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U.S. in 2050:
Diverse, but divisions could fester (posted 4/2/98)
By Deborah Mathis / Gannett News Service
Facing The 21st Century WASHINGTON-The U.S. population will be so diverse by 2050 that no race will be able to claim a majority, and the result may be more conflict than conciliation as the scramble for the American Dream intensifies. Unless resources, power and opportunity are shared more broadly than they are now, the various racial and ethnic groups will engage in steady, sometimes fierce competition, demographers and social experts fear. "One of the real dangers is the minority groups run the risk of being played off against each other," said historian John Hope Franklin, chairman of President Clinton's advisory panel on race. He said it's possible blacks, Hispanics, Asians and American Indians will be left to fight over crumbs, while whites-composing about half the population-hoard the advantage. With a birth rate of 1.9 children per female and declining immigration by Europeans, the white population "will stop growing," said Harold L. Hodgkinson, co-director of the Center for Demographic Policy in Washington. It takes a birth rate of 2.1 children per female to sustain a population. Demographers put the white population in 2050 somewhere between 49 percent and 53 percent-a significant drop from the 72.5 percent reported in the 1990 census. Such a steep and rapid decline could provoke rivalries and resistance, said Larry Davis, a professor of social work and psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. "Whites are so accustomed to being in the majority that when the numbers exceed the customary racial ratio, they feel themselves to be psychologically outnumbered," Davis said. "The America as they knew it will be gone," he said. "In the event that something does not really happen to make us mindful of this, we can expect more racial conflict, more balkanization, something more like the Oklahoma City tragedy where extremist groups strike out." Said Hodgkinson, "We've got this big conflict that's building already between black and Hispanic leaders in terms of who represents the dominant minority group. We've always assumed that the big debate is white vs. black, but the most rapidly growing part of the population is neither." The tendency to identify racially and to congregate into racial enclaves could make the one-nation ideal-that is, a race-neutral America-a far-fetched dream, experts say.
Early trends
From The Detroit News, issue of Sunday, March 29, 1998, pg 5a Copyright 1998, The Detroit News INDIGENOUS WOMEN STRENGTHEN FREEDOM IN MEXICO Mexico's indigenous rebellion has finally wrought a lead role on TV. Currently, there is a novella on Spanish-language TV, "Si Tu Supieras Maria Isabel," that features a non-Indian playing a Huichol Indian. This is in a country where Indians play only maids or are featured in commercials about governmental humanitarian projects during election time. Unfortunately, the actress's portrayal of a Huichol could be likened to a brown-face "Amos 'n' Andy." In this program, Maria Isabel is a caricature of an indigenous woman whom the "gente decente" (decent people) snub, speaking to her as a nameless object. Meanwhile, to the south, indigenous women are holding back the army in Chiapas with their bare hands, creating human chains of female power against the Mexican army's incursions. The soldiers call them "malditas indias," bad Indian women. Prior to the December massacre, government supporters had purportedly threatened that female Zapatista sympathizers would be raped first, then their daughters. Out of the 45 killed in the autonomous community of Acteal, only nine were men. The rest were women and children. And yet female Zapatista supporters and their families have long declared that they live in "liberated free zones." What does it mean to name your community a liberated free zone when guns are pointed at you? It means that the mind is liberated, that their minds and bodies have become, in effect, a liberated free zone, contested space, and that the societal authority that demarcates space is not accepted. It means that the values that create power are contested. Margaret Montoya, a professor at the University of New Mexico Law School, talks about space that is constructed to maintain authority: "Space that must be listened to, spaces where we are to be quiet." Other such spaces include the witness stand, a classroom, a preacher's pulpit, the border. And this has real ramifications. Right now, there are reportedly 38 autonomous areas in Chiapas and more than 400 such communities in Oaxaca. In some cases, women are on the councils and helping elect the leadership. These communities have their own judicial powers and traditional forms of governance this, even prior to the recent introduction of constitutional changes recognizing a government-defined autonomy. These reforms have been criticized as a dilution of previous historic accords with the Zapatistas and other indigenous peoples. The contribution of female strength in Mexico's indigenous movement is the kind of power we see in the United Farm Worker's union, which is a movement made whole by families. UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta once told us that Cesar Chavez recognized that when families march, there is less likely to be violence. In her book "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today," Leslie Marmon Silko writes: "... the beauty that Yellow Woman (a supernatural woman) possesses is the beauty of her passion, her daring, and her sheer strength to act when catastrophe is imminent." So when we speak of Mexico's powerful indigenous women, we must acknowledge the legacy of the mothers of the disappeared who reclaimed the plazas of Mexico and broke the silence after the 1968 student massacre at Tlatelolco. They engaged in what we call the naming ceremony, because they named the abuser and the abuse. And their marches and hunger strikes became public prayers to bring back the disappeared and became a precursor to today's democracy movement. And after all these years, the Mexican government's files of '68 finally have been opened. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire said we must name our world to break oppression. Abusers always rely on their victims' silence. So part of contesting space means creating counter narratives of what is happening to us as people narratives quite different from what television portrays. Ojibwe leader Winona LaDuke observed it's easy to romanticize the Zapatista ski mask and revolution when most families would rather be growing corn and raising their children. The fundamental challenge in the Americas is that of changing the internal violence that leads to war, the emotional violence endured as a result of poverty, and the structural violence that creates rogue police, teachers who loathe children, and the "rape culture" that helped establish this continent. We should honor those who are already creating a new world, particularly the women. COPYRIGHT 1998 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Both writers are authors of Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN 0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library, Publications Unit. Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question of Race (Cloth ISBN 0-927534-69-X paper ISBN 0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press) and the antibook, The X in La Raza II. They can be reached at PO BOX 7905, Albq NM 87194-7904, 505-247-3888 or XColumn@aol.com
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