Don't have an account? To participate in discussions consider signing up!
Sign-up, its free! Close [x]

Benefits

  • okay Create lasting relationships with other like minded women.
  • okay Blogging, let your voice be heard!
  • okay Interact with other women through blogs,questions and groups.
  • okay Photo Album, upload your most recent vacation pictures.
  • okay Contests, Free weekly prize drawing.
  • okay Weekly Newsletter.


The Diversity Train has Arrived


rss feed monnalissa's blog feed

The United States is multi-cultural and ethnically diverse. So, you may ask, why is that news? It is news, in large measure, because nativists and the anti-immigrant lobby in particular, argue that we need to immediately shut our borders lest, we become multi-cultural and ethnically diverse. For better or worse, and I would vehemently argue for better, the U.S. is already a multi-cultural society. The horse, so to speak, has left the barn and closing the gate will not prevent what nativists fear most. The U.S. Census Bureau confirms that minorities now form a much larger part of the American population. As reported recently in the New York Times:

Foreshadowing the nation’s changing makeup, one in four American counties have passed or are approaching the tipping point where black, Hispanic and Asian children constitute a majority of the under-20 population, according to analyses of census figures released Thursday.  

   Racial and ethnic minorities now account for 43 percent of Americans under 20. Among people of all ages, minorities make up at least 40 percent of the population in more than one in six of the nation’s 3,141 counties.  

   The latest population changes by race, ethnicity and age, as of July 1, 2007, were generally marginal compared with the year before. But they confirm the breadth of the nation’s diversity, and suggest that minorities – now about a third of the population – might constitute a majority of all Americans even sooner than projected by census demographers, in 2050.  

Reasons for this emerging diversity will, of course, cause much ink to be spilled, never mind the rancor that will be evinced. But one thing should be unequivocally clear: anyone who argues that immigration alone is causing this shift is quite simply howling at the wind. Nativists cannot speak of “our culture” as if they had some proprietary lock. I am reminded of Woody Guthrie’s song: “This Land is Your Land.”  

   This land is your land, this land is my land  

   From California, to the New York Island  

   From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters  

   This land was made for you and me  

   Chorus  

   The sun comes shining as I was strolling  

   The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling  

   The fog was lifting a voice come chanting  

   This land was made for you and me  

   Chorus  

   As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there  

   And that sign said – no tress passin’  

   But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!  

   Now that side was made for you and me!  

   Chorus  

   In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple  

   Near the relief office – I see my people  

   And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’  

   If this land’s still made for you and me.  

Yes, indeed, some are grumblin’ and wonderin’ if this land’s still made for you and me.



Member Comments

About this author

author


La Leona View blog »



Back to top Back to top