“Minorities are the new majority.
For the first time, more non-white, Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American babies will be born this year than white babies. African-Americans have a buying power in excess of $1.5 trillion. Hispanic buying power is growing at three times the national average. Asian-Americans spend three times as much as Gen Y, and gay and lesbian buying power is estimated at $800 billion. Marketers cannot afford to ignore these consumers.”
– Avi Dan, Advertising Age
10 Changes That Will Continue to Affect Marketing in 2011,
published October 12, 2010

Frankly, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that the “whiteness” of our continent is fading. But when you speak or write about race in America, no matter how benign or benevolent your intent, you are instantly accused of being racist. It’s amazing.

But no matter. Let them say what they will say. This is America. They may speak their thoughts and so shall I.

In 1915, Teddy Roosevelt spoke in Carnegie Hall to the largely Irish-American Knights of Columbus:

“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic… There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”

Ninety-five years later, we have new hyphenations. We lost the old, European hyphenations through intermarriage. We’ll lose the new ones the same way.

If Teddy R made his speech in the Carnegie Hall of today, I believe he would list “White-Americans” as just one more hyphenated group that needs to be assimilated into the larger body of just plain “Americans.”

Roy H. Williams