With CHARLIE HARPER

THE government has announced that preparations are well underway for the next Bahamian national census. An estimated 119,000 households are due to be surveyed over the first three months of 2022. Ho-hum?

Not in the US. As the results of the 2020 American census are clearly emerging and tabulation is nearing completion, several significant trends are apparent.

What has properly earned the most attention is the striking decline in the white population in America. The white share of population dipped by as much as 30 percent in many localities all over the country, and prognosticators now predict the US will become a “majority-minority” nation within less than 20 years.

According to recently released federal census data, Hispanics accounted for about half the country’s population growth over the past decade, up by about 23 percent. The Asian population also grew faster than many had anticipated, rising by about 36 percent, an increase that made up nearly a fifth of the country’s total population growth. Census data show nearly one in four Americans now reports that they are either Hispanic or Asian.

The American black population grew by six percent from 2010-2020, an increase that represented about a tenth of the country’s growth. Americans who identified as non-Hispanic and multi-racial rose the fastest, more than doubling to 13.5 million from six million.

Meanwhile, the white population, in absolute numbers, declined for the first time in the country’s history. The state of Maryland has already become a majority-minority state. Most data suggest that in Maryland and many other states, the rise in “non-white” population is largely attributable to a continuing surge in Hispanic or Asian populations.

Other states that have experienced large dips in the percentage of their white population include Florida, Texas, California, Washington, Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts. With the exception of the first two of those, all are generally solidly blue states that consistently support Democratic candidates.

More broadly, as the percentage of white population drops in many areas, racial and ethnic diversity has correspondingly increased. A glance at a map depicting demographic trends reveals a broad swath of increasing diversity extending south and westward from Washington and Baltimore in the northeast across the entire South and Southwest and up the central valley of California all the way to San Francisco.

New England, the Midwest and much of the intermountain West remain solidly white-majority areas.

Over 80 percent of major metropolitan areas experienced solid population gains, especially in the South and Southwest. New York City remains America’s largest city and Los Angeles keeps its second position, but Houston solidified its third spot and Phoenix has become the fifth largest US city, surpassing Philadelphia. Chicago stays in fourth place.

Considering that American blacks and members of the national US teachers’ union continue to be among the most solidly reliable of Democratic voting blocs, it may come as a surprise that most African American majority communities are arrayed in a seaboard crescent ranging from Washington around to New Orleans and up the Mississippi River valley as far as Memphis.

It might be surprising in that every single state in that crescent except Virginia is either solidly Republican or red-purple in political tendencies.

This, of course, explains the urgent, even desperate attempts to restrict minority voting rights by state legislatures in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Texas and the Deep South.

Gerrymandered congressional and state legislative district boundaries all over America continue to frustrate attempts to ensure fair and equitable voting and representation. That is not especially new – nor is it limited to Republican Party machinations.

But the discouraging reality is the GOP is increasingly identified with white power and its retention by an ethnic group whose birthrates and overall demographic strength are dwindling.

However, there is a growing hypothesis that the espousal of white supremacy, overt nativism and only slightly less overt racism by opportunistic Republican and other politicians is nothing more than a slogan – and not an unprecedented one, either.

A recent article in the New York Times by a George Mason University professor named Justin Gest offers a good synopsis of this perspective.

“Stoking fears of white decline reinforces the myth that this whiteness always included all who now identify with it — as if the Irish had never been demonized, as if Italians had never endured discrimination, as if Jews had never been excluded. Through a historical lens, being white in America today is like belonging to a once-exclusive social club that had to loosen its membership criteria to stay afloat,” Gest writes.

“From 1845 to 1854, a wave of Irish people arrived on the East Coast that outnumbered immigrants from all other countries since 1776 combined. The resulting backlash created a wave of support for the xenophobic Know Nothing movement and its nativist American Party.”

Gest and other students of the complex history of American immigration have cited some of the late 19th Century writings of future President Theodore Roosevelt, who is often viewed as the ultimate disciple of trans-continental American expansion in the 1800s, to provide perspective on what we are today witnessing.

Gest writes that “in Roosevelt’s understanding, Americans were made by their encounters with the wilderness and their cultivation of strength, individualism and democratic community — their commitment to a set of principles. For Roosevelt, the new ethnicities admitted into the United States were not entitled to their American identity; it was to be earned.”

As Gest points out, there is no frontier anymore, “but the grind of modern capitalism is just as stern a forge for fashioning American identity.”

“There is no future in which white people disappear from America, but there is also no future in which the understanding of whiteness stays the same,” Gest concludes.

A world of worries

Now that the initial shock and drama of President Joe Biden’s decision to finally get the US out of Afghanistan has begun to wane, how do you feel about the entire situation?

Do you still feel sympathy for the women and girls, American and Allied-employed translators and other assistants, patriotic members of the prior Afghan administration, police, military and civil service who face repression, retaliation and perhaps summary execution under the new Taliban regime?

But are you also beginning to feel weariness about the situation? Have you heard enough about the tragic evolution of events far away in a remote land where democratic traditions like ours have historically seemed to enjoy as much chance of sustained success as they would have on the moon?

After all, we have a real time tragedy right here in our backyard. The seemingly eternal run of bad luck in neighbouring Haiti, from whence many hard-working emigres continue to underpin our economy and society in The Bahamas, is sadly continuing.

Many Bahamians have commendably risen to the new challenges posed by Haiti’s continuing misfortunes. That is to be heartily applauded, and such unselfish dedication to the plight of others represents the best of us.

Meantime, we have our own problems. The COVID situation in America is increasingly worrisome. The US announcement of a new restrictive travel caution for its citizens planning a Bahamian visit is doubtless the product of efforts by well-meaning officials trying to do their jobs.

But the protests by our government ministers and officials are also well-founded. We should all be concerned as we watch an ambitious Florida governor persist in statements and policies that will likely further exacerbate public health conditions across the Gulf Stream from us.

Still, the news from the US is not all bad. Congressional approval of a massive new American infrastructure bill should represent a healthy shot in the arm for the US economy, and as employment levels rise and optimism is rekindled, Americans will hopefully resume their visits to The Bahamas.

Other potentially transformative Biden legislation also bodes well for a less turbulent America. The fate of proposals to buttress and expand the social and economic safety net for poor Americans still hangs in the balance in Washington, but it does seem like some positive change is inevitable.

What stabilises America should help The Bahamas. In the coming weeks, we will hopefully witness an ebbing of the media emphasis on distant, tragic distractions in favour of a renewed focus on public health emergencies and political, social and economic distress right next door to us.