Demographic trends setting U.S. up for race wars in coming decades?

By David McElroy · April 23, 2012

Is the United States heading for some form of race war? I’m getting more concerned about that. I see the convergence of several trends that mean we need to be thinking seriously about what’s coming.

The old estimate was that white people would be a minority in the country by 2050, but accelerating demographic trends mean that might happen more quickly. Demographers now estimate that it will happen as soon as 2042. Already, white babies are in the minority. Blacks are reproducing at a higher rate than whites, and Hispanics are reproducing at a higher rate than either group.

So what’s it going to mean? Conflict between groups over culture and economic resources. White people have control of a greatly disproportionate amount of the income and wealth. I don’t happen to believe that it’s because of racism, but a high percentage of the non-white groups believe it’s unfair and racist that it’s this way. As whites become a minority, there will be increasing political pressure to take more from “the rich” and give it to “the poor” in one way or other.

Many black and Hispanic politicians are going to enjoy the increasing power that’s going to come from representing more people like them. At the same time, a large proportion of whites are going to feel that their country is “being taken away” from them. It’s going to be a potentially volatile mix.

We already see some evidence of it in the reaction to the Trayvon Martin killing. Blacks and whites have radically different views about the situation, on average. Only 38 percent of white say the killing of Martin was unjustified, but 80 percent of blacks say it was unjustified. That’s a huge disparity.

What’s more is that it almost doesn’t matter who’s right, because there is enough simmering anger among some blacks that some have been attacking white people in isolated incidents as payback for George Zimmerman’s killing of Martin. There was a case in Gainesville, Fla., a couple of weeks ago in which half a dozen or so blacks attacked a white man while yelling, “Trayvon!” Last Tuesday, a black man in a Chicago suburb beat up a white man and said it was because he was angry about the Martin killing. There have been others, so these are just a couple of examples.

The case of Martin and Zimmerman will eventually fade, but it’s doing damage in the meantime. If Zimmerman is found not guilty — as I suspect he will be — many blacks are going to feel that it’s another example of blacks getting a raw deal in this country. Will there be riots? Very possibly. Will they cause lasting damage? It depends on how you mean it. That sort of riots won’t destroy the country, but they’ll be laying even more of a foundation for racial distrust that the demographic trends are going to expose.

The most frustrating thing about the whole racial mess is that I don’t see things as black against white against Hispanic. I see it as a bunch of individuals of different skin tones — some good people, some bad people, most somewhere in between. And the “good” and “bad” don’t correlate with their races. Unfortunately, as group conflict gets more and more likely, most people are going to tend to see each other as parts of groups, not as individuals. It’s not something I’m looking forward to.

I’ve talked before about the economic collapse that I see coming. There’s no way debt can continue to increase as it has been — and it can’t continue to be paid for (and even more borrowed) without absolutely confiscating wealth. When you combine economic collapse with the group conflict that’s going to come as whites lose power and black and Hispanics gain power, you get a powder keg that’s going to set off an ugly explosion. I can’t predict what’s going to happen, but I think it’s safe to say that this country won’t survive in anything like its current form.

We’re going to see a rise of “white power” movements and “white rights” groups in response to this. We’re going to see some blacks and Hispanics who feel they’ve waited long enough to live in the fancy white suburbs, so they’re going to want to use their power to take money from those who have it.

Is it any wonder that I hope to have found someplace else to live and raise a family while this plays out? I fear it’s going to be ugly. I honestly can’t see any other way it can play itself out. I hope I’m wrong.

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