What the Blue Wave Says About America’s Future
November 7, 2018
Last night's election results were at once inspiring and disappointing--for people on both sides of the ideological divide. Americans are clearly locked in a battle for the soul of our country--an exhausting, disquieting fight that seems to have no end. But it will end, and not with a knockout. Instead, one day in the not-so-distant future, it will just sort of be over, and we will find ourselves a more diverse, more tolerant country.
How? Simple demographics. The U.S. Census predicts that whites will become the minority (49.1%) of the population as soon as 2045. (That timing differs by age group; white Americans under the age of 18 will be a minority among their peers by 2020.) The largest increase in "non-white" populations in the foreseeable future? Multi-racial populations--people who allow themselves to love and create families with those who are ethnically different from themselves (a clear marker that America is learning to embrace its diversity).
In the not-so-distant future, a Muslim-American congresswoman, or a multiracial Senator, or a female president-of-color won't be an anomaly. It will just be America.
Yes, even with Trump at the helm for now.
From the start, Donald Trump's presence on the political scene has represented the dying gasps of the old-white-boys' club in this country--the last heaves of a culture that is watching its own demise. His vitriol is the death rattle of an old America. The real America has always been about new ideas, moving forward, and becoming more and better than we are today.
And so this Trump era, too, shall pass, although it will get worse before it gets better. The scab that was torn off when Trump won the presidency revealed a deep-seated racism that still festers, and that we have yet to heal, together. We still have a lot of work to do to come to terms with who we are as a country--the truth of our complicated past and conflicted present. But we will get there. We must.
If you have any doubt, look not just at the results of last night's election, but at popular culture. Turn on your television and you will see race-blind casting on your favorite shows, multi-racial families on commercials for mundane household goods, a music culture that is constantly boundary-shifting. To my conservative friends who say, "the free market will show the way," in this case you're exactly right. Demographics are changing, the attitudes of young people are changing, and advertisers and marketers are following right along. We are becoming a more diverse, more tolerant culture, whether Trump and his supporters like it or not.
What’s the bottom line of last night's results? The unprecedented wins of people of diverse backgrounds and faiths are the true signs of what is to come.