“The End of Whiteness”
January 7th, 2009Good article by Hua Hsu in the Atlantic on the changing dynamic of race and culture in America. Especially good treatment of what “whiteness” means in America’s changing demographic makeup.
As a purely demographic matter, then, the “white America” that Lothrop Stoddard believed in so fervently may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still. But where the culture is concerned, it’s already all but finished. Instead of the long-standing model of assimilation toward a common center, the culture is being remade in the image of white America’s multiethnic, multicolored heirs.
The article is good in that it doesn’t lose sight of entrenched inequalities, and sees the variety of “white” responses to demographic shift (and power shift, as “white” people come to terms with it), from self-denial and identity crisis to defensive withdrawal into identity groups. But it’s ultimately optimistic, as am I, about the potential for a new era of respect for individuals as individuals, and the democratization of American culture.
But maybe this is merely how it used to be—maybe this is already an outdated way of looking at things. “You have a lot of young adults going into a more diverse world,” Carter remarks. For the young Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s, culture is something to be taken apart and remade in their own image. “We came along in a generation that didn’t have to follow that path of race,” he goes on. “We saw something different.” This moment was not the end of white America; it was not the end of anything. It was a bridge, and we crossed it.