Someday, sooner or later, the United States of America will have more black and brown ethnic minorities combined than people traditionally considered Caucasian or white. The closest estimate is 2040; the "hold up a sec" estimate is more like 2044.
It's got a bunch of white-supremacist panties in a twist, and certain folks on the left end of the political spectrum are citing the coming demographic change as the main reason that Trump and his lackeys have been so hard on both illegal and legal immigrants...and in some cases, even naturalized citizens.
Me, I hope that all the estimates get blown out of the water and the demo shift happens way sooner. Like in 2035. Or how about 2020? And man, I hope that new majority is ready to unite and hit the ground marching, voting, and working like hell. Because that is the only way all the old white farts are going to vacate the halls of power and let the hoi polloi run the country.
I Remember "Schoolhouse Rock"...
When I was a kid, there were a bunch of 2-minute bits that ran during the commercial breaks between cartoons on Saturday mornings. They were collectively known as "Schoolhouse Rock," and they used catchy tunes and fun animation to teach all kinds of things to kids. Most kids of that generation probably learned the Preamble to the Constitution from "Schoolhouse Rock," along with other parts of American history. Plus, there were new-math hacks, grammar usage, science, money and how it worked...wow. It really was a schoolhouse.
But the segment I remember best was the one called "The Great American Melting Pot." It was all about how America wasn't just colonized by the English, but also by the Spaniards, Dutch, and French...and how, later, other people came from many other places to make a better life here (the nationality that gets the most attention is Polish, but I think that's because one of the creators of SR was of Polish descent). The catchiest scene in the segment is the one from the chorus where the Statue of Liberty opens the book she carries to reveal that it's a cookbook, and the recipe for "America" lists many different nationalities as "ingredients."
I saw that segment recently on DVD, and I started crying...both because it's such a beautiful vision, and because we've stopped living up to it. The ugly things I hear on a regular basis regarding immigrants are things I would never have heard as a kid, even in my racist, nowhere home town.
English Only?
It started with language, back in the late 80's: "Why can't these blankety-blank immigrants speak English, for cripes' sake?" (And nowadays, the complaint is that you have a Spanish-language option when you call a company or agency.) But when you've spoken a language from the time you could first form words, you don't realize how hard it is to learn that same language from scratch as an adult. And the less education you have, the harder it is. And English is a language with so many roots, runners and grafts that it's a wonder anyone who comes here manages to learn it at all!
In fact, only a few languages are harder to learn than American English. Magyar (Hungarian) is one, because unlike the Romance languages (like Spanish, French, and Italian), it has almost no European linguistic connections. It has anywhere from 18 to 35 cases, many derived from Latin, and a number of gutteral sounds that a student would find hard to pronounce. Then there's Welsh--that "ll" is nigh on impossible for an adult student. Mandarin has tonal sounds that are treacherous to navigate; get the wrong one, and you could end up speaking nonsense. Or maybe getting your lights punched out.
And of course, there are also a number of African languages that use elaborate clicks as consonants, one of which--Xhosa--is used as the language of Wakanda, the fictional country that is home to the superhero Black Panther. Another, spoken by the Ju'/Hoansi tribe of the Kalahari desert, was spoken by the hero Xi in "The Gods Must Be Crazy."
If you ever tutor ESL (English as a Second Language), you get to see and hear our newcomers struggle with the confusions of English. No wonder some of them give up and let their children (who have little trouble picking up the new language) act as their interpreters.
It Got Worse...
The nineties were no improvement. The things said about immigrants got worse, and for the first time in my life, I had to provide proof of citizenship when I applied for a job! I needed 2 forms of ID--my birth certificate, and a driver's license or passport. Not having one of the latter, I substituted my voter-registration card, and fortunately that was official enough to pass. (Now you can't even vote with one of them...not unless you also have a photo ID!)
Then came the Twin Towers attack, and suddenly all immigrants were suspect--mostly Muslims, but if you even looked Middle Eastern, you were a candidate for harassment. That was when I first heard "send them back." After that came the groundless rumors that terrorists would pretend to be Mexican and cross our southern border and attack us. And that was when the government started talking about fences and walls.
...And Now, It's Silly, Too!
So, as awful as Trump's verbal scours are, they're nothing new. I've heard it for years.
But now, it's gotten just plain silly, too. Not in the fun sense, but in the "this is brainless and unreasonable" sense.
Folks who were little kids when their parents sneaked in? Just as guilty and worthy of deportation as the parents! Never mind that the kids know nothing of the old country, and they don't speak anything but English--send them back!
People who are here illegally, but they've used their time here to work hard and try to fit in? Out with them! But notice that nobody's raiding the houses of idle white people sitting on their asses and drawing SSI on false pretenses. Or rounding up our home-born homeless and putting them to work picking up trash in exchange for "three hots and a cot." No, that's inhumane...but removing a foreigner from the family who loves him and the employer who values his service apparently isn't.
Oh, and it's okay to separate parents and kids when they're just asking for asylum--they haven't even sneaked in, they just walked up and surrendered to ICE and asked to be admitted legally. Time was, their case would have been reviewed, and they probably would have gotten to stay. Not anymore.
(Oh, and by the way...remember when our department for dealing with immigrants was called INS--Immigration and Naturalization Services? Now it's ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Aren't those initials friendly-sounding? Well, the new department is every bit as cold as its acronym.)
Hurry up, 2040!
Well, I, for one, am sick and tired of all this bigotry and suspicion. If this is how white people in power are gonna act, then it's high time for us to step aside. We deserve to sink into the quicksand of obscurity and do what we ought to have done all along: pass the reins on to the next qualified person in line, regardless of race, color or creed. I'm betting those qualified folks are all around us.
And if that means I have to learn Spanish as a Second Language, I'm ready.
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