For close to a decade it has been reported that Americans under the age of 18 are “majority-minority,” yet non-Hispanic white births continue to constitute a majority of the country’s newborns. The reason for the discrepancy is methodological. The CDC tracks race by that of the mother exclusively, so babies who will be categorized in the census as “two or more races” once they reach adulthood are determined only by mom here.
This could be said to inflate the non-Hispanic white birth share, but the mother’s race is the only one where reliable vital statistics are always available. Treating all multiracial births as non-white statistically erases the white parent’s contribution. By characterizing the children of a white man and an Asian woman and also the children of a black man and a white woman as non-white, the majority-minority future arrives sooner—to media celebration if the NYT mentions it and to angry accusations about conspiracy theories and fragility if anyone on the right does.
Parenthetically, whites on the right and non-whites on the left is coincidental. Just as the graph’s color scheme is random, so are the label placements. No political implications there, no sirree!
