A well-known Daily Kos writer opined today that the US is hopelessly fractured. I suggest respectfully that the US has always been “fractured” in one way or another. The innovation nowadays is that the European-descended people who have been in control of the US since nearly two centuries before the US broke off from the British Crown, are losing that control and being compelled to share power with others.
What’s causing the loss of control and the subsequent freakouts by the white supremists? Their shrinking slice of the demographics pie. As NPR’s story on the Census Bureau’s 2017 report stated:
America's diversity remains on the rise, with all racial and ethnic minorities growing faster than whites from 2015 to 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau says in a new snapshot of the national population. The agency also found the U.S. median age has risen to nearly 38.
Asian and mixed-race people are the two fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population, the U.S. Census Bureau says. Both groups grew by 3 percent from July 2015 to July 2016. In the same 12 months, the non-Hispanic white population grew by just 5,000 people.
Non-Hispanic whites remain the only segment of the U.S. population where deaths outpace births, the agency reports.
"While all other groups experienced natural increase (having more births than deaths) between 2015 and 2016," the Census says, "the non-Hispanic white alone group experienced a natural decrease of 163,300 nationally."
By 2040, and probably well before, non-Hispanic whites will account for less than 50% of the demographic pie. The power of the bigots among them will have shrunk correspondingly. The battle for control will have been won by the diverse without firing a shot.