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After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.
Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.
Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.
While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”
Signs that the country is evolving this way start with the Oval Office, and have swept hundreds of counties in recent years, with 348 in which whites are no longer in the majority. That number doubles when it comes to the toddler population, Mr. Frey said. Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, and have slipped below half in many major metro areas, including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis.
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bbanzaiz:
crankyskirt:
transradical:
The Washington Blade, America’s oldest LGBT (but mostly G) newspaper, recently printed an opinion piece from editor Kevin Naff titled “All aboard the Trayvon bandwagon”. As you can gather from the title, it was a tad problematic:
At the heart of Naff’s editorial are questions about whether racial bias actually played a role in Trayvon’s killing. He states “there’s not much about this case that’s so crystal clear” in response to the section of the LGBT organizations’ statement that racial bias played a role in Trayvon’s killing.
Further, Naff also somehow choose to ignore press reports that describe the racial profiling that Zimmerman regularly engaged in, including warning his neighbors about the presence of young black men in the area. To us, it seems pretty obvious that Zimmerman followed Trayvon because Trayvon was black and not because he was somehow acting suspicious.
What’s more, Naff trivializes the parallels between racially motivated hate crimes and those perpetrated against LGBT people by suggesting that the spotlight on Trayvon somehow casts a shadow on LGBT victims of hate crimes. For example, Naff concludes his column with “…in the weeks since the Martin shooting, LGBT people have been attacked, shot and killed in the U.S. without a press release or peep of protest.”
This “us versus them” rhetoric implies that the LGBT victims are white, which couldn’t be farther from the truth considering that LGBT people of color are the victims of the most severe and deadly hate violence. What Naff fails to acknowledge is that our “hate crime martyrs” are overwhelming people of color, be they straight or LGBT. Among them are Brandon White, Deoni Jones, and Robert Champion, young queer people of color who were recently attacked and murdered simply because of who they were. It’s worth noting that Naff himself has yet to write about any of them despite his chiding about the lack of coverage of LGBT hate crimes in recent weeks.
(Emphasis mine.)
Gay racefail? Must be a day ending in Y.
White gay men continue to race fail. In other news, the ocean is wet.
This is just like how media from the right is producing articles on how countless white kids have been beaten by black kids, etc. Except the major difference is that there has been justice for these hate crimes. There has been no justice in the Trayvon Martin story and that’s why it has continued to gain so much attention.
(via knowledgeequalsblackpower)
occupyallstreets:
Arizona Official Considering Banning Ethnic Studies In Universities Too
Two years ago, Arizona outlawed the teaching of some ethnic studies courses in K-12 schools, and now it may expand the prohibition to universities too.
Just weeks after the state passed its infamous immigration law, it also passed a law aimed at scuttling Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program, which critics claimed taught kids to resent white people. The argument, at the time, was that teaching subjects like critical race theory to kids in high school amounted to indoctrination because they were not old enough to question the teaching critically, like university students.
But now, Arizona’s chief education official sees university-level Mexican-American sudies programs as a danger too:
Arizona’s superintendent of schools, John Huppenthal, says Tucson’s suspended Mexican American studies curricula teaches students to resent Anglos, and that the university program that educated the public school teachers is to blame.
“I think that’s where this toxic thing starts from, the universities,” Arizona Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal said in an interview with Fox News Latino. “To me, the pervasive problem was the lack of balance going on in these classes,” Huppenthal said.
Not surprisingly, a long list of Latino groups and education activists have protested the move, as they did when the state shut down Tucson’s program, decrying the imposition on free speech. “What we’re trying to do is expose children to a much broader perspective, so that we’re not indoctrinating,” said Augustine Romero, the former director of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies Department.
The ethnic studies law, which bans schools from offering courses designed for a specific ethnicity, had far-ranging consequences, including banning books like Shakespeare’s The Tempest and other seemingly anodyne works of literature.
And while many call the state prohibitions unprecedented, Devon Peña, the former director of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies said, “There is a precedent, and it’s called McCarthyism.” “It’s just a witch hunt of a different color. Now, instead of going after the reds, they’re going after the browns.”
Source
(via fragmentsshoredagainstmyruin)
ethiopienne:
satifice:
What the fuck?
This dude accidentally hits his medical alert and the police bust in and kill him. Fuck. It is going to be a spectacular day.
My heart hurts for his family.
Is it just open season on Black folk now? They’re not even gonna try hiding it anymore? Jesus Christ. I have spent a fair amount of time in White Plains, y’all. One of the people I care most about in this whole damn world lives there. I’m feeling all types of sick right now.
Fuck. This is in my neck of the woods. I never heard of this til now. What the fuck, I’m not even safe at my own fucking school…
(Source: biyuti)
![thedailywhat:
Comic Book Boycott of the Day: Conservative group One Million Moms is at it again, directing its not-quite-a-million members to boycott Marvel and DC Comics due to recent announcements from both companies about their futures of their gay characters.
DC has revealed that a major character is soon going to come out as gay, while Marvel announced the engagement of superhero Northstar to his boyfriend, Kyle.
These events don’t sit will with One Million Moms, whose anti-gay agenda has also led them to protest the wedding of Archie Comics’ first gay character, Kevin Keller.
“Children desire to be just like superheroes,” said the group in a statement. “Children mimic superhero actions and even dress up in costumes to resemble these characters as much as possible. Can you imagine little boys saying, ‘I want a boyfriend or husband like X-Men?’”
The statement goes on to accuse the publishers of trying to “indoctrate [sic] impressionable young minds.”
Marvel and DC have yet to respond to the homophobic comments.
[towleroad.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4jy0xRyON1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
