Introduction

Social demographers predict 2042 will be the year when people of color become the aggregate racial majority in the United States.1 This demographic shift will reshape common understandings of what constitutes American culture and national identity. We are already witnessing the ramifications of America’s changing demographics in our electoral politics. In 1988, George H.W. Bush got 60 percent of the white vote, and won in an electoral college landslide. By contrast, in 2012 Mitt Romney won 59 percent of the white vote, and lost by five million votes.2 Suddenly, in the wake of the 2012 election, primetime media pundits awoke to the political ramifications of America’s changing demographics; conservative media couched the conversation in nostalgia for the “real America.” An anxious Bill O’Reilly lamented

Because it’s a changing country, the demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore . . . Twenty years ago President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The White establishment is now the minority.3