A ‘Minority Majority?’

The widespread fixation with group identity in American culture reached a new level of absurdity with an article published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger titled, Millennials: N.J.'s first generation without a white majority. Stephen Stirling of NJ Advance Media for NJ.com reports:

Minority young adults make up the majority of their age group in New Jersey, Census data shows, the first time in state history a generation has not been represented by a white majority.

An analysis of recent data from the American Community Survey shows that minority groups make up 50.73% of 18 to 34 year-olds, marking a momentous shift that is all but certain to carry over to the entire state in the near future. A recent study said this will likely occur by 2030.   

The shift in the age group, which essentially makes up the oft-discussed Millennial generation, is one of many expected to change the face of New Jersey as they slowly eclipse the Baby Boomers and become the leading economic engine of the state.

While the state has long been a portal for new immigrants from a vast array of races and ethnicities, a white majority has been firmly in place for virtually the entirety of the states' [sic] history. New Jersey is one of just 10 states in the country where a minority majority exists among Millennials after growing by more than 112 percent since 1980. [My emphasis]

I could have let it go. But I just couldn’t, because the fixation with group identity threatens our individual liberty. I left these comments:

A 50.73% “minority majority”? That belongs right up there with “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” in the doublethink category. How can the editors let this get through? Somebody’s not doing their job. Or has language deteriorated to the point where words and concepts are infinitely malleable?

Simple math will tell you that if minorities make up a majority, then minorities make up 100% of the population. Of course, the whole idea of a white majority is nothing more that an arbitrary construct. “White” can just as easily be subdivided into a multitude of minorities (German, French, Italian, and so on).

That said, the whole idea of defining the population as a collection of groups, or defining each generation as “represented” by its racial majority, is rather sickening. It’s time to rid our culture of the insidious poison of collectivism. Collectivism is the tool of the ignorant, breeding irrational prejudice, discrimination, hostility, bigotry, and legal injustice.

Now that we are all statistically part of a minority group—or soon will be—perhaps we can finally get beyond collectivism, and rise up to the enlightened level of judging people as individuals, rather than categorizing everyone according to some racial (or other) group identity. After all, a group is merely a collection of individuals, not a collective entity separate and apart from individuals. And the fact is, the individual is and always has been the only true minority, because the individual is the only human entity that exists. Only the individual breathes, digests, thinks, feels, judges, values, and acts. Each of us is a minority of One. “Content of their character,” anyone?

Related Reading:

The Rise of Collectivism and the Fall of the Constitution

Slavery, Racism and Collectivism... and New Jersey's Folly

After Charleston, We Need a Dialogue on Individualism