![\"\"](\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/images\/delacruz-national-anthem-racist-tweets-sg.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Yesterday a New York Times article<\/a> ran under the headline Census Benchmark for White Americans: More Deaths Than Births<\/em>. I’m guessing that story read something like Tornado Strikes Minutemen Border Patrol Headquarters: Millions in Guns and Ammunition Lost <\/em>among America’s growing ranks of white nationalists.<\/p>\n But, before further panic ensues, the article also made it clear that demographic change is not exactly right around the corner, saying,<\/p>\n The disparity [between white births and deaths] was tiny \u2014 only about 12,000 \u2014 and was more than made up by a gain of 188,000 as a result of immigration from abroad. But the decrease for the year ending July 1, 2012, coupled with the fact that a majority of births in the United States are now to Hispanic, black and Asian mothers, is further evidence that white Americans will become a minority nationwide within about three decades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thirty years to stew in the fear of a brown planet is a pretty good long time. Most white baby boomers won’t feel the change at all, especially since changing demography does not equate to desegregation, nor does it mean that the racial income and wealth gaps will be eradicated. As an April 28, 2013 New York Times article reported<\/a>,<\/p>\n As of 2010, white families, on average, earned about $2 for every $1 that black and Hispanic families earned, a ratio that has remained roughly constant for the last 30 years. But when it comes to wealth \u2014 as measured by assets, like cash savings, homes and retirement accounts, minus debts, like mortgages and credit card balances \u2014 white families have far outpaced black and Hispanic ones. Before the recession, non-Hispanic white families, on average, were about four times as wealthy as nonwhite families…By 2010, whites were about six times as wealthy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The racial wealth gap is growing, not shrinking, even while the percentage of people of color within the population is increasing. And since your parents’ wealth is the strongest indicator of your financial success (and the biggest factor in determining wealth is inheritance) the real advantage of white skin privilege achieved as a result of historically prohibiting property ownership among people of color is increasing.<\/p>\n And, don’t get it twisted, reports that Asian American median household incomes are higher than for whites are deceptive. Median household incomes are only higher because Asian families tend to include more incomes that, measured per capita, are lower than white per capita incomes. And this situation is compounded by the fact that Asian Americans are concentrated in the most expensive cities on the coasts where wages tend to be higher to keep up with the high cost of living. This exaggerates Asian American buying power, creating the impression that we’re richer than we are.<\/p>\n As long as you have the wealth to influence political outcomes, you don’t need to be the numerical majority by race to control politics in the U.S. That’s why the 1% is able to lord it over the 99%, forcing us to cover the losses resulting from their reckless disregard for the majority of us in 2008, even as the majority grew poorer as a result of that same recklessness.<\/p>\n