsequent U.S. census reports.

Ironically, given the general decline in U.S. Caucasian population segments, today’s U.S. Census Bureau designation for “whites” has been expanded to include “any original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” Have Morrocans, Algerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Iranians and Saudi Arabians been advised of this? It would be interesting to hear their perspectives.

For me, this issue raises a great number of questions. Do we, as black people, simply sit back and accept the projections for the extraordinarily high infant mortality rates and dramatically lower life expectancies, or do we mobilize our resources and take appropriate steps, now, to ensure that neither of those nightmarish scenarios ever actually materialize? Do these glaring, life-and-death disparities constitute a sufficient "wake-up call" for those of us who have been lulled into believing that--in 2008--there are no remaining "black issues" for this country, for our elected officials and for all of us to be concerned about? Do either Senator McCain or Senator Obama care about these horrible projections, and shouldn’t we make sure that they are added to their agendas?

Under the guise of "good news for minorities" and the prospect of "greater diversity" in this country, the Census Bureau has just told us that we and our children are expected to die with a great deal more frequency and at a whole lot younger age than virtually everybody else in this country for the next 42 years.

Are we o.k. with that, or doesn't anyone really care?


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