A survey from the Pew Research Center released last month showed that there is a rapid decline in Catholisism among American Hispanics — tumbling from 67% in 2010 to 46%. “That’s consistent with other Latin American countries, such as Brazil, where large numbers of Catholics have converted to Evangelical Christianity,” says Dr Andrew Chesnut, Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The “health and wealth” promises of Pentecostalism in particular are driving people across the continent to Evangelical churches. “The interesting difference between Latin America and the United States,” says Chesnut, “is the percentage of religious ‘nones’, which has tripled to 30 percent in 12 years. In Latin America, they’re only usually in the 12-14 percent range.”

Nones are people who have no faith at all, and they are fast swallowing up white Christian America — now firmly a minority. In 1996, the year Bill Clinton was sworn in for his second term as president, almost 65% of Americans identified as white and Christian. Now, only 44% do. In 1990, only 7% of Americans said that they were nones, but that figure has increased four-fold over the last 30 years, largely because of young people. Today, almost half of Gen Z — young adults born from 1997 onwards — say they have no religion.

For a long time, American exceptionalism saw the United States buck the European trend of secularisation. And faith among Hispanics, who tend to come from more religious backgrounds than white Americans, remained particularly strong. Catholicism was seen, even among the young, as part of their identity — but “the inflexibility of the Church to modernise its dogma and doctrine in terms of blessing, same sex marriage, and female clergy really is culturally out of touch with Millennials and Generation Z”, Chesnut says. High-profile sex scandals have also put people off — too much even for the Latino community’s cultural Catholics. People who once ticked the box identifying as Catholic, even if they weren’t regularly attending, are now firmly in the “none” camp. And Hispanics are now abandoning the faith as fast as the rest of the country.

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Ryan Burge, author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, suspects that changes in Hispanic faith have to do with how devout your parents were when they came to the United States. “If they are super devout, you’re more likely to stay Catholic,” he says. “If they really weren’t religious at all, you’re much more likely to become a none.” But there is a third way: “If they’re kind of on the fence about religion, then you might become Evangelical.”

The material promises offered by born-again churches are also attractive. A Pew study in 2014 found that 49% of Hispanics who were raised as Catholics but have become Protestants say that an important factor was finding a church that “reaches out and helps its members more”. Moreover, the prosperity gospel preached in Evangelical churches rewards hard work — a philosophy that often appeals to those who’ve signed up to the American Dream, which reassures them that if they put in the effort, they’ll be rewarded. Faith healing is also an attractive offering, given that health care is usually out-of-reach for working-class people in the United State.

Assimilation is often a primary aim. “We’re seeing a rising number of conservative Hispanics jumping the fence from Catholicism to Evangelicalism, because Evangelicalism is a very American religion,” says Burge. Immigrants to the United States often have more malleable identities, and “becoming an Evangelical is a way to jump into the mainstream of your town or city”, says Burge.   Evangelical Churches are a marker of a new life and new identity. Being born again is both a spiritual and actual experience: you’re baptised as a follower of Jesus, and as an American. Some scholars describe conversion to Evangelical faith as a kind of safety mechanism, stemming from the belief that Hispanic immigrants become more American, and less deportable.

The change in the religious landscape reflects a bigger picture in American politics: the stark, and increasingly pronounced, city-rural divide. The “God Gap” is a part of that: if you’re in a big city,you’re likely to be secular; in a rural area, you’re likely to be church-going — or at least religiously-identifying but not attending. Politically, these religious shifts are beginning to have a real impact: the Democrats are making gains in secularising regions, while the Republicans are on the march in places where religion is on the rise.

Hispanics are increasingly adopting the cultural markers once dominated by white Americans — and with that has come a change in party allegiance. In the 2020 election, Hispanic Evangelicals voted almost 50/50 for Trump and Biden, while two-thirds of Hispanic Catholics voted for their co-religionist Biden. In Hispanic-majority Miami-Dade County, which Hillary Clinton won by 30 percentage points in 2016, Biden won by only seven in 2020.  Even more striking is Texas, long vaunted as a state preparing to turn to the Democrats. This would be electorally disastrous for the Republicans: Texas is the second largest state in the electoral college. But along the Texas-Mexico border, in the Rio Grande Valley, the number of votes for Republicans has jumped astronomically. After losing Starr County, in southernmost Texas, by 60 percentage points to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump lost it by just five to Joe Biden in 2020. Next door in Zapata County, which Clinton won by 33 percentage points in 2016, voters flipped entirely for Trump. These are counties that identify as almost entirely Hispanic or Latino — and who have long been assumed to be flag-waving Democrats.

But Hispanics here, unsurprisingly, feel the threat of deportation more keenly than most, given their proximity to the border. That anxiety often manifests as a preoccupation with job security, and one’s place in the community — ideas central to the conservative worldview.

“Hispanics who are conservative culturally, socially and religiously are moving into places around the Rio Grande Valley,” Burge says. “And they’re really changing the political and social culture of those places.” Religiosity, like Republicanism, has massively increased in the region. In 2010, about 33% of Starr County claimed they were part of a religious congregation. By 2020, that number was 73%. Conservative Texas Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar describes the region as “homogenous, deeply religious, pensively patriotic, socially conservative, and it’s hurting economically.” In other words, naturally Republican.

Whether the conservative or the Evangelical turn came first is difficult to say, but they often go hand in hand, motivated by the same feeling: that the liberal, secular world is closing in on people with conservative values. And given the GOP is so clearly losing the demographic battle, it has been willing to accept Hispanics — particularly evangelical Hispanics — as all-American patriots. Though Catholicism has historically been tied to Hispanic identity, for first and second generation migrants who feel compelled to prioritise assimilation over their heritage, a fork in the road is clear: become a non-believing, big-city Democrat, or a small-town Evangelical Republican.

But locals have long known that Democrats were due for a collapse. With his victory over perennial loser Charlie Crist, DeSantis transformed Miami from a cultural outpost to a diverse Republican haven heading into the 2024 Presidential election. It’s a fascinating turn for a city that has traditionally been considered more Latin American than American — one that highlights the ongoing political realignment stateside.

Miami has been trending red since 2016, when Trump made initial inroads with Hispanics, but last Tuesday’s “red wave” was a surprise. Most observers expected a modest DeSantis victory or a narrow defeat. But I was certain that DeSantis was poised for a big win. Miami has been steadily shifting rightward for years, and the city’s incompetent Democratic operatives have made matters worse by countering with woke talking points and a fake panic about “disinformation” in Spanish-language media.

The seeds of this shift were planted by the Orange Man himself. With his talk of “bad hombres” at the border and “making America great again”, Trump immediately connected with a sizeable number of working-class Hispanic Miamians, many of whom had previously been apolitical. In these early days, the county’s Right-wing crew was mostly a mix of youngish Miami bros and rabid Cuban anticommunists, who made their presence felt in the caravans that commandeered the streets and worsened already awful Miami traffic in the lead up to the 2016 election.

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This was a boisterous and fun crowd, enamored by the gaudier aspects of the Trumpian aesthetic, and it was not strictly Cuban. It was an intersectional crew of Hispanic dudes, and as the country was engulfed in flames in the summer of 2020, ladies began to join in on the fun. The Right-wing Latina was born. The caravans and boat parades leading up to 2020 were no doubt the best-looking, and most surgically enhanced, political events in American history — complete with one of the all-time great campaign songs. The city’s vibes were red hot. In 2020, Trump lost Miami-Dade County by only seven points, after losing it by 29 four years earlier. Miami was primed to go red, and soon.

As Miami began to shift Right, local progressive outfits, such as Cubanos Pa’lante, and Democratic Hispanic politicians, such as former US representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, doubled down on Latinx-style wokism and the “disinformation” gambit. Hispanic Miami, hypersexualised and constitutionally politically incorrect, is by its very nature an anti-woke city, but progressive Miami Democrats, captured and funded by the woke white Democratic establishment, cannot confront this reality head on. “Latinx” progressives, unable to deviate from the Democratic funding apparatus, could not speak up and say what they knew to be true: that the weird gender and racial obsessions of white progressives alienate working- and middle-class Hispanics.

Many Hispanics, as has been noted ad nauseum as the Rightward shift continues, are “socially conservative”. In Miami, however, such “social conservatism” often means a simple belief that men are men and women are women. The elevation of the trans woman as the embodiment of Democratic femininity was never going to play here — or with Hispanics anywhere.

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The coronation of Ron DeSantis

By https://stage.unherd.com/2022/04/why-hispanics-gave-up-on-the-left/

Some progressives have tried to explain the Rightward shift of Hispanics by pointing to the supposed “whiteness” of certain Latino demographics. According to woke dogma, Hispanics, especially Cuban Americans, think of themselves as white and are increasingly starting to vote that way. But this is a dodge, conveniently deflecting attention away from the fact that Democratic messaging is full of progressive extremism that appeals to the party’s elite base while alienating everyone else.

The truth is that progressives must focus on wokeness because confronting the reality of what many Hispanics believe on issues like the border, race, and gender would infuriate the elite white women who run the Democratic and media apparatus. This disconnect between the elite party brokers and working-class people of colour is most obvious in Miami, a city that prides itself on its intransigence. Due to their inability to speak honestly, Democrats ceded the most important issues for the city’s voters — crime, immigration, the economy — to Donald Trump and, later, Ron DeSantis.

If you hang around with working-class Hispanics in Miami, you’ll hear some of the most strident immigration policies imaginable: “We gotta close the border, bro. There’re too many people here already.” This isn’t a white dude from Omaha saying this, but a Hispanic guy who probably knows half a dozen people who crossed over illegally. This hardline talk has nothing to do with “whiteness” or Trumpism, but with the realities of living in a city where immigration is a constant. It’s no coincidence that Mexican-Americans living along the Southern border also flipped toward the GOP in 2020. As long as working-class reality is ignored in favor of woke talking points, a truth vacuum will be created.

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Into that truth vacuum walked DeSantis, who adopted and then refined the more popular aspects of the Trumpian brand. “Florida,” DeSantis says, “is where woke goes to die.” Like Trump, DeSantis understands that culture war issues can be winners for conservatives. Unlike Trump, he has proved that he has the focus and discipline to follow through on his rhetoric and win the ensuing battles. He went after critical race theory and gender ideology in public schools, banned medical transitions for minors, picked a fight with Disney over the company’s alleged political meddling, and passed the Stop WOKE Act, which has endeared him to traditional working-class Hispanics. According to NBC News exit polls, DeSantis not only won a supermajority of Cuban Americans but a majority of Puerto Ricans and half of other Latinos.

Of course, Hispanics aren’t the whole story here. Miami-Dade flipped in part because of their Rightward shift, but the influx of blue state lockdown refugees certainly didn’t hurt. DeSantis kept schools and businesses open, proclaimed “the free state of Florida,” and the rest is history. Tech bros flooded into Miami, as did regular Americans looking for freedom in what has traditionally been the most non-American big city in the country.

DeSantis’ strength on cultural issues, coupled with his pro-business and pro-freedom agenda, shows that big-tent Republicanism is still possible, so long as the man leading the charge is capable and competent. The expected national red wave didn’t happen, but if Republicans are smart, they’ll follow the Florida model employed by DeSantis, which will draw both working-class Hispanics and anti-woke, pro-America elites. The Trumpian approach was always going to attract the more rambunctious elements of the Republican base, but DeSantis has proven that his measured, workmanlike approach will retain the working-class types — Hispanic and otherwise — while attracting lapsed Democrats and traditional Republicans.

Miami Democrats will have to change course if they hope to retain the city, but their longstanding inability to deviate from woke talking points will make that extremely difficult. They must break from, or convince, the Democratic Party apparatus that Hispanics — the largest minority demographic in the country — are more traditionally American than they suspected.

If you spent 10 years trying to write a satire that encapsulates our present moment in American Democratic politics, you could do no better than this story. It is practically art. It is divinely ridiculous. But it’s also an incident from which certain conclusions can be drawn — about where the Left stands politically, and what the future holds, here at the almost-halfway point to our next presidential election.

The LatinX IncluXion Luncheon took place on Monday, in the Texas city of San Antonio, and Biden was attempting to compliment civil rights activist Raul Yzaguirre. “Raul helped build this organisation with the understanding that the diversity of this community, as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio, is your strength,” she said — mispronouncing “bodegas” as “BO-guh-duhs”. For the uninitiated, that is basically the closest thing we have in New York City to the crime of lese-majesty.

The backlash came swiftly from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which released a statement that read, in part, “NAHJ encourages Dr. Biden and her speech writing team to take the time in the future to better understand the complexities of our people and communities. We are not tacos.”

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The white privilege of BLM

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The First Lady, of course, did not write this speech herself — as evidenced by the fact that it included a word she didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce. And the “tacos” line, of course, is not something she — or any normal person — would ever come up with organically. It’s pure political strategy, a too-earnest pandering to various identity groups that has dominated the liberal discourse for the past six years. It’s just unfortunate for Jill Biden that her speechwriters and political aides failed to realise that this type of rhetoric has not only reached the limits of its usefulness, but has lately become akin to walking around with a sign on your back that says “cancel me”.

This happened quite fast. It is only two years since the racial reckoning of 2020, a year when you couldn’t open your email without combing through half a dozen new corporate diversity declarations from every organisation you’d ever had contact with in your life. Your newspaper, your cable company, your dermatologist, the company that mails pineapples to your in-laws every year as a holiday gift: all of them wanted you to know that they stood in support of social justice. This was the year when the diversity industry climbed to a $7.6 billion valuation (and counting), and expensive DEI consultants flooded en masse into corporate life. It’s when Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility was a bestseller in its (approximately) 53rd millionth printing; when Democratic politicians took the knee wearing kente cloth; when celebrities purged their white guilt in self-produced confessional videos.

The momentum of the diversity movement was unstoppable, partly because Americans were united in genuine horror over the murder of George Floyd, but also because the country had been in pandemic lockdown for months, and everyone was bored and stir crazy and absolutely desperate to do something. Here was something to believe in and an excuse to flout the stay-at-home order, and by God, we were going to take it.

But as the landscape of daily life became littered with solidarity statements and BLACK LIVES MATTER signs, the significance of these expressions began to subtly shift. What started as legitimate outrage and demand for change was evolving into a sort of status signal, a code by which good liberals could recognise others of their kind. And as the summer wore on, the signs started taking on a subtext: not just I’m one of you, but also please don’t hurt me. Store owners plastered social justice slogans in their windows in the hope that their businesses would be spared if a riot broke out. Diners at sidewalk cafes were confronted by mobs of angry protesters who refused to let them eat until or unless they raised a fist for black lives. Silence, of course, was violence — and power was coalescing in new and different places.

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The desperation to demonstrate that you were down with the cause was palpable, and not unfounded. In one viral video, released at the moment when cancelling so-called “Karens” had become America’s new favorite spectator sport, a sobbing woman tries frantically to shield both her face and her licence plate from view. The unseen videographer accuses her of calling him the n-word; she protests that she’s done no such thing. “I have a black husband!” she shrieks, terrified.

To some people, the sight of that sobbing, desperate woman was deeply distasteful: a sign of things gone too far. But to others, it was a lightbulb moment: here was an opportunity. You could see it in the way that allegations of racism began to run rampant — not on the political Right, but through the most diversity-conscious, progressive spaces. The industries rocked hardest by the reckoning, and where most cancellations occur today, were not hotbeds of white supremacy but Left-liberal havens, populated by highly educated white people who prided themselves on their progressive bona fides and lived in terror of causing offence.

Media, fashion, publishing, television, the non-profit industrial complex: somehow, it was always the people doing the most who were next on the chopping block. The yoga studio owner who hosted free classes for students of colour. The novelist who diligently sought sensitivity reads in hopes of avoiding offence. The café owners who set out to create a welcoming LGBT community space. The summer camp with not one but two separate diversity committees to address issues of racial equity. The greater your dedication to diversity, the less likely your business was to survive a callout for even the most minor offences against it. Suddenly, nothing made you a target quite like being an ally (except apologising, of course).

And those statements that used to signal solidarity, even status — that used to be a tool for self-advancement in a world where caring about diversity was the best thing you could do for your brand — have taken on a new shade of meaning. Now, to say you care is to advertise your susceptibility to allegations of not-caring. You’re telling people that you can be squeezed, for apologies, or for money, or for whatever shred of publicity or attention or advantage might be gained by humiliating you.

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Jill Biden is being squeezed. Not because she actually did anything wrong, but because she cares about being seen to do right, and that makes her vulnerable. Let’s be clear about this: nobody actually believes that the First Lady of the United States, a 71-year-old professional with a doctoral degree, needs to be instructed as to the difference between people and tacos. Even the group of people who just issued a public statement declaring themselves not to be tacos do not believe it. Biden’s speech was many things — cringy, pandering, clearly unrehearsed — but it was not racist, not by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet, as long as someone can benefit from claiming they believe otherwise, they will — and the rest of us have to go along with it.

This might be the worst part: that everyone, from the First Lady to the NAHJ to the media covering this ridiculous story have to keep pretending that it’s a real thing, that it really matters. Journalists have to dutifully publish the interviews with the offended parties, who in turn dutifully manage to keep saying “We are not tacos” with a straight face. Jill Biden has to dutifully apologise and thank her interlocutors for the opportunity to listen, learn, and do better. And ordinary liberals who want to remain such, in good standing, have to dutifully nod along as if the party weren’t on the verge of collapsing under the weight of its own ridiculousness.

Meanwhile, the economy is imploding, no laws are being passed, our president’s approval rating is hovering around 30%, and those Latino voters who we claim to care about so much are fleeing in droves to the Republican party — where a candidate need not bother with endless racial sensitivity charades that cater solely to the sensibilities of an elite class of progressive activists. Donald Trump not only refused to celebrate diversity, unless you count tweeting a picture of himself on Cinco de Mayo — eating, of all things, a taco bowl — alongside the caption, I LOVE HISPANICS! He also vowed to build a wall to keep Mexicans  — who, he suggested, were mostly rapists — out of the country, a comment for which he refused to apologise. And yet, for a growing number of voters, even that is better than the cringe coming out of the Left.

And if things continue this way, that tweeting, taco-bowl eating orange ex-President will be re-elected in 2024 by a multi-racial coalition who care far more about the price of gas than they do about the culture wars. Melania Trump, who not only makes no apologies for her husband’s coarseness but really doesn’t care about immigrants will resume her position as the least-enthusiastic, and least seen, First Lady ever to set foot in the White House. But sure, let’s keep holding our politicians hostage to increasingly tortured purity tests. Let’s nitpick and police and snipe over etiquette until every last normal person in our orbit has fled. Let’s keep schooling the First Lady on the difference between a taco and a person. This will definitely end well.

Adding action to rhetoric, Biden has embraced brazenly discriminatory policies that Barack Obama would likely have been too savvy to impose openly: special assistance to prospective black homeowners, race-based support for black farmers and black businesses, and attempts to end inflation by promoting “equity” in the financial sector through intrusive regulation.

Yet while Biden has placed racialism — making race a decisive factor in public decisions — at the heart of his political programme, in reality minorities may not prove the Castroite fifth column dreamed up by either the far-Right or their leftist doppelgängers. Minorities are more than genetic constructs; they are people with ambitions, families, and budgets. And sadly, Biden’s policies are not making their lives any better.

The inflation his administration deemed first temporary, and only a “high class” concern, is now destroying small minority-owned businesses and eroding their savings. Indeed, America’s embattled economy seems a crucial reason why minority support for Biden has been failing for months, including among black voters. By contrast, Republicans are building on Trump’s surprisingly large share of minority voters in 2020; they command the highest support from Hispanics and African-Americans in recent history. The fall of Roe could impact this, particularly among women, although many Latinos are also devout Catholics and many of them, as well as many black voters, also attend evangelical churches.

Indeed, cultural issues are part reason for the flight of minorities, include racial indoctrination in schools, ineffective law enforcement and questionable gender policies in primary schools — enough to spark a boom in home education among Latinos. A similar pattern is emerging among Asian voters, who played a critical role in San Francisco’s recall of progressive DA Chesa Boudin this month, and the defeat of progressive school board members a few weeks earlier. Similarly, the recent wave of GOP victories in Latino-dominated south Texas has ridden on the embrace of conservative social values and, perhaps most critically, reaction to the chaos unfolding at the border. When the Democrats start losing the Rio Grande Valley, a place they dominated for a century, you know things are changing.

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Overall, Biden’s racialist focus also runs against a changing demographic reality. When Biden was growing up, African Americans were the primary racial minority. As late as 2005, black people and Latinos constituted 14% of the population. Today, however, the Hispanic population stands at 62 million, far outnumbering the 47 million African Americans. By 2050, according to Pew, the Hispanic population will swell to 30% of the population, more than twice the black share. Asians, meanwhile, will have grown from barely 12 million in 2000 to more than three times that number by mid-century. Taken together Asians and Latinos will account for 40% of Americans, and the vast majority of the racial minorities.

In modern America, then, political leaders need to transcend the old “black-white” paradigm embraced by Biden. Latinos and Asians (as well as a rising population of Africans from the continent or the islands) experienced very different histories than those descended from slaves or those who suffered under Jim Crow. Although many immigrants have also experienced discrimination; they also came here voluntarily to seek out a better life.

Simply put, the rhetoric around race needs to change. Rather than the language shaped by slavery, progressive Americans should instead embrace what those liberals who dominate our publications and airwaves don’t realise: that most Americans don’t learn about race in college grievance classes but by personal, daily experience. They live in a country where salsa outsells ketchup, Modelo is about to surpass Budweiser as the nation’s top beer brand, and Latin music is the fastest-growing in the country.

Perhaps nothing contradicts the racialist mantra more than the rise in intermarriage, which has soared from barely 5%i n 1980 to 17% today. The notion of America succumbing to “encroaching white supremacy” seems unlikely when 10% of babies have one white and one non-white parent and 12% of all African-Americans are immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere.

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Critically, the geography of diversity is also changing, with potential political implications. As minorities move away from the inner cities, they enter a more integrated, less economically isolate milieu. In the 50 largest metropolitan areas, 44% of residents live in racially and ethnically diverse suburbs. Nationwide, in the 53 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 residents, more than three-quarters of black and Hispanic residents now live in suburban or exurban areas.

There’s also a movement between regions, which is making red states evermore politically influential, as well as diverse. Minorities are leaving the “enlightened” centres of racialist religion — New York, California, Illinois — for the red states of the old Confederacy, Texas, Arizona, Utah and even Great Plains. It’s not hard to see why: in recent report for the Urban Reform Institute, we found minorities have generally done much better — in terms of income and homeownership in deep red areas than in the more loudly “anti-racist” blue regions. In Atlanta, African American-adjusted median incomes are more than $60,000, compared to $36,000 in San Francisco and $37,000 in Los Angeles. The median income for Latinos in Virginia Beach-Norfolk is $69,000, compared to $43,000 in Los Angeles, $47,000 in San Francisco and $40,000 in New York.

Some on the Right fear, and those on the Left hope, that this movement will drag red states into alignment with migrants from former blue homes. This may be true in terms of abortion or tolerance for Donald Trump, but progressives often forget what motivates people to move. Most minorities, like other people, have more important things to worry about than where they slot into some racialist agenda — they want a chance to make a better life for themselves and their families.

So instead of confessional mea culpas about racism and embracing Critical Race Theory, Biden would do well to help these people by focusing on the working-class needs of most Americans. After all, minorities make up over 40% of the nation’s working class and will constitute the majority by 2032. Without them, our country’s labor shortage and issues with ageing would be far worse. For all that the Left fixate on intersectional theory, few seem to connect the dots between race and class.

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By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ultimately, racial problems can only be solved by addressing fundamental economic issues facing Americans of all races. Rather than obsess over the original sin of slavery, we need to focus on creating opportunity for all those lacking it. Subsidies and special dispensations can only cover a relative handful of people. But policies favouring entrepreneurship, family-friendly housing, and reshoring industry would create far more lasting positive results, particularly if growth can be steered to distressed parts of the South, the southside of Chicago or the barrios of East Los Angeles, the Bronx, San Antonio, or Fresno.

The key to ending racial antagonism, then, doesn’t lie in equity programmes, but in economic growth and opportunity. Unity can’t just be conjured out of thin air — people need to feel it in their bank accounts first. This won’t be achieved through a national campaign of penance, or through boxing the country into a racial zero-sum game. If Biden really cares about America’s minorities, the goal should be simple: to help them to find a road to prosperity and financial independence, along with the rest of the country.

When asked about the inspiration behind Americano last month, two weeks after its first broadcast, CEO Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo cited the 2016 election, in which Trump made massive, surprising gains with Hispanics. Recent polling suggests that the rightward drift of the demographic, on which Trump capitalised, has continued since then. There is a growing audience of conservative Hispanics, Garcia-Hidalgo points out — and what they, and America, needed was a “Fox News in Spanish”.

The first evidence of this political shift was met with incredulity by both Left and Right. But those of us on the ground had known for some time that Hispanic-Americans were turning to the Republican Party in unprecedented numbers. In my working-class Miami neighbourhood, I consistently encountered enthusiastic Trumpists. Sure, Trump was always going to attract traditionally Right-leaning Cuban-Americans, but the fervour — and the youth — of his fanatics back in 2015 and 2016 hinted at the beginnings of a new political realignment. Trump’s unorthodox style and abrasive anti-elitist rhetoric had connected with working-class Hispanics. Friends and family who were previously apolitical or tepid independents with centrist leanings had surprisingly hopped on the Trump train.

Trump may be on the fringes again, but in 2020 he gained even more support among working-class Hispanics than he had in 2016. This was a result not purely of his own qualities: since his election, the Democratic Party had alienated another Hispanic demographic. The BLM riots of 2020 were incisive: after the fire and smoke had cleared, polling showed that Hispanics, traditionally law and order types, were against the protests and strongly rejected the Black Lives Matter organisation. At the same time, Democrats were demanding that regular Americans kneel at the altar of the new social justice religion. Many Hispanic-Americans who had previously considered themselves centrist Democrats were repelled.

They might previously have been turned off by Trump’s inflammatory language; now, they were even more turned off by the actual flames destroying American cities under the guise of wokeness. They might not have been Trump supporters in 2016, but they certainly had a rabid Trumpist tio or abuelo who was now pointing at the fires and looters and saying: “See, Trump was right. Democrats want to destroy America.” Hispanics didn’t wake up en masse, but the Right-wing shift became a phenomenon that wasn’t strictly driven by Hispanic Trump supporters.

According to Garcia-Hidalgo, “the only way to save America is with the Hispanic vote” — a  sly rhetorical move that subscribes his new network to the Trumpian view that America is under attack, while positioning patriotic Hispanics as the antidote. Garcia-Hidalgo understands that conservative Hispanics, even if they still have strong ties to their homelands, essentially identify as Americans above all else. Trump understood this, too, which is why some of his more “problematic” language directed at Hispanics — the “bad hombres” rhetoric — didn’t hurt his chances with the demographic. After all, conservative Hispanics, along with the white working-class, are the last group that is unironically patriotic.

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Trump understood the power of culture war as a binding agent. While the Democrats’ socialism-tinged rhetoric became blatantly anti-American, he continued to offer an unabashedly pro-America shtick. Since many Hispanics have ties to failed socialist countries, their American dream is a simple one: they want to work hard, make some money, and be left alone in their free time. This sentiment is perhaps the greatest tenet of classic Americanism. Hispanics do not believe that the nation is illegitimate, undermined by “whiteness” or “cis heteronormativity”, or in need of a radical restructure.

The summer of 2020 may have solidified the Trump-triggered Hispanic rightward shift, but the Democratic response to the pandemic ensured its short-term viability. According to blue-state governors, it was okay to get fresh air only if you were marching for a liberal cause or torching a small business. After the riots subsided, schools remained closed, as did the small businesses left standing after the summer of BLM. All the while, Democrats elevated disconnected bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci to deity-status and robbed the little man of all agency. Working-class Hispanics, of course, were still carrying out their essential jobs throughout the entirety of the pandemic, connected to the physical reality that the laptop class had had the luxury of abandoning.

Still, now that lockdowns and mask mandates are subsiding, will the Republican’s Hispanic gains last? Outside of Trump — and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — no politician on the Right knows how to communicate effectively with Hispanics, which is why the long-term rightward shift is anything but a guarantee. Garcia-Hidalgo understands this reality, which is probably why he announced, on the Americano show “La Politica,” that presenter Maria Herrera Mellado will be interviewing Trump today.

Of course, the success of Americano isn’t tied to Trump, per say, and nor is the growing conservatism of Hispanics. Even if Trump doesn’t run again in 2024, there’s no doubt that a Trumpian “America first” sensibility plays well with Hispanics and must hold a significant role in any outlet — or movement — if the rightward shift is to continue.

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The best way for the Republicans to sustain the rightward shift is to consolidate a fragmented Hispanic demographic. The same goes for Americano. Conservative Hispanics are accustomed to regional outlets catering to mostly localised obsessions: prior to the network’s inception, the Spanish-language news options available to them were regional outlets, like Miami’s Radio Mambi. These stations cultivate their audiences for decades, through a fine-tuned understanding of what their listeners’ desire, resulting in a family-like ecosystem in which listeners and commentators build decades-long relationships. They don’t individually pull in massive numbers, but overall listenership is in the millions.

It’s tempting for a network, or a Republican politician, based in Miami to focus on the concerns of Cuban-Americans — they, and the Mexican-Americans along the Rio Grande Valley, are the two Hispanic demographics usually cited when pundits speak of the rightward shift. But if the Right strictly focuses its efforts on the interests of these groups — which sometimes, but not always, dovetail — their rhetoric will be far too insular to reach a broad-based Hispanic coalition.

In my recent listens to Americano’s programming, it’s clear that the station is in Miami, but not of Miami, which bodes well for its future prospects. Instead of placing too much emphasis on a single Hispanic group, Americano is melding “America first” Trumpian Republicanism with the socially conservative elements that have traditionally appealed to disparate Hispanic demographics. For instance, on the night I caught the 8pm show “Entre Nosotras”, the three female presenters were joined by a former officer from the Phoenix PD to discuss the border crisis and the attendant drug scourge precipitated by President Biden’s porous border policy, which is causing a “domestic war”. The Trump-like takes on immigration — which are very popular with Hispanics — and the machinegun-like, emotionally charged delivery of the presenters will appeal to old-school talk radio veterans.

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It’s worth noting, too, that many of the network’s stars — including the presenter who will interview Trump — are strong women, which highlights the savviness of the management. Recent polling has shown that Hispanic women have shifted to the Right more than any other demographic; a show that foregrounds educated Latinas is likely to be a hit. It’s also as fine a way as any to make a splash and draw in younger Hispanics, which will be the key to expanding the rightward shift and the station’s reach; younger Hispanics are still skewing progressive.

Meanwhile, Americano’s other programming, including the first show of the day, “Amanecer Con Dios” (Waking up with God), which is hosted by a priest, and “Sabor Caribeno,” which focuses on Dominican and Puerto Rican issues, speaks to a network attempting to attract disparate Hispanic elements.

The Trump campaign was likewise able to bring together the fragmented Right-wing Hispanic coalition. What’s most impressive is that the shift occurred without the help of major networks, which often serve as messaging apparatuses for the parties. In the lead up to 2020, the Trump campaign blitzed South Florida, the Texas Rio Grande Valley, and other Hispanic-heavy areas with targeted ads painting Democrats as light on crime socialists hellbent on reshaping America. But its project certainly would’ve been easier if a national Spanish-language network existed, which is why Americano’s appearance on the scene is such an interesting development. Whether or not it succeeds will reveal whether Trumpism can hold onto Hispanic voters who feel themselves drifting to the Right.

The Republican Party, then, should be watching the network’s fortunes closely. Even if Trump doesn’t run in 2024, his brand of Republicanism is so popular with Hispanics that it will play a crucial part in the election. Meanwhile, the budding Spanish-language media ecosystem can provide an insight into what the ascendant Hispanic-American conservative coalition desires — an insight the Democrats might benefit from, too.

The article stated that the results of last year’s census marked “the first time the absolute number of people who identify as White alone has shrunk since a census started being taken in 1790”. Similar refrains rang out across numerous other news outlets: “America’s white population set to shrink”; “America’s White Population Shrank for the First Time”; “Vast Stretches of America Are Shrinking. Almost All of Them Voted for Trump”.

There was jubilation among the Left. Michael Moore called the announcement “the best day ever in US history”. For cultural radicals such as he, the census marked the end of “white supremacy” and the start of a millennium of progressive dominance and racial equity. Similarly, Neocon-turned-Never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin gushed that “this is fabulous news — now we need to prevent minority White rule”.

Meanwhile, on the Right, Tucker Carlson, while condemning the Left’s gloating, went on to claim, without evidence, that the opioid crisis in white communities explained the decline. Likewise, the news will only confirm views held by the far-Right, whereby white nationalists have warned that white decline is being orchestrated by globalist elites and minorities, and which will lead to dire consequences for white people and their children.

However, despite the charged rhetoric doing the rounds, the number of people American society considers to be white has almost certainly increased since 2010. White America is not shrinking, and whites are not being racially supplanted. It’s a false narrative with serious political repercussions: study after study has found that reminding white Americans about their impending minority status shifts their policy attitudes in a conservative direction and increases support for Right-wing populism. So while this announcement may make the cultural Left feel good, it largely benefits the Trumpist Right.

But what do the actual findings indicate? Isn’t the census reporting the facts as they stand, that the number of white people in the country is declining? Well, it’s certainly true 5.1 million fewer non-Hispanic Americans ticked their race as “white alone” in 2020 compared to 2010. But to take this number out of context is to paint a misleading picture of social reality.

Any quantitative social science student knows that when you change the wording of a survey question, you can alter — often substantially — the pattern of responses. The 2010 census questionnaire offered single tick boxes for “white” and “black”. The 2020 version was changed so that people were not only asked to tick a box but also prompted to write their ethnic group in a text box below. Research from Pew shows that around 15% of black and white respondents did not write anything in the text box, or they wrote something that doesn’t make sense. Hispanic Americans were also told, for the first time, that Hispanic is not a race[1.  For this survey, Hispanic origins are not races”, was the wording alongside the What is your race? question.] when asked to define theirs. It is likely this prompted people to question their choice of which box to mark, opting for a multiple race or “other race” category instead. This would depress the number ticking the “white alone” box.

In addition to the change in census wording, the politicisation of white identity in the Trump era may also have led liberals to distance themselves from the category. The 2010s bore witness to a sharp rise in cultural progressivism. During this decade, the share of liberal Democratic white citizens, saying they felt “cold” towards white people increased by roughly 10%.

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There’s also the fact that many WASP Americans, such as Elizabeth Warren, have some Native American ancestry and some, such as Brad Pitt, believe they do even when such claims cannot be substantiated. Similarly, since 8 in 10 black Americans have white or other racial backgrounds in their family history, and 1 in 10 white southerners has African ancestry, the scope for expansion in the mixed or other race categories is potentially enormous.

So did these changes affect what people wrote on the 2020 census? Much of this depends on three things: whether their answers reflect a) their own identity, b) how they think others see them, or c) some judgement about the preponderance of pan-ethnic origins in their background.

Figure 1 (below) shows that the number of Americans ticking “white alone” as their race dropped by 19.3 million between 2010 and 2020, while the number ticking “white” alongside some other category increased by 23.6 million. Much of this shifting took place within the Hispanic population, but even among non-Hispanics, “white alone” declined by 5.1 million.

At the same time, the census recorded a rise of 24.8 million in the “two or more races” group and a jump of 28.1 million in “some other race”. The increase of 3.6 million in the population of those with mixed “American Indian and Alaska Native” and other racial background is also noteworthy given that this group numbered just 2.3 million in the 2010 census. Hardly any of this shift can be explained by aboriginal birth or death rates.

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Indeed, it's striking that most biracial white and Native Indian Americans are effectively considered white and view themselves as such. Meanwhile, the assimilation process means that with each generation, fewer descendants of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, especially those of mixed background, identify with their origins. It is, therefore, difficult to conceive that the number of Americans considered white is in decline.

Yet none of this means there is nothing happening with the nation’s ethnic demography. The balance between white births and deaths, taking into account the small flow of some 200,000 white immigrants a year, is nearly equal. The non-Hispanic white population, using the old question, was essentially flatlining between 2010 and 2019. White Americans have maintained a North European fertility pattern, with a total fertility rate between 1.5 and 2, since the Seventies.

Though relatively high for the developed world, this is still below the magic 2.1 replacement level. The “unmixed” white American population, along with white ethnic majorities in the rest of the developed world, will start to gradually decline in the decades ahead. But the big demographic story of the 2010s wasn’t about White Americans, but the big drop in Hispanic fertility, which is rapidly converging with the more stable white rate. So even while the share of “unmixed” whites will probably dip below 50% by 2050, the share who are considered socially white is likely to be a majority into the foreseeable future.

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Either way, to be more informative, the US census needs an update. Social scientists and pundits are interested in people’s subjective racial identity, but we also want to know about the balance of “objective” racial categories. The latter shapes people’s decisions about where to live, who to marry, who to vote for and can affect their life chances. One option might be to ask people how others perceive their race. In Northern Ireland, people’s growing tendency to state their religion as “none” or “not stated” led census takers in 2011 to add a question asking about the religion people were brought up in.

Ultimately, though, until the results of such a question show a real decline in those considered to be "white", the zeal to foreground the Great Replacement tells us more about ideological hopes and fears than any emerging social reality. One of the few seeking to dispel such illusions is leading American sociologist of ethnicity, Richard Alba. However, his important book The Great Demographic Illusion failed to garner reviews because it doesn’t fit the prevailing narrative. Instead, the media are attracted to demographic stories which heighten white threat perceptions, gratifying progressives while increasing support for Trumpism.

So while the definition of white may be blurring at the edges, the white American majority isn’t going anywhere.

Last week he was arrested (then released) in Washington DC, after burning a BLM flag stolen from a black church, once again confounding white Americans with his supposedly distorted racial identity. I found it hard, as I do every time he pops up in the news, not to roll my eyes at the media’s portrayal of Tarrio as some great instigator of racial discord. Because, like me, he’s a Cuban-American from Miami, which is to say that I’ve seen plenty of Tarrio-types in my day.

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Tarrio is what I’ll call a petty Miami schemer — the kind known to anyone who lives in the city, which was built on schemes and grifts in its days as a swampland backwater. In Miami, guys like Tarrio, from the personal trainer who tries to sell you steroids after your first session to the sleazy foreign investors who buy up entire high-rises, are a dime a dozen. The Proud Boys leader was first convicted, of theft, at the age of 20; nine years later, in 2013, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for rebranding and reselling stolen medical devices. Before that, he spent some time in North Florida and ran a poultry farm. And let us not forget Tarrio’s failed 2020 congressional run.

That Tarrio leads a white supremacist group can be explained not by national race relations, but by the fact that he grew up in Miami: a place where “whiteness”, as it’s defined by the woke media class, simply doesn’t exist – for the simple reason that there are basically no white people here. It’s the only American city where Hispanics completely dominate the political and cultural landscape, and the few white people who remain no longer feel themselves to be “culturally white”. Everything in Miami, including racial dynamics, is filtered through a Hispanic lens, not an American one. Miamians don’t even consider themselves Floridians, because the rest of the state resembles Miami as much as Zimbabwe does. Those who grew up here are unrestrained by traditional ideas of race.

As a Miami cliché, Tarrio isn’t remarkably interesting. He’s merely an opportunist with some street smarts, who, due to his urban look, cuts an imposing figure. What he represents to the media class — and how they frame him — is far more interesting. The conversation about race in America always revolves around the supposed animus between blacks and whites, with other POC automatically siding with African-Americans due to some assumed melanated kinship. The fact that Tarrio is even a member, not to mention the leader, of a white supremacist group is inconceivable to most liberals. Their paradigm, in which all POC are locked in an interminable struggle against their white oppressors, removes all possibility for the fluidity and nuance with which POC, and especially Hispanics, navigate ideas of race and colour.

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In Miami, the main animus Hispanics have is with other Hispanics. The Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans have beef with one another. The Chileans and the Argentinians despise each other for reasons beyond just soccer. Hell, my people, the Cubans, have issues not only with other Hispanics, but with each other! The Cubans who immigrated shortly after Castro took power view themselves as entrepreneurial hard workers; they look down on the “newer Cubans” as lazy dope dealers and Medicare fraudsters.

These disparate Hispanic demographics, in order not to have to deal with one another, have segregated themselves into neighbourhoods where they only associate with themselves. The idea that anyone in Miami is thinking about white supremacy is preposterous; to someone like Tarrio, the “spectre of whiteness” — or any other concept used by the Left to explain American race relations — is completely foreign. Herein lies the problem with a term like “people of colour”; something as surface level as pigmentation doesn’t bind distinct subgroups into some kind of coalition.

If liberals find the impossibility of Hispanic solidarity distasteful, it’s only because they believe that kinship between groups is only achievable if all animus ceases to exist. People who live in cities where cultures are constantly clashing, Miami being the greatest example, get that a utopia in which every single group loves each other isn’t necessary. It’s only those suffering from white guilt who advocate this communal POC lovefest, because they are convinced that “whiteness” — and not natural and historic differences between groups — is what’s keeping the utopia at bay. One of the only things Hispanics seem to agree on, though, is that merely tolerating one another is often all the tolerance that’s needed. Some may find this “division” disconcerting, and maybe even sad, but if there isn’t a deep affinity among disparate Hispanic groups, there is in Miami a begrudging camaraderie that permeates personal interactions and animates the culture, and the city.

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Steeped in this culture, a figure like Tarrio, despite all his petty idiocy, has a more acute understanding of American racial dynamics than any African-American Studies major from an elite institution. The race-obsessed commentariat — the same people who’ve pushed the word “Latinx” on Hispanics in the hope of inducing an inorganic solidarity — would be mystified by the Hispanic view of blackness, if they ever bothered to listen to it. To white liberals, if a person looks black, they must automatically identify as black, which isn’t necessarily the case. A Dominican friend of mine, who is very dark-skinned and would be considered “black” by an outside observer, bristles if you jokingly call him so, quickly saying, “I’m Dominican.” Like a lot of Caribbean islanders, he’s not invested in the African-American racial project as understood by those who dominate the race conversation.

Of course, some would argue that this is a result of internalised anti-blackness. Whether that’s true or not — I don’t buy it — the fact remains that in the Hispanic world, black isn’t always black. Which goes a long way in explaining why a guy like Tarrio, who personally identifies as an Afro-Cuban, seems to suffer no cognitive dissonance in leading a white supremacist group.

What his opponents fail to understand is that Tarrio, in a twisted way, is a post-racial man. If I had to guess — and as I said, I’ve known many like him — he truly isn’t concerned with thoughts of colour and race. The only colour that matters to him is the green of the American dollar. In his albeit disturbing quest for finding the ultimate grift, he would’ve fit in just as well with Black Lives Matter as he does with the Proud Boys. He just so happened to have fallen down one internet rabbit hole and not the other.

After the recent events at the Capitol, groups like the Proud Boys will certainly be monitored more closely — and possibly even be forcibly disbanded. But Tarrio, a nasty Miami grifter through and through, will just move on to his next scheme.

It is the same promise of opportunity that explains the new wave of immigration which, from 1965, has come predominantly from Latin America and Asia. And it is throwing up the same questions, challenges and tensions that Americans grappled with in the later 1800s and early 1900s.

The numbers speak for themselves, over 56 million Americans, nearly 18% of the total population, already claim Hispanic heritage,[1. Unless noted otherwise, the data about Hispanics, their heritage, and their socio-demographic characteristics, are taken from https://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/09/18/facts-on-u-s-latinos-current-data/.] and by 2045 it is projected to reach nearly 25%, or over 80 million people. In fact, driven by the huge rise in the Hispanic population, it is predicted that by 2045 America will no longer even be a majority White country.[2. William Frey, ‘The US will become “minority white” in 2045, census projects’, Brookings, 14 March 2018]

Understanding this seismic demographic shift is, therefore, crucial to grasping some of the current and future challenges facing the US. Here are six facts that help explain the potentially profound social and political change ahead.

1. Most Hispanics are from Mexico

Fully 63% of Hispanic-Americans came from one country: Mexico. No other country comes even close to this total. Puerto Ricans, the second largest group of Hispanic-Americans, comprise less than 10% of the total, while the third-and-fourth-largest groups, El Salvadorans and Cubans, are a mere 4% each.[2. Migration from Mexico is down following the Great Recession, but as so many Mexican-Americans are already citizens they will comprise the vast majority of Hispanic-Americans for the foreseeable future.]

2. Most Hispanics are legal immigrants, but most foreign-born Hispanics are undocumented

While Trump’s focus on building a border wall with Mexico might suggest otherwise, around three quarters of Hispanic-Americans are living legally in America, either because they are native-born US citizens or are legal immigrants. Nevertheless, nearly 8.5 million Hispanics living in America, and around 5.5 million Mexicans, are in the US illegally,[3. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/25/as-mexican-share-declined-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-fell-in-2015-below-recession-level/] and two-thirds of foreign-born Hispanics are undocumented.[3. Author’s own calculation based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center. According to Pew, about 8.4 million of America’s 11 million undocumented or illegal immigrants are of Hispanic descent. A Pew analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey finds there are 12. 6 million foreign-born, non-citizen Hispanics living in the United States. See Table 3 in https://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/09/18/facts-on-u-s-latinos-current-data/. Thus, roughly two-thirds of foreign-born Hispanics are not legally in the country.] This simple fact is one reason why immigration is such a potent issue in America – and why President Trump’s call for the wall resonated so widely.

3. Hispanics are overwhelmingly in working-class jobs

Hispanics in America are overwhelmingly in the labour force and occupy traditionally working-class jobs. That’s not a surprise considering their relatively low educational attainment. Nearly half of American-born Hispanics, and nearly three-quarters of those born elsewhere, have no more than a high school diploma. In fact, nearly a third of foreign-born Hispanics dropped out of education before even reaching high school.

Foreign-born Hispanics are particularly concentrated in jobs requiring physical labour. About half are employed on building grounds and in maintenance, construction, factories, or transportation. Another tenth are employed in food services. Given the high proportion of undocumented foreign-born Hispanics, that means millions of largely low-skilled jobs are held by illegal immigrants.[4. According to American law, the roughly two-thirds of foreign-born Hispanics not legally in the country should not be employed. According to Pew, roughly 14 million foreign-born Hispanics had been employed in America between 2011 and 2015. See Table 23 in https://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/09/18/facts-on-u-s-latinos-current-data/. Applying the two-thirds figure to this 14 million figure, we find that nearly nine million Hispanics not legally able to work in America nevertheless did so during that five year period. Even accounting for people who come and go from the country, it is clear that in any given year millions of jobs in America are held by Hispanics not legally authorised to hold them.] Coinciding with rapid job decline in the manufacturing industries that traditionally employed White working-class Americans, these data help explain why anger over illegal immigration is especially concentrated among this group.

4. Hispanic-Americans are disproportionately poor

The median household income for Hispanics born in the US is about $46,000 a year, well below the equivalent $61,000 for Whites. Over one-fifth of Hispanics, and over 30% of Hispanics under 18 years old, live in poverty. This increased likelihood of poverty and low income makes Hispanics much likelier to receive means-tested government benefits than their White or Asian counterparts. Over one-fifth of Hispanics receive food stamps and nearly 40% rely on one of the many publicly-financed programs for their health insurance.[5. A further 20% do not have health insurance at all. This masks a vast difference between US-born Hispanics, whose rate of non-coverage is only slightly higher than that of Whites, and foreign-born Hispanics, 36 percent of whom have no health insurance. See Table 37 in https://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/09/18/facts-on-u-s-latinos-current-data/. This likely arises because people in the country illegally do not qualify for most government-sponsored benefits, and as noted before about two-thirds of foreign-born Hispanics are in the country illegally.]

5. Hispanic-Americans are concentrated in a small number of large states

Hispanics are concentrated in the American West and Southwest, especially in those states bordering Mexico. Hispanics comprise nearly half of New Mexico’s population, nearly 40% of California’s and Texas’, and about 30% of Arizona’s and Nevada’s. Most Hispanics in these states are of Mexican origin. Other states with high Hispanic populations, such as Florida (25%), New York (19%), and New Jersey (19%) tend to draw their Hispanic populations from Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or Central and South America. All told, about 40 million of America’s 56 million Hispanic residents live in one of these eight states.

6. Hispanics tend to favour big government and vote Democrat

Hispanics are supportive of a much more energetic role for government than are Whites. A 2013 survey found that by a nearly 2-1 margin, Hispanics backed higher taxes and more government spending over lower taxes as a means to encourage economic growth. The same survey also found that Hispanics strongly supported government action to reduce income inequality (72%) and to guarantee all Americans had health insurance (58%). While Hispanics do oppose abortion (52%), they prioritise other domestic issues such as education and the economy over this. Since the Republican Party remains at least rhetorically committed to reducing spending, cutting taxes, and limiting government’s role in addressing social problems, these attitudes partly explain why Hispanics are generally supportive of Democrats.

Whether measured in terms of partisan identification or by actual voting behaviour, most Hispanics prefer and vote for the Democratic Party.[6. There is a debate over just how strong the Democratic Party advantage is among Hispanics. The official 2016 exit poll found that Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump among Hispanics by a 66-28 margin while Latino Decisions’ election day poll found Clinton won by a 79-18 margin. See https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls and https://www.latinodecisions.com/files/8614/7866/3919/National_2016__Xtabs.pdf. The true answer is probably in between the two, as each pollster’s methodology has its flaws. But the overarching finding, that Hispanics are overwhelmingly Democratic, is undisputed.] This preference has already moved the once-Republican states of Colorado and Nevada into the Democratic column, and placed the former swing state of New Mexico out of the Republicans’ reach. One respected analysis estimates that the Hispanic share of eligible voters will rise from today’s 12% to 18% by 2036.

Cultural and political challenges await

Predicting the future is a fool’s game, but there are nevertheless some clear implications for American culture and politics that no degree of choice or chance can prevent.

Hispanic and Asian immigration have already made White Christians a minority. This, along with the concurrent rise in atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-Christian belief, is one reason the status of Christian beliefs and institutions play such a large role in American politics. In the 1980s, the religious right called itself the ‘Moral Majority’ and sought to rally the majority of White Christians behind an agenda designed to reinstitute traditional Christian beliefs.

Today, White Christian activists know they no longer constitute a majority, but fear the fallout from becoming a clear minority. Managing this change peacefully and in such a way that both the new majority and White Christians have a respected place in American life and politics is one of the greatest challenges America will face.

Hispanics, most notably Mexicans, will clearly have significantly more political power in the next two decades. In the past, American immigrant groups have brought their culture and experiences from the country of their origin to bear on their political engagement. We can, therefore, expect America to take a growing interest in Mexican affairs, which will likely mean a decline in interest in other regions of the globe. Combined with the rise in Asian political power, this could lead to a re-evaluation of the importance that traditional ties with European countries should play in American global policy.

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Hispanic preferences for a more active and extensive government will also create political conflict with economically dominant Whites. Even though Hispanic income is likely to rise as the children of immigrants attain higher levels of education, and hence obtain higher paying jobs, Hispanics will continue to be disproportionately lower-income for the foreseeable future.

But while the increase in their economic power may be slow to take off, their political power is rising much more quickly, and with it, that of the White population will decline. It should not be a surprise if the result is heightened political struggle between a political coalition influenced by Hispanic desires for increased taxes to fund more social services and one heavily comprised of Whites who will pay those taxes. The ethnic and racial dimensions of this conflict could give rise to greater racial and ethnic tension within America.

These tensions could be exacerbated by another phenomenon: White ageing. The median age of Whites continues to increase as the largely White Baby Boomer generation ages and fertility rates for younger adults decline. Since America pays for its state pensions through a tax on wages, Hispanics will be paying the taxes to support a largely White retired community.

Retirees would clearly exert their political power to continue these benefits, which in turn will could lead to large numbers of working-class Hispanics either pushing for cuts to pension benefits, increasing taxes on higher earners, or taxing unearned income (which accrues to Whites in much higher proportions) to support pensions.[7. Jared Bernstein and Henry Olsen, ‘Two perspectives on demographic change and the future of the workforce’, AEI, February 2016] Adding racial and ethnic dimensions to the pressing political issue of social security increases the likelihood that American society will be more, not less, divided in the future.

Conclusion: Demography need not be destiny

Social and political conflict that arises from demographic change is not, however, a new occurrence in American history. In prior eras of mass immigration, American leaders insisted that immigrants abide by majority norms in terms of democratic values and the role of the state, even as they fought intensely over social norms such as the role of Catholic schools, language, and alcohol consumption. At one point, the native-born Protestant majority even used its political power to outlaw alcohol consumption (1919) and virtually end immigration (1925). But an affinity on the part of both the native and the foreign-born with American ideals kept these conflicts from disrupting essential American unity.

These previous generations did this by limiting the scope of their political claims and by emphasising each sides’ loyalty to republican self-government. And native-born Americans, largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs, to Americans), did not argue that immigrants already in America be deported to their country of origin. Nor did they try to prevent them from voting, holding political office, or practising the bulk of customs they brought over from ‘the old country’.

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It is true that WASPs often practised widespread social discrimination against newcomers, including, for example, refusing to hire immigrants or denying them admission to universities or private clubs. But they did not seek to prevent immigrants from becoming full legal citizens, or from using that political power to enact laws more favourable to the immigrant population’s views.

Immigrant populations, in turn, largely respected these boundaries. Catholics, in particular, emphasised that they supported the idea of religious freedom no matter what pronouncements came from the Vatican. Catholic politicians always maintained that their first loyalty was to the US, and that they would faithfully execute American laws no matter what the Pope or the Church said. And in the face of discrimination, immigrants built their own institutions – universities, social groups, and clubs – to rival those to which their access was restricted or denied. Any loyalties to the home country were subsumed under their loyalty to America.

Similar prudence and shared commitment will be necessary in the coming decades to manage the growth of the Hispanic-American population. Should such shrewd social and political leadership be forthcoming, these new Americans should energise and enrich America economically and culturally just as prior immigrant waves did. Should such statesmanship be lacking, however, America is at risk of following in the footsteps of countless nation-states that fail because racially and ethnically derived identities trump, and ultimately destroy, the national identity that allows people of different backgrounds to live together in harmony.