The Fool wrote:
>
> <<http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_03_28_atrios_archive.html#10805349153722
> 2264>>
>
> O'Reilly, 3/23/04
>
> O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly.
>
> In THE FACTOR "Follow-Up" Segment tonight, we've been following the
> various demographic shifts throughout America, and now the Census Bureau
> estimates, by the year 2050, white Americans will make up less than 50
> percent of the population. How will that change the USA?
>
> Joining us now from Washington is Dr. William Frey, a demographer at the
> Brookings Institution. Here in the studio, John McManus, the editor in
> chief of "American Demographics" magazine.
>
> So I guess this is being driven by Hispanics, right, with all the illegal
> immigration, millions of people coming in here and the higher birth rate
> among Hispanics in America. That's what's driving this?
>
> JOHN MCMANUS, "AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS": The Hispanic population is the
> greatest increase that we'll see over the time period that we're talking
> about. Illegal immigration is a portion of the story, but it's the
> increase in -- rapid increase in immigration and birth rate in people of
> Hispanic origin that we'll see.
The thing is, enough Hispanics have been culturally assimilated to the
point where you can't tell that much difference between them and, say,
O'Reilly, except for skin color and surname. Maybe some have retained
certain customs from their latest country of origin, but hey, didn't we
get Oktoberfest that way, too?
Sheesh. Maybe there are some illegals, and maybe the way the system
currently works doesn't help on that, but I've met plenty of people with
Hispanic last names, proud of their heritage (wherever they were from
before they got here), that I can't tell from someone of Italian or, in
one case f'crying out loud, maybe even Irish extraction, without that
surname tipping me off.
It bugs the heck out of me when someone makes a blanket statement about
"Hispanics" because chances are, it's going to be flat-out wrong for
more than half the people that could be classified that way for whatever
reason. (I could probably come up with a few examples that wouldn't be
wrong for so many, but they're not the sort of thing people usually talk
about when they're saying something about "Hispanics".)
Julia
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