Demographics Are Changing!
There is no denying it. I am a White Christian American and proud of it. What does that really mean in the greater country’s mosaic of diversity?
On my mother’s side, our roots in this country go back to the mid-17th century. My father’s not so much. We are Southern Italian, Catholic, and definitely New York. I identify with dad’s heritage much more so than with my mom’s.
Perhaps if I had been raised in the South, I would have been at least more attuned to its thoughts and rhythms. I could have even been one of those White guys who are afraid of being subsumed by the Black, Brown and Yellow hordes that are gaining fast on us White people.
Having lived in the New York metropolitan area for most of my life, I became oblivious to color, religion, and ethnicity. At times, I have disliked all mankind equally. One of my favorite pastimes as I roamed the New York streets was to count how many times I would speak to a native born American in a day. (Some days there were few.) Many of those I encountered including coworkers and later employees were Hispanic, Greek, Italian, Russian, Polish, Chinese, and everything else.
One of the reasons I liked Stuart was because of its walkability which was such a part of my day-to-day life in New York City. It becomes harder once summer begins. My house is 10 minutes from downtown. I cover most of downtown plus Potsdam and the Creek District as one of my walking routes a couple of times per week. Stuart is a relatively safe place. I usually take my walk a couple of hours before sunrise and have no trepidation in doing so.
Like Stuart I do the same when I am at my apartment in Connecticut. There we often walk to dinner. I believe in the walkability of cities. However, in both Stuart and Greenwich, while walkable, residents must have cars. In Manhattan, where we had an apartment for 10 years, we never owned a car.
In the early 1970s, I was afraid of being a victim of crime in New York especially going to work early in the morning and home from college late at night. As time went on, life definitely improved, and crime no longer was the number one challenge. New York and other cities became and are imminently more livable than the sprawl of the suburbs.
Many White folks dislike cities. Without ever having lived in one, they call them hell holes. Perhaps it is because they cannot imagine having to interact with people who are not like them. That is how much of our politics became so fragmented. That is not to say that everything is all peace and love between the races in big cities either, but it isn’t seen through the same prism of fear that I hear from people with my complexion in less diverse surroundings.
Believe it or not with all the problems confronting the government, the House of Representatives just passed a resolution condemning the Russian Revolution…in 1917. They also included Stalin’s famine of 1932, Mao’s Great Leap Forward of 1959, and Pol Pot’s killing fields in 1975. The resolution concluded with Congress denouncing socialism and opposing implementation of socialist policies in the U.S. portraying themselves as 100% free market capitalists.
But when Maxine Waters, a Black Democratic Congressperson from California, wanted to identify all House members who had taken federal money under the PPP and had requested that their loans be forgiven in the resolution, she was shouted down. I guess socialism is in the eye of the beholder.
What is really happening is that the country’s demographics are changing rapidly. In 2022, 42% of Americans were White Christians with only 13.6% of Americans being evangelical Protestants according to the Public Religion Research Institute. In the 18–29-year-old group, 38% are religiously unaffiliated.
White Christian Evangelicals are more likely to believe that they are victims than other groups. Yet at this moment in the country, they have a larger proportionate share of political power than their numbers warrant. Now is probably the peak of that influence.
The younger the cohort, regardless of race, are more likely to believe in reproductive choice, voting liberalization, gay rights, and an entire host of other “woke” issues. The nation’s history cannot be changed or erased because old White people like me sometimes come out looking bad. Truth doesn’t work that way.
Many can speak about revolution and their willingness to go to the streets with their guns to save the White race. Yet with each passing year, there are fewer of us and more of them. At some point, we will look ridiculous mounting the barricades in our wheelchairs and walkers with our assault rifles strapped close to our bodies.
