(CNN) -
Cutting taxes on the rich helps the poor.
There is no such thing as a Republican or Democratic judge.
Climate change is a hoax.
Some political myths refuse to die even though all the evidence shows otherwise.
Here's another one:
When whites are no longer in the majority, racism will fade and America will "never be a white country again."
This myth was recently reinforced when the 2020 US Census report revealed that people who identify as white only declined for the first time since the census began in 1790. Most Americans under the age of 18 are now people. of color and people who identify as multiracial increased by 276% over the last decade.
These census figures seemed to validate a common assumption: The United States is on track to become a rainbow nation by 2045, when whites are expected to become a minority.
That year has been described as "a countdown to the white apocalypse" and "dire" news for white supremacists. "Two commentators even predicted that the" white majority will soon disappear forever "in America. Now it is taken for granted. that the "Browning of America" will lead to the erosion of white supremacism.
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Lawmakers predicted the growing racial divide more than 50 years before George Floyd's death.
Why didn't the solution run?
I used to believe those predictions.
Now I have a different conclusion:
Never underestimate the adaptability of white supremacism.
The assumption that more racial diversity equals more racial equality is a dangerous myth.
Racial diversity can function as a cover-up device, hiding the most powerful forms of white supremacism while giving the appearance of racial progress.
Racism is likely to remain as entrenched in a darker America as it is now.
It will still be white supremacism, but with a tan.
My personal interest in a multiracial America
I don't like to pose such a pessimistic scenario, partly for personal reasons.
I want to believe that my country is on the edge of this New World where there will be such a rich mix of skin tones, hair textures and racially ambiguous people that racism will lose its sting.
My family is a symbol of these demographic changes.
My mother is Irish;
my father was black.
My wife is an immigrant from Central America with a biracial mother and a "ladino" white father who was Jewish and Castilian.
My stepmother is Chilean and half of my brothers are Afro-Latino.
I have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed relative who goes around the world as a young white man, but is actually Afro-Latino.
And I have another black relative who went to court to claim he was white (lost).
The 2020 census could have used my family portrait as a poster.
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There is a yearning embedded in my DNA that a demographic tide will overcome white supremacism: the belief that whites are superior and must maintain political, social, and economic power over other races.
This longing is not driven by some desire that people of color one day rule over whites.
It is a hope for a more just America, a hope that we can somehow escape the tribalism that tore apart other countries.
That hope was captured by one of the most skilled commentators on race in America, in a passage I can't seem to forget.
After President Obama was reelected in 2012, David Simon, creator of the HBO series "The Wire," wrote:
"America will soon belong to the men and women - black and white, Latino, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and atheist, gay and straight - who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the feeling that they are in a world. of a certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. "
New U.S. citizens meet at a naturalization ceremony on March 20, 2018 in Los Angeles.
The ceremony welcomed more than 7,200 immigrants from more than 100 countries who took the oath of citizenship and pledged allegiance to the American flag.
Simon added that "this may be the last [presidential] election in which anyone but a fool tries to play - at the national level, at least - the cards of racial exclusion, of fear of immigrants ..."
We know what happened next: Donald Trump was elected president.
White supremacists marched on Charlottesville.
Protesters waved Confederate flags during the January 6 uprising at the United States Capitol.
The list goes on.
It turns out that the reports of the disappearance of white supremacism were exaggerated.
Whiteness is elastic
White supremacism isn't just tougher than many assume.
It is also elastic.
Consider how the whiteness has been defined.
It's a prime example of how white supremacism adapts.
The census suggests that white Americans will be a minority by 2045, but as several commentators have already noted, that date can easily be postponed.
Whiteness is not a fixed identity;
It's like candy - it expands to accommodate new members, if they look right.
In books like "Working Toward Whiteness" and "How the Irish Got White", scholars have argued that the definition of whiteness has been expanded to include the Irish, Italians and Jews, groups that were not once considered completely white. in United States.
A group of Italian immigrants ready to be processed on Ellis Island in New York in 1905.
The United States has broadened its definition of white people throughout history, enough to maintain power over black, Asian and Latino people, writes political scientist Justin Gest in a recent essay, "What the Change of ' minority majority 'really means to America'.
"Through a historical lens, being white in America today is like belonging to a once exclusive social club that had to relax its membership criteria to stay afloat," Gest writes.
Images from the protests reveal America's racial hierarchy
Why do so many racial groups gravitate toward whiteness?
The answer is pragmatic and psychological.
It is due to a racial hierarchy that places whiter-looking people at the top and darker-skinned people at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.
"Sometimes looking white puts money right in your pockets," says Tanya K. Hernández, author of the forthcoming book "Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Fight for Equality."
"You have access to jobs, opportunities and you are seen as competent. But there is also a psychological benefit, that feeling of having an enhanced status, of being part of the whiteness."
A new citizen flies an American flag as he leaves a naturalization ceremony on March 20, 2018 in Los Angeles.
This racial hierarchy is the basis of white supremacism.
Europeans created it about 500 years ago to justify slavery and colonialism.
This hierarchy is where we get the modern conception of race: how a person's inherent worth, intelligence, or attractiveness can be determined by their skin pigmentation.
For those who worry about the "disappearance of the white majority", I say look at the story:
The number and type of people who define themselves as white may change, but the status and power that comes with being white remains the same.
The future of whiteness could be with Latinos
It is a difficult truth for me to accept, because I see that racial hierarchy working within my family.
I have young male relatives who appear black to the world and one who appears white.
They might as well live in different universes.
One is an artistic teenager with curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin who is already more physically imposing than most men.
I call him an "undercover brother."
A priest greets the faithful after leading a church service in Spanish in West Liberty, Iowa, on August 25, 2019.
When a classmate tried unsuccessfully to get suspended accusing him of bullying her, I found myself saying to my wife, "Thank God he looks white."
If the same accusation had been made against a darker relative of mine, the result might have been different.
My relative is a proud Afro-Latino.
His mother teaches him about his heritage.
But I wonder when he becomes an adult — and competes for jobs and deals with the police — if he will come to the same conclusion as me: "Thank God, I look white."
Someday you may even mark "White" on your census forms.
Other Latin Americans have already made the same decision.
This is another way the whiteness (w
hiteness)
retains its dominance.
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In the 2010 census, for example, researchers found that some 1.2 million Americans who had identified themselves as "of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin" a decade earlier had changed their race from "some other race" to " White".
"The data also casts doubt on whether the United States is destined to become a so-called minority majority nation, where whites represent a minority of the nation's population," said The New York Times.
"Those projections assume that Hispanics are not white, but if Hispanics ultimately identify as white Americans, then whites will remain the majority for the foreseeable future."
However, that number plummeted in the 2020 census. It revealed a drastic drop in the number of Latinos or Hispanics who identify as white.
That drop may be due to the Black Lives Matter protests and former President Trump's well-documented hostility toward non-white immigrants and his administration's failed attempt to reduce the Latino count by tampering with the 2020 census.
An aide uses buttons in Spanish during a campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff in Lilburn, Georgia, on December 7, 2020.
The future of whiteness in America may be in the hands of Latinos.
It could go either way.
One study suggests that Latino identity fades across generations as immigrant connections fade.
If large numbers of Latinos identify as white in the future, whiteness will expand.
The enhanced status and socioeconomic benefits that come from identifying as white will be too tempting for many to ignore.
Racism in unexpected places
The link between whiteness and status is already a reality in some Latin American countries.
In places like Brazil and Cuba, people of mixed race and interracial marriages are common.
Latin Americans tend to think of themselves not in terms of race, but of nationality.
However, discrimination against indigenous peoples and dark-skinned people is common there and in many other Latin American countries.
There is still a widespread belief that the whiter a person looks, the better it is for them.
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These countries offer evidence that a country can have a large and expanding population of black, brown, and multiracial people, and still be governed by the same racial hierarchy that slavery and colonialism gave us.
Think of Brazil.
It is home to more people of African descent than any other country outside of Africa, and approximately 40% of Brazilians identify as mestizo.
People attend a theatrical performance on April 18, 2015, in Salvador, Brazil.
But the economic and educational prospects of many Brazilians are still determined by colorism - the notion that a person's inherent worth is determined by the color of their skin, according to a Foreign Policy article that analyzed the country's racial landscape.
About 80% of one percent of the country are white, according to the article.
"Today, Brazilians see themselves as belonging to a spectrum of skin colors with a dizzying variety of names: burnt white, brown, chestnut, light brown, black and copper," Cleuci De Oliveira wrote in the article.
"What ultimately ties these definitions together is the awareness that the less 'black' a person looks, the better."
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In a recent twist, the percentage of Brazilians who identify as black or mixed race has increased slightly due to affirmative action policies and because they identify with the racial protests in the United States that followed the assassination of George Floyd.
Cuba also has a complex history with race.
Racism is often described as a relic of capitalism in the communist country.
Hernández, the author, says that the late ruler of the country, Fidel Castro, prohibited racial discrimination and political parties built along racial lines.
But although racism is prohibited by law in Cuba, it is "alive in the streets."
The country's Afro-Cuban population is still excluded from most elite circles, which are dominated by Anglo-looking Cubans.
Cubans queue to buy food in Havana on March 3, 2021.
"What we have is a highly educated Afro-Cuban population, and yet there is a glass ceiling," says Hernández, who is also a professor at Fordham University School of Law in New York City.
"There is still a penalty for blackness where it can only go so far."
What happened in some Latin American countries can easily happen in the United States.
There will be cosmetic changes in our racial makeup: more black, brown, and multiracial people.
But the dominant group will remain white people, however, it can be defined by 2045.
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We will have arrived at what one sociologist calls the "Latin Americanization of the race" in the United States.
There will be more, not less, racial inequality in America because people will cite the nation's growing diversity to "drown out" those voices of darker-skinned people still fighting for racial justice, says Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author. from "Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America."
"The apparent blessing of 'not seeing race' will become a curse for those who fight for racial justice for years to come," Bonilla-Silva wrote.
You can no longer fight racism if everyone believes that your country has overcome race.
Multiracial People Won't Save America
Some people pin their hopes for a more racially tolerant future on multiracial people.
That problem comes even closer to home.
I am old enough to remember when biracial children were treated as objects of pity, confused "nuts" that neither whites nor blacks accepted.
That belief is where we get the myth of the "tragic mulatto" reflected in Hollywood movies like "Imitation of Life".
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The tragic mulatto, however, has become what I call the "magical mulatto."
Being biracial now is great.
People like Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, golfer Tiger Woods, and director Jordan Peele are now seen as inspiring figures.
We are often portrayed as the vanguard of a new racial order in which interracial couples and their children will weaken white supremacism until it collapses.
Sheryll Cashin, author of "Loving: America's Interracial Intimacy and the Threat to White Supremacism," once said that people who seek interracial relationships "are our best hope for racial understanding" because they encourage white Americans to empathize with other races.
Waizeru Johnson holds her husband's hand as she passes a group of people celebrating Juneteenth at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington on June 19, 2021.
"Eventually, a critical mass of white people will accept the loss of the centrality of whiteness," Cashin wrote in a New York Times essay.
"When enough whites can accept being one voice among many in a robust democracy, politics in America could finally become functional."
But the explosive growth of Americans now identifying as multiracial could also be used to reinforce racial inequality.
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How?
It depends on how we check the box.
During his first term in office, President Obama made headlines when he marked his race as "African American" in the 2010 census.
He may have marked "some other race" because his mother was white, but there are political ramifications for marking "black" on the census and other forms.
Racial ranking numbers are a great tool for uncovering the hidden hand of white supremacism: systemic racism.
These numbers are used to enforce civil rights laws, track discrimination, and protect voting rights.
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The United States Department of Justice, for example, relied on racial classification statistics in its 2015 report to detail how the Ferguson, Missouri city government systematically violated the constitutional rights of its black residents.
Police subjected black citizens in Ferguson to a disproportionate share of unjustified traffic stops, arrests and "use of force" incidents, according to the report.
However, this pattern of racial discrimination would not have been discovered if federal officials did not have records of the number of black people in Ferguson.
"The Census is not an invitation to express oneself," says Hernández.
"Racial data is critical to enforcing our civil rights laws."
A Confederate flag flies outside a home on April 17, 2021, in Langtry, Texas.
However, there has long been a debate in the multiracial community about how we express ourselves.
Some say that we should not limit our choice to the black box, but rather that we should select "some other race", or even white.
That debate broke out at the dinner table with my father one day.
When I told him that I define myself as black, he put down his fork in anger and raised his voice.
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"When you say that you are black, you deny your mother," he said.
I didn't know how to explain to my father that if more multiracial people with a black father checked the "some other race" box, it might be easier for institutions to hide racism.
It is a sensitive subject, because some multiracial people feel torn between their loyalty to a parent and to a race.
However, the way we check the box may protect white supremacism rather than dismantle its power.
What would true racial progress look like?
Here's the hard truth we must face about the future: We may one day live in an America where there are no racial majorities, but whiteness could still predominate.
However, nothing will change, unless we go after the racial hierarchy that makes whiteness such an exclusive club.
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Eso requiere un cambio radical. Implicaría desarraigar el racismo sistémico arraigado en nuestras escuelas públicas, vecindarios y sistema de justicia. Implicaría un reparto más equitativo del poder y los recursos, no por culpa o compulsión de los blancos, sino por el conocimiento de que "a todos nos va mejor cuando a todos nos va mejor".
En última instancia, requerirá que descartemos la noción moderna de raza, la ficción biológica de que existe algo llamado "persona negra" o "persona blanca" o "persona asiática".
Más diversidad por sí sola no ayudará a Estados Unidos a lograr la igualdad racial, escribe John Blake. Debemos eliminar el racismo sistémico incrustado en instituciones como las escuelas públicas.
El concepto moderno de raza se ha utilizado durante demasiado tiempo para esclavizar y explotar. Como dijo una vez Audre Lorde, poeta y activista: "Las herramientas del maestro nunca desmantelarán la casa del maestro".
Sin embargo, no podemos llegar allí si seguimos subestimando la resistencia del supremacismo blanco. Es un camaleón que puede adaptarse a cualquier entorno.
- Suspenden a un director de Texas luego de que lo acusaran de promover la teoría crítica de la raza
Sobrevivió a una revolución cuyos líderes declararon que "todos los hombres son creados iguales", una Guerra Civil, el movimiento de derechos civiles, varios "ajustes de cuentas raciales" y el primer presidente negro de la nación. Sigue adelante.
De hecho, Estados Unidos puede convertirse en un país de minoría mayoritaria alrededor de 2045. Podemos convertirnos en una nación arcoíris de diferentes identidades raciales, tonos de piel y uniones interraciales.
Pero si no desmantelamos la jerarquía racial que le da estatus y poder a la blancura, esta nueva versión de Estados Unidos no será realmente nueva.
Será solo otra versión actualizada del supremacismo blanco, pero con un bronceado.
Discriminación RacialFamilias interracialesRacismoRaza