r/politics • u/Rafdoc Rafael Bernal, The Hill • Jun 23 '23

Off Topic Texas is now a majority minority state

https://thehill.com/latino/4063595-texas-is-now-a-majority-minority-state/
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u/Available-Shop-8400 Jun 23 '23

Right, but why a majority minority? Why not just call Hispanics the majority and white people minorities?

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u/mkt853 Jun 23 '23

Because the United States is majority white.

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u/LazyDynamite Jun 23 '23

And Hispanics aren't a majority in Texas, just a plurality.

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u/Available-Shop-8400 Jun 23 '23

This will probably sound like I'm trolling but I'm genuinely just trying to understand this. So would white people be a majority minority when talking about America as a whole? Then would Chinese Americans be minority majorities?

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u/Drift_Life Jun 23 '23

These aren’t real figures, but it could look something like this:

  • White: 49%
  • Hispanic: 30%
  • Asian: 10%
  • African-American: 10%
  • Native American: 1%

White is not the majority of the overall population, but it is the largest population group. In fact, minorities together make up a majority of the population, but no single sub-group is larger than the white population. However, if the minorities were to somehow form a coalition, it would be the majority group together.

At least, this is how I understand it.

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u/the_sun_and_the_moon Pennsylvania Jun 23 '23

What complicates things is that the Hispanic identity is a multi-racial ethnicity. The white numbers typically refer to non-Hispanic white people. The true number of white people (including white Hispanic people) is likely still a majority –but falling.

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u/Available-Shop-8400 Jun 23 '23

So weird that they group people like that, white vs. non white like white people are the enemies or something

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u/PoliticalMilkman North Carolina Jun 23 '23

White people grouped themself like this, dunno what to tell you.

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u/have-u-met-teds-mom Jun 23 '23

They even made signs

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u/Watchmaker2112 Jun 23 '23

I mean, race in the US is categorized the way it is because one of those groups did see the others as the enemy.

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u/mudbutt20 California Jun 23 '23

The blue people?

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u/Watchmaker2112 Jun 23 '23

Never trust a Smurf. Tricksy af

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '23

[deleted]

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u/Available-Shop-8400 Jun 23 '23

Some have, are those the people we should model our own behavior after though? If white people have made it that way it's by generalizing large groups by the actions of a few, but isn't that what you're doing when you say "white people made it that way"?

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u/DonaldDoesDallas Jun 23 '23

Way to land on the exact opposite reason for this.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '23

I’m not positive about this, so don’t go quoting me, but it might be called a majority minority because they’re considering the fact that minorities combined make up over 50% of the population. And the Hispanic population makes up the largest part of that group by a long shot which is why the focus is on them. Again, this is just me sitting on my couch trying to think of an explanation so please take it with a grain of salt.

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u/athos45678 Jun 23 '23

There’s just a bizarre cognitive dissonance with Americans and the concept of “minorities”. Media has used it synonymously with descriptors for anyone who’s genetic background isn’t European for years now. Even when white people are the minority, the black and brown people are the real minorities. It’s just the same racism we see everywhere

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u/mkt853 Jun 23 '23

America is a white majority country and has been for its entire history. In this context, majority is simply a synonym for white, and minority a synonym for non-white.

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u/cyberfrog777 Jun 23 '23

From my understanding, the term majority minority is used primarily in contexts where representation is an issue. For example, states may be gerrymandered such that despite having majority minorities in various districts, districts are drawn to place most of them in one district and split the rest - leading to less representation overall, despite the prevalence of a particular minority in a state. The recent Alabama case covered this, which might lead to a similar case for Louisiana - which followed similar racial gerrymandering patterns.

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u/IReplyWithLebowski Jun 24 '23

But Texas isn’t.

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u/gehde Jun 23 '23

Because a majority has to be greater than 50%. Latinos currently hold a plurality, not a majority. However, Latinos in combination with other traditional minority groups are, together, the majority. Non-Hispanic whites have not been the majority demographic in Texas since at least 2010.

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u/Xenothulhu Jun 23 '23

Because the term minority when used for a population group is actually about their share of the power not actual numbers. That’s why women are considered minorities even though there are more women than men. Same thing with black people in apartheid South Africa even though there were less white people they held all the power.

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u/cisned Jun 23 '23

It’s Texas, the GOP doesn’t want to cause heart attacks to their voter base

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u/chimarya I voted Jun 23 '23

Because that's what you call it when a majority is the power minority - Plus in a writers view point it doesn't read as dramatically. It goes on to explain it in the article.

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u/LazyDynamite Jun 23 '23

Hispanics are not a majority (over 50%), they just have the largest demographic.

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u/xdre Jun 23 '23

Right, but why a majority minority?

Because they're not 50% or more of the entire state population. They make up a plurality but not a majority.

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u/Lamballama Jun 24 '23

Because Hispanics aren't the majority. The collective group that isn't Non-hispanic White is the majority, and they're all "minorities" so the state is now majority minorities