"American white people really hate being called 'white people' ", David Roberts

David Roberts' piece appears in Vox. It jumps off from the reaction to a poll in which Americans were asked whether becoming a so-called "majority-minority" nation will be net good or bad for the nation, with Roberts noting that the very question is premised on an assumption that is almost never stated in this country: that being white and male (and heterosexual) is the norm by which everything else is judged.

This is one of the more striking observations I've read in a while:

In most situations in the US, a woman is a female person. Someone part of a racial minority is a black person or a Latino person, etc. Gay people. Trans people. Immigrant people. All these groups are [adjective] people, people with an asterisk, while a white, heterosexual male is simply a person, as generic as he chooses. His presence is taken for granted; it rarely occurs to anyone to question it. A white man in khakis and a polo shirt can walk into almost any milieu in the US and, even if he’s greeted with hostility, be taken seriously. His legitimacy is assumed.

The power and privilege that come along with that — being the base model, a person with no asterisk — are invisible to many white men. Simply calling them “white people,” much less questioning the behavior or beliefs of white people, drags that power and privilege into the open.

This is indeed an eye-opening observation for those white (heterosexual) men who have never thought about the assumption that underlies everything in this country.

Nearly every country struggling with its self-identity right now seems to be majority-white, so it would be tempting to regard this as a "white person problem" if one was anxious to demonize. However, there's the instructive exception of India, which has been riven by divisions between Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists for generations. One wonders how a similar poll conducted there would play out.

My guess: what Roberts observes is not a "white people problem", it's a declining-majority problem.

That said, the fear among those who have it cannot be ignored. They will act on that fear. In the person of our domestic Dear Leader, they already have.