End of White America: Should We Care?

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Is it time to start saying goodbye to majority-white America? Maybe, according to census data and estimates out on Thursday.

The highlights that are getting the most attention: a prediction that, based on current rates of growth, whites in the under-5 age group are expected to slip to a minority this year or next; and another that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of all children under 18.

Plus, there’s the finding that last year, for the first time, more non-Hispanic white people died than were born. And a reiteration of the prediction that the country’s white majority will likely be minority by 2043.

The news inspired Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan to write the tongue-in-cheek “Weep, Weep, for White America Is Dying” (“It is all very scary and sad. So please be sensitive on this somber day. If you see a white American such as Dick Cheney or Gawker staff writer Max Read crying today, embrace them in sympathy. They are contemplating perdición,” he says), but no doubt there are some people out there who are legitimately fretting about these changes to what they know as the “real” America.

And what about nonwhite people? Are we supposed to be celebrating or something? That would be a little premature (and probably a lot misguided), according to the thinkers and leaders The Root spoke to for ourBrowner America series on America’s demographic shifts.

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