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Image Source: U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, Pew Research, February 11, 2008

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism

Excerpt from “Black Labor, White Wealth: The Search for Power and Economic Justice,” (August 1, 1994) Claude Anderson, Ed. D., Chapter 2: Power and Black Progress:

Chapter 2, page 33, subsection titled:

Numerical Population Power

In a democratic society, the numerical majority wins, rules, and decides. The theoretical rights of a minority may or may not be respected, especially if they are a planned minority. Numerical population power is the power that comes to those groups that acquire power through their sheer size. The black population peaked in the 1750s when slaves and free blacks accounted for approximately 33 percent of the total population. The high numerical strength of blacks caused fear and concern among whites. They feared the loss of their own numerical power. Word of black Haitians’ successful slave revolt in the 1790s had spread across America and reportedly ignited several slave revolts in Southern states.

The First U.S. Congress enacted the first naturalization law that declared America a nation for "whites only." The naturalization act and other income incentives attracted a mass influx of legal and illegal European ethnicities, followed by Asian and Hispanic immigrants a century later. The immigration quota for blacks remained zero until their total population percentage declined to nine percent. By making blacks a planned numerical minority, white society assured dominance in a democratic society where the majority always wins. Source: Sample chapter

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If current trends continue, the demographic profile of the United States will change dramatically by the middle of this century, according to new population projections developed by the Pew Research Center.¹

The nation's population will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the growth during this period will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their descendants. (Figure 1)

Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves, 47 million will be their children, and 3 million will be their grandchildren.

The Center’s projections indicate that nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be foreign-born in 2050, well above the 2005 level of 12% and surpassing the historical peaks for immigrants as a share of the U.S. population—14.8% in 1890 and 14.7% in 1910. (Figure 2)

By 2050, the nation’s racial and ethnic mix will look different than it does now. Non-Hispanic whites, who made up 67% of the population in 2005, will be 47% in 2050. Hispanics will rise from 14% of the population in 2005 to 29% in 2050. Blacks were 13% of the population in 2005 and will be roughly the same proportion in 2050. Asians, who were 5% of the population in 2005, will be 9% in 2050.

If you do the math: the BIPOC in these statistics adds up to ~51 to 53%, a clear majority.

What is intersectionality?

The concept of intersectionality describes how systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class, and other forms of discrimination “intersect” to create unique dynamics and effects. For example, when a Muslim woman wearing the Hijab is being discriminated against, it would be impossible to dissociate her female* from her Muslim identity and to isolate the dimension(s) causing her discrimination.

Source: Center for Intersectional Justice: What is intersectionality?

“Race,” as we have been conditioned to understand it, is a social construct. Yet, every employment application asks me to choose a category that best describes me: I chose Black/African American because that is my culture. I am a human being, a terrestrial inhabitant born on planet Earth. We fill out the Census because it is our “civic duty” and our habit, born of ignorance and not questioning why things are the WAY they are.

So racial capitalism was basically built based on the idea that capitalism itself is not distinct from racism. The way we think of racism is that racism is a by-product of capitalism. That is, capitalism emerges, and racism is a way to divide workers. It’s a way to extract greater value from enslaved people, Indigenous people, etc. But Cedric argued that the grounds of the civilization in which capitalism emerges are already based on racial hierarchy. If you think of race as assigning meaning to whole groups of people, ideologically convincing others that some people are inferior to others, that some people are designed as beasts of burden, then what you end up getting is a system of extraction that allows for a kind of super-exploitation of Black and brown people. And racial capitalism also relies on an ideology or racial regime. The racial regime convinces a lot of white people, who may get the crumbs of this extraction through slavery, through Jim Crow, convince them to support or shore up a regime that seems to benefit whiteness based on white supremacy but where their own share of the spoils is actually pretty minuscule. Slam poet Saul Williams commenting on the Intercept Podcast: The Rebellion Against Racial Capitalism. Facebook

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The Census is crafted from the same crucible. Every ten years, we count the number of citizens, or residents, in the nation. We craft, actually, gerrymander districts based on these demographic numbers. The absurdity is evident not too far from me: my Alma Mater, North Carolina A&T State University, the largest Historically Black College and University in the nation, was split in two to dilute the impact of student voting and participation in the franchise. That was thankfully remedied, and students are voting in record numbers. It is thus important which party controls the White House (I think it should be called the Presidential Mansion) during the ten-year cycle. We’re looking at the next election in 2024. What will be of paramount importance is which party gets to draw congressional districts after the election of 2028.

Fifty years of precedent were repealed in jettisoning Roe vs. Wade: why? Perhaps it is that “for the last 70 years, fertility rates have decreased worldwide, with a total 50% decline. Reasons include women’s empowerment in education and the workforce, lower child mortality, and the increased cost of raising children. Lower fertility rates, coupled with increased life expectancies worldwide, create an aging population, putting pressure on healthcare systems globally.” (World Economic Forum) Comparing national birthrates in 2020:

Source: World Economic Forum: Ageing and Longevity, June 17, 2022

It makes sense, in a macabre, sociopathic, psychopathic “logic.” If your birthrates are falling, you open the floodgates to all births by repealing abortion rights; the health and career aspirations of women be damned. Similarly, for the LGBTQ community, the right to marry "who you love" contradicts the desires of capitalism: replacement workers, which can be done through surrogate parenthood. Still, these are Neanderthal minds crafting our society. The closet was valuable to them because you could, in sham marriages, procreate in public and copulate in secret. Dr. Claude Anderson stated in "Black Labor, White Wealth" that enslaved Africans and their descendants were a "planned numerical minority." "White" is a fungible concept: as numbers declined in America, Czechs, Italians, Jews, and Russians were added to the "white" column and instructed how to address the designated pariah "others." This façade would inevitably crash on the weight of its own hubris.

"Race" is a social and political construct. Suppose you happened to have won the "sperm lottery" and were born in "Leave it to Beaver Villes" with a prepondering lack of Melanin (and lack of empathy for those possessing it). In that case, you're likely comfortable with the status quo as it is; reducing inequality doesn't interest you in the slightest; therefore: you want to "conserve" what you know and are comfortable with it. And if you can't gerrymander, voter suppress, or intimidate "others" into their diminished places, January 6, 2021, showed us conclusively that their last ditch, "in case of democracy, break glass" last move, they will resort to deadly violence to uphold a chimera. 40,000+ video security footage given to the CIA reject at Fox Propaganda ensures the next coup will have a roadmap to once-secret places. The Capitol is the scene of past and future crimes.

Intersectionality is another word for cooperation. We will have to cooperate to address the challenges of climate change, to take the mythology out of it, "it's THOSE people, not US," to solve the problem together. It's not Ron DeSantis-Stan at risk of higher water levels due to climate change: it is an American state, American citizens, and, as illustrated in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina, American climate refugees and, sadly, casualties.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech on April 4, 1967, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." He condemned the Vietnam War, which would result in over 50,000 American casualties, as immoral and unjust. He was assassinated, supposedly by James Earl Ray, on April 4, 1968.

Dr. King was in Memphis, Tennessee, for the rights of Sanitation Workers, carrying signs stating the obvious, "I am a man," that wasn't at the time (and since the public execution of Tyre Nichols feet from where King was assassinated) being respected. It was an extension, or arm of the Poor People's Campaign, an effort to unify the poor in urban cities and Appalachia, in other words: intersectionality.

So, it's not a fear of Black History/CRT, or drag queen story hour (if you don't support it, don't go), Hispanic Heritage Month, Queer History Month, Women's History Month: it's the Venn Diagram that intersects each of these groups under a common foe that is determined to maintain that status quo by closing polling booths, voter purging, voter suppression. Book bans discourage intersectionality through ignorance, such that each can build coalitions to the point they could become the 53% voting majority in a majoritarian nation.

South African Apartheid existed as "white" Afrikaans declined to a numerical minority.

America might try something like this for 47%, and the continuously psychopathic 1% would like to maintain.

There is another formula:

99% = 46% + 53%, which is > 1%.

The old world had castles, kings, queens, dukes, and duchesses, with serfs willing to subjugate themselves to a monied elite because of "divine will," not sociopathy.

The new world has mansions, billionaires, hedge fund managers, and corporations, with a bewildered herd willing to subjugate themselves to a monied elite because the propaganda they pump them says they are "blessed," not kleptomaniacs.

Intersectionality = cooperation = survival. Authoritarian autocracy does not.