“The atheist Muslims are coming to get us! The country is dying!” cries the right, and it is easy to recognize the fear behind the words. Or, in more restrained cases, simply a discomfort, a feeling that things they’ve taken for granted – including a certain definition of American – are changing. And you know what? They’re partly right. They are wrong to be afraid, but they are right that change has come yet again to these shores (although a rather minor one compared to some past).
The final census numbers were released last week, and the country grew by about 10%, adding more than 27 million people to the official count. And many have noted that the number of people identifying as Hispanic or Latino surpassed 50 million. But it is the change over the past ten years that is even more telling: while those who identify as non-Hispanic whites alone increased by 2.3 million, the number of minorities increased by more than ten times that number– by 25 million. Not only that, but this disparity is increasing.
