Tom Fudge: Where did you grow up? I grew up in a small town in Iowa. It was the kind of place where the difference between ethnic Czechs and ethnic Germans was a big deal. If you were Italian-American, you were practically a person of color. Things are very different where I'm now living and raising my kids, in Central San Diego. But that's California for you. California is unique among American states since it no longer has any racial majority. But our state's unique status won't last much longer. This we hear from a study done about a month ago by the Pew Research Center . The report basically says that the rest of the nation is about to become just like California. By 2050 there will be no racial majority in the U.S. We can expect about one in five Americans to be foreign-born. The Latino population of the U.S. is expected to triple in size, making up 30% of the population.
So what? Good question. We're a nation of immigrants, after all. What's the big deal if we get more? Yet you can be assured that a lot of Americans are suffering a little future angst when they look at those numbers, and maybe it's not all racism. It's fair to wonder whether the immigrants of tomorrow will assimilate in the same way the old ones did. Keep in mind that the population of the U.S. will be very large: more than 400 million people. How do you get such a large, diverse country to work together and see itself as one community?
Guest
- Philip Gay , professor emeritus of sociology and former chairman of the Sociology Department at San Diego State.
