“Preparing for the Browning of America” by Daniella Gibbs Leger is an
interesting article because it discusses what the implications of the browning
of America will be in the near future. Meanwhile, the article “The Changing
Face of America: Time-lapse map reveals how non-whites will become the majority
in U.S. within 30 Years” by the Daily Mail Reporter approached the issue of the
browning of America in a more visual way to demonstrate what the projections
actually look like. The second approached the issue by providing a lot more
detailed statistics about what will actually occur. Before goggling the term “Browning
of America”, I never realized how much the majority of the population in the
United States was actually shifting. Being from northern California, I’ve seen
in recent years the growing number of Latinos, but it never really occurred to
me that the population has been shifting across the United States. One of the
most interesting statistics that I stumbled upon had to do with the different
areas that African-American and Hispanics are most densely populated. The Daily
Mail Reporter writes, “The U.S. black and Hispanic populations are mostly
concentrated in the South – but whereas the black population is centered in the
Southeast, Hispanics are mostly in the Southwest” (Daily Mail Reporter). This
statistic really stood out to me because you never realize that these
populations live on completely different sides of the country. Why is it that
both groups are most densely populated in the South? The maps that are shown on
the second link are especially depictive of these trends. I also found the
second article interesting in that it incorporated the opinions of individuals
on the trend of the browning of America. I found a quote by an Asian American
especially interesting. The Daily Mail Reporter shares, “Another commentator
added: ‘I am Chinese American and I objected to the grouping under Asian as
coloured…Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are not coloured. Our complexion is
white if not whiter than Caucasians’” (Daily Mail Reporter). Are they
classified as being a part of the browning of America simply because they are a
minority group? In that sense, are all groups that are considered to be apart
of the minority currently going to be classified under this notion of the
browning of America? I think if this term is to be widely accepted, I think
there needs to be a common definition of what it means for our nation to be
browning---what groups are classified under this movement?
Both articles
stressed the importance of the change in government and funding that needs to
take place in order to keep the standard of living up in this country once the “browning
of America” turns into being the majority of this country. Leger writes, “As we
noted in a recent report, Hispanics and especially African-Americans felt the
brunt of the economic downturn and are recovering at a pace slower than whites
And if we don’t address these disparities, as the country becomes more diverse,
it will have a negative impact on our economy” (Leger). I found this
observation to be especially interesting as both articles touched on the
importance of reforming education, health care and reducing poverty rates. If
this kind of change does not occur, soon our economy will suffer even more as
these groups will become the majority. Leger also made a great observation
about how the United States is going to face the future different from other
countries. Leger observes, “If you look at places like Japan and some European
countries, they have a rapidly aging work force with a diminishing number of
young people to take their place. Thanks to our booming youth population, we
will not face that issue. And our booming youth population is due almost
entirely to communities of color” (Leger).
How interesting! If the United States didn’t have these colored
communities that were booming in population growth, then the United States
would have negative population growth. I never really thought of this situation
that way. If you are to look at Japan, they are a very homogeneous population
and that fact that all of there people are very affluent and often put their
career before having a family probably greatly contributes to their population
decline. This is not the case in the United States with the colored groups—and this
is not to say that they are not educated or not going to the universities – but
rather that these groups have strong tradition values of family which probably
contributes to their continued population growth that will soon over take the
white population as the majority.
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