By Winkie Chan
Abstract
Historically, whites have been the lifeblood of the American nation. They instigated its founding, fought its wars, and built it from the ground up. For centuries, they have been the dominant US racial group in terms of power, status, and numbers. However, in some decades—by the tentative year 2042—the American population is projected to lose its non-Hispanic white majority. As anti-minority anxieties wrack a demographic supposedly allied with the advancement of less advantaged, non-White minorities—Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans—popular literature finds that White Americans are feeling increasingly intimidated by a diversifying America. This paper evaluates how an emerging majority-minority US population threatens the White American identity—historically rooted in societal dominance and superiority—and contributes to negative anti-minority sentiment, in conjunction with the phenomenon of White backlash in 21st century America. Primary conclusions imply strong national racial tensions as white Americans perceive growing minority populations to challenge their supreme position in the US societal hierarchy, resulting in outgroup bias and ingroup defensiveness, as well as an inclination to preserve White societal status through extreme methods.
Keywords: Non-Hispanic White Majority, Shifting Racial Demographics, Majority-Minority Population, White American Identity, Anti-Minority, White Backlash, Racial Tensions
Introduction
“To those accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
Today, nearly 40% of Americans are people of color (PoC), including Black, Asian, Latino, and other racially minoritized individuals (Pérez, 2021). Projections indicating that the U.S. will soon be will soon be a “majority-minority” nation with racial minority Americans outnumbering non-Hispanic white Americans by 2042 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008), have been widely heralded by civilians and academics alike. Although some may view this diversification positively, various empirical studies suggest that many white Americans are likely to perceive this demographic shift as a threat to their status as the dominant racial group in the United States (Craig & Richeson, 2014a); white people, after all, have long held more power and prestige than PoC (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Despite extensive interest, the threat of changing racial demographics to white Americans has yet to be applied in a real-world context, specifically, with the consideration of existing white responses to perceived minority group growth and correlated racial progress in American society. This paper sets out to address this research gap. In addition, it seeks to determine the role of changing racial demographics in producing threatened white Americans and frames induced responses against the social-psychological backdrop of white privilege versus racial empowerment. Collectively, it offers possible implications for future racial relations in the US.
Defining Whiteness
Conventionally, the term “White” describes a racial category, referring to a group of individuals who share common European ancestry. In particular, the White American identity is assigned with the consideration of one additional factor; under US federal government agencies, individuals are defined as White if they self-identify as racially White and ethnically non-Hispanic (Poston & Sáenz, 2017).
The Formation of a ‘White America’
When the US was established as a country in 1776, Whites comprised roughly 80 percent of the population. By 1920, their share had risen to 90 percent, where it stood until 1950 (Poston & Bouvier, 2017). In 2022, White non-Hispanics persisted as America’s largest racial demographic at 58.9 percent (USA Facts, 2022). The US’ White numerical majority can be attributed to historical patterns of European-dominant immigration. Two of America’s three great waves of immigration are linked to European movement: (1) the Northern European Wave (1840-1889) saw about 90 percent of total US immigration come from Europe, with roughly 80 percent originating in North/West Europe; (2) the Southern/Eastern Europe Wave (1890-1919) witnessed again, about 90 percent of total US immigration come from Europe, with nearly 60 percent originating in South/East Europe (Moslimani & Passel, 2024).
However, it is far too narrow to characterize the White American identity in ancestral terms. In order to understand how the Whiteness became synonymous with societal dominance in the U.S., this study further introduces a historical perspective. When the first Africans arrived at the newly minted colony of Virginia, there were no ‘White’ people there; nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years (Facing History & Ourselves, 2016). According to the source, legal distinctions between “Black” and “White” inhabitants were only officially established in the colony following Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676-1677, after which people of African descent became bound to hereditary slavery while poor indentured White servants and farmers received novel rights and status. European colonial authority thus formed the American White race and reserved superior treatment for its members rich and poor, differentiating the powerful and the powerless not by wealth, but by skin color. Socially, White settlers were exalted as a separate class that possessed greater freedom, power, and mobility; early claim to influential roles in policy writing and governance enabled American Whites to establish an enduring societal system that would operate in their self-interests.
The Contemporary Identity of White Americans
White Americans are privileged. Whereas other non-White minority groups struggle against systemic and structural racism—forms of racism “so embedded that [they] often [are] assumed to reflect the natural, inevitable order of things” (Braveman et al., 2022)—White Americans are considered their beneficiaries. In “White Privilege, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (1989), Peggy McIntosh describes being taught about racism as “individual acts of meanness” that put others at a disadvantage, but not being taught to see the “invisible systems conferring [White] dominance” and one of its corollary aspects that puts Whites at an advantage: white privilege. In schooling, McIntosh asserts, she—a White American—was neither taught to be an oppressor, an unfairly advantaged person, or a participant in a damaged culture.
However invisible the effects of white privilege may be to White Americans, this source of unearned power, conferred systemically, contributes to the racial gap between the White majority and non-White minorities in the US. Simply put, White Americans, by default, are more likely to succeed. According to the Economic Policy Institute (2022), Black, Hispanic, and Alaska Native (AIAN) individuals are still much more likely to be incarcerated than white people and have significantly higher unemployment rates compared to Whites, at every level of educational attainment. Additionally, under the US Department of the Treasury, Bowdler & Harris (2022) found that people of color (Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians/Alaska Natives) were more likely to be overrepresented in high-poverty neighborhoods, less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree, and have considerably lower earnings than White adults. This unequal distribution of resources, power, and economic opportunity across races in American society is largely attributed to existing policies that hinder minority access to the labor market, housing, and infrastructure etc. (Bowdler & Harris 2022), as well as the overrepresentation of whites across all dimensions of society—political, economic, cultural—especially in positions of power, with the ability to maintain white privilege through laws, hiring practices, discipline procedures and so on (Collins, 2018).
Moreover, white privilege can refer to how White individuals benefit from the Whiteness of the “norm” in American society. Indeed, as White practices, beliefs, and culture developed into the standard in the United States, public spaces and goods catered to one race (e.g. first-aid kits having “flesh-colored” Band-Aids that only match the skin tone of White people, a grocery store stocking food options that reflect the cultural traditions of most White people), as if the White American is the prototypical American and the White American identity representative of that of US society as a whole (Collins, 2018). “Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average” (McIntosh, 1989), but in fact, they form the ideal norm that non-White minorities consistently do not and cannot meet.
Demographic Changes to the US White Majority
In a historic first, the 2020 Census showed that the U.S. had a shrinking non-Hispanic White population that identified with a single race; it had fallen 3%—or was about 5.1 million people down—from 2010 to 2020 (Krogstad et al., 2021). The decline was widespread geographically, with 35 states seeing drops in their non-Hispanic White populations.
This decline has three identified causes. Firstly, White births are being outnumbered by minority births. White women have an average of 1.7 children over their lifetimes compared to Latina women averaging 2.2 (Poston & Bouvier, 2017). The total fertility rates (TFRs) of Blacks, Asians and American Indians are in between, meaning that White births sit numerically on the lowest end of the scale. Secondly, higher mortality rates are associated with the U.S.’ aging White population (Sáenz & Johnson, n.d.). Only 10% of all the people who were members of racial and ethnic minority populations were age 65 and older in 2019 compared to 21% of the non-Hispanic white population (Administration for Community Living, 2020). Thirdly, U.S. immigrant populations are shifting increasingly toward non-white countries of origin. In 2022, single-race Asians formed the largest racial demographic in U.S. immigration (Batalova, 2024). In the same year, Europeans comprised only 10 percent of the 46.2 million immigrants living in the United States, whereas those from the Americas and Asia constituted 52 percent and 31 percent respectively (Oyolola & Batalova, 2024).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau Projections (2008), the country's non-Hispanic White population will fall below 50% in the year 2042. In effect, after 2042, the United States will be known as a majority-minority, in which more than half of its population will represent non-White minorities.
Predicting White Response to Majority-Minority
Longstanding theoretical work posits minority group size as a common proxy for estimating its political and economic power; larger or growing minority groups are seen to elicit feelings of threat in the dominant majority (Craig et al., 2017). It can be claimed that as non-White minorities grow in numbers, White Americans perceive a simultaneous growth in power, and an imminent threat to the societal structure that currently benefits them. As previously identified, the White American identity and its associated privileges rest upon the dominant White ownership of political, institutional, and economic power in society. A non-White majority, with increasing “political and economic power”, therefore challenges the White American identity and status.
In recent experimental work, the prospect of a majority-minority US population has induced threat responses from White Americans, who prominently display more in-group protective and out-group antagonistic attitudes. For instance, White Americans who read an article portraying a future in which their racial group will compose less than 50% of the national population (vs. various control conditions) were more likely to perceive that Whites’ societal status is under threat, leading to stronger racial identification (preference for interactions within their own racial group) and more negative intergroup emotions, such as feeling anger and fear toward ethnic minorities (Outten et al, 2012). Among other negative effects, racial demographic shift salience triggers stronger explicit and implicit antiminority prejudice (Craig & Richeson, 2014a), social distance towards minorities (Bai & Federico, 2020), discrimination towards racial outgroups (Abascal, 2015), and an expectation among White people that they will become targets of discrimination in the future (Craig & Richeson, 2017).
Furthermore, beyond their impact on intergroup attitudes and emotions, anticipated increases in national diversity can influence Whites’ political ideology regarding race-related political issues: irrespective of political affiliation, Whites express (a) less support for diversity (Danbold & Huo, 2015); (b) more racial resentment and support for the Tea Party, a White nationalist movement famous for pursuing racist policy priorities (Willer et al., 2016); and (c) more support for Donald Trump and anti-immigrant policies (Major et al, 2016). Overall, when changing national racial demographics are made salient, White Americans seek to secure their threatened status (and by extension, identity) through endorsing exclusionary and white-nationalistic ideals.
Actual White Response to Shifting Racial Demographics
In recent years, “White backlash” has been used to delineate White resistance in the push for racial equality, in which White people, imagining themselves on the margins, are taken ahold by “violent White nationalism”, or advocate for a physical White state through violent means (Dirks, 2022). In moments of racial advancement, journalist Wesley Lowery affirms, America’s White majority fears that developments will come at their own expense, and lashes out with rhetoric, with policy, along with violence (Kaplan, 2023). He further implies that the prediction of America becoming a minority-majority country fuels such extremist behavior.
2023 saw a 50 percent surge in White supremacy hate groups and a record number of White supremacist propaganda incidents, amounting to a total of 7567 cases (Murray, 2024) (Anti-Defamation League, 2024). Coincidentally, such offensive—or one could say, defensive—reactions come at a time when America is imminently approaching a majority-minority population. Ostensibly, White Americans have validated the popular hypothesis: confronted with growing minorities, they experience feelings of threat and hostility, and are in turn, motivated to strengthen their societal status (e.g. by reinforcing existing systems that uphold white privilege), even at the expense of racial equality.
It is widely believed that the US Capitol Attack of January 6, 2021, was intended to be an outward assertion of White dominance in the face of growing and thus, more powerful minorities. Enraged by the role of the Black vote in cinching Biden’s election win, the Capitol insurrectionists had rioted in support of Donald Trump—a politician differentiated by his pro-White sentiments—and were notably united under the rallying cry of “Stop the Steal”, in reference to cities with high Black populations that “broke for Biden” (Tensley, 2021). This perceived loss of power and status, in part due to a rising minority with rising societal recognition, prompted White Americans to act destructively with the aim of defending their historical position as the privileged majority. It is subsequently suggested that the prospective majority-minority US population will not be met peacefully by White Americans (especially those carrying the zero-sum belief that a gain by one group comes at the expense of their own), so long as a greater population size is affiliated with a greater scope of authority, and hence threatening to the conventional White status and its built-in advantages. This conclusion is further validated by research stating that participants in the Capitol attack were more likely to come from areas that experienced more significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population (Jefferson & Ray, 2022).
Conclusion
Altogether, examinations of White Americans’ responses to anticipated and existing racial demographic shifts imply a more fragmented, racially divided future for the United States. Experimental studies demonstrate that a non-white majority demographic will undermine Whites’ present monopoly on power and their claim to superior status, producing negative emotional responses directed at the perceived “threat(s)” (see: minority groups), ultimately resulting in hostile intergroup relations and an uncooperative racial climate. Analyzed real-life instances verify the aforementioned outcomes and additionally clarify the extent of White pushback against the potential loss of societal status, by namely indicating a willingness to resort to violence and force in order to retain said status. Collectively, this paper highlights the significance of affirming the White American identity amidst changing US demographics and calls for greater understanding on the social-psychological factors that advance and hinder racial dynamics in 21st century America.
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