Shades of the Future

The millennium is almost upon us. In fact, it's been almost upon us for so long that it will be a relief when it arrives. But there's another date in America's future that may hold far more significance. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by the middle of the next century, race in America will be turned upside down. In 2050 whites will be a minority, and present-day minorities will be in the majority.

One group of Americans already exemplifies that future. The Millennium Generation, today's 15-to-25-year-olds, is the most racially mixed generation this country has ever seen. Its members are 60% more likely to be nonwhite than those of their parents' and grandparents' generations, and an increasing number are racially mixed. A third are black, Latino, Asian or Native American. And the two-thirds who are white have grown up with more exposure to people of other races, through school, sports, dating and the media.

That's not to say that this generation is living in some sort of racial Utopia. Diversity simply refers to a racial mix, not whether the people in that mix get along. For my new book The Color of Our Future, I traveled around the country and found a generation that is increasingly aware of diversity but equally likely to be confused by it or afraid of it.

I met Justin, a white high school senior, who confessed that he sometimes felt uncomfortable around members of his own race, since he had grown up in an Oakland, Calif., neighborhood that is almost all black, Latino and Asian. His classmates Sandra and Diana were smart, studious Latinas who'd lived most or all of their lives in the U.S. Sandra went on to Berkeley, but Diana, with no green card and no money, couldn't attend college. I spoke with Steve, who had felt the sting of anti-Iranian racism, but as a recruiter for the Berkeley College Republicans, he nonetheless worked frats in which "minorities are not welcome." Jaime, who's white, was called a "nigger-loving whore" for walking with her black boyfriend in Georgia. But Nicole, a Los Angeles teen whose father is black and mother is white, felt she and her friends had progressed far beyond those divisions. "I think this generation has definitely made America a different America," she says. "It's Asian; it's Latino; it's everything."

Today, cities like Los Angeles, New York and Houston are already "majority minority." But some states, like South Dakota, are still more than 90% white. One thing bears remembering: every day America's heartland looks more and more like New York and Los Angeles, not the other way around.

We have some hard decisions to make in the next few decades. America has a track record of turning against minorities in tough economic times. By the year 2050, whites will be a demographic minority but not a political or economic one. If we don't open up opportunities equally to all Americans, we could see a rising level of resentment among the nonwhite majority. Americans love to fight. The question is whether we will fight one another for parts of the economic pie or fight together to raise the standard of living and opportunity for all Americans.

Finally, we have to realize that we are responsible for teaching the next generation about race. The young Americans I met who were racist had parents who taught them to be so; those who were open to the changes this country faces were taught to be that way as well. Racial progress should be a part of the American Dream, the dream that we can live our lives better than our parents lived theirs. Fortunately, and unfortunately, it's entirely up to us.