The query, from my favorite secret Facebook group: “Serious question: Is the idea of whites becoming a minority in America disturbing to you (be honest)?” My answer, edited for clarity, is below.
I don’t want whites to disappear, though I identify strongly with what [redacted] said about the current empowered patriarchy achieving fear through power. What I’d like to see is a shift in the conversation to one of economies, at the same time that we’re having the discussion about embracing our cultural differences as strengths.
Because that’s where the real conversation is, money. Blacks, Latinos and other US minorities may show visible signs of being better off, but those of us who make it to middle class who have generations rooted in this nation’s history are still mostly poor. As cultural groups, integration has only made us 2% better off. There’s a several hundred year gap in the passing on of familial wealth.
In the meantime, our obsession with race in this country has robbed impoverished white people of their standing in the conversation. I don’t mean people who feel self-righteous because they’ve had no material wealth for a generation or so, though I still feel some empathy for them.
I mean we have people growing up in generations of poverty with no real resources for advancement. In taking government assistance they become enslaved to it and can’t move forward without a huge gap in resources. People like the Appalachian poor, the motor-home poor – no wonder some of them lash out angrily at poor people of another race. Who else listens to their pain.
Racism, sexism, all the isms, these are serious, complex issues, yes. But a lot of the issues that make them serious are tied up in the unfairness of impoverished people caught in cyclic economies of maintenance instead of advancement. If we could transform those economies to ones of advancement, even through entrepreneurship, it would benefit us all, and we wouldn’t have so much to have conflict over.