Our Changing Demographic

Our Changing Demographic

It has to be evident to any alert and unbiased observer, that the world, including the United States, is becoming more homogeneous.  I posit that although cultural issues, like identity politics, may have some minor influence on this homogenization, it is occurring because of increased communication and interaction between the peoples, races and ethnic groups of the world.  One does not need to be a studied anthropologist to note the historic intermingling and assimilation of people of varied backgrounds.  Given enough time, people that originally may have looked and thought differently will inter-mingle and become indistinguishable.  Historically this has taken centuries, but time is compressed in our modern information/communications environment, so the process accelerates.

We can see this in America probably more that in more insular Asia, Africa and Europe.  The U.S. has been called the “melting pot” in the past when referring to European immigration and assimilation.  The term truly applies in modern terms to all of the diverse people living, loving and inter-marrying in America.  We are becoming an amalgamation of Caucasian, African, Asian, Native American and other racial and ethnic groups.  We can already see this in our glossy advertising, TV commercials and news focus.  Whereas not long ago, our idealized male and female icons were white, blue-eyed and blond, they have increasingly become darker skinned, brown-eyed and dark haired.

Not that long ago, in the early and middle twentieth century, this trend was resisted and called “mongrelizing” by white supremacists, primarily in the southern U.S.  Although there are still small pockets with such beliefs, this racism has been largely overcome in the U.S., fueled by the civil rights movement of the later half of the last century, by laws establishing equal rights for ALL Americans and by culturally based social trends.  To hear some in our current political environment throw the term “RACIST” around, one would think that we are a “RACIST” country.  These radicals would belie the history of the past 250 years by trying to bring past racial transgressions into the present, destroying statues and art that are deemed offensive, and calling for reparations for events that occurred hundreds of years ago.

So the quintessential “average American” (and eventually average person in the world), will become somewhat darker skinned and darker haired, and have slightly slanted darker eyes.  We will also probably be a little shorter, less muscular and with bigger heads to accommodate more brain power in our meat computers.  According to Ray Kurzweil and others, we may also be merged with the small phones and computers that we love so well and become cyborgs, completing our march against prejudice in general, and incorporating machines in the mix.

July 30, 2019

Ray Gruszecki