The racial diversity of the United States is slowly transforming

The United States has been a predominantly white-majority country since its foundation but that has been slowly changing in recent decades. Today, America is poised to become a nation in which no single racial group will have a numerical majority according to an analysis of census data.

Generation Z was the last majority-white generation in America and within the next two decades, the country’s population of non-Hispanic whites will fall below half of the U.S. based on reporting from The Hill's Daniel De Visé in August 2023. 

The idea that the makeup of the US is changing isn't a new one. American demographers have been predicting the end of the white majority ever since Brookings Institute Senior Fellow William Frey came out with his prediction in March 2018 that the US would be a minority white country by 2045. 

Frey hasn’t changed his opinion since his original analysis and reaffirmed his theory in mid-2023 after analyzing census data from 2020, data which he said showed aging in America wasn't “race-neutral” and indicated that whites were aging much faster than any group in the country.  

While Frey did concede that all races in the United States were aging to some degree. He also stated that aging among white Americans was higher in nearly every geographic area of the country, adding that the U.S. population was aging fastest among older populations. 

“White Americans contributed substantially to older population gains compared to younger and middle-aged populations, which registered white declines,” Frey explained in his analysis. “Nonwhite residents accounted for all of the gains in post-baby-boomer populations.”

“Although all race and ethnic groups are aging to some degree, the median age of white Americans is higher than all others in most geographic areas,” Frey continued. 

Frey also explained that the country's aging trends led to what he called a “racial generation gap,” one which had been driven by immigration in the previous decades. However, this isn't a bad thing according to Frey. 

“Immigration is a good thing for America,” Frey told The Hill. “You’re going to want a country that’s growing and robust and has a lot of energy and people who will contribute to Social Security and Medicare. And you can’t just count on whites for that.” 

However, the point of Frey’s updated analysis was an attempt to show that there were racial generational gaps in the country and that those gaps were being led by the diversification of America’s younger generations. 

"The nation’s so-called majority minority arrived with Generation Alpha, those born since about 2010," wrote Daniel De Visé. "In the decades to come, that wave of diversity will wash across the generations, yielding an America with no single racial group that can claim a numerical majority."

According to Frey's analysis, in 2000, the old-young racial gap was 22.7% with the older age group's share of whites being 83.6% while the younger group's share of white was 60.9%. In 2020, the country’s old-young racial gap grew to 27.5% with whites declining in the share of both groups. 

Older age groups saw a share of whites at 74.8% while the younger group had a share of 47.3%. For Frey, this was clear evidence that the nation's white majority was slowly aging out of existence. However, not everyone agrees with the demographer's theory. 

“Whites are going to be the largest group in this country for a long time,” City University of New York Professor Emeritus Richard Alba explained to The Hill. 

“In a sense, we’re forming a new kind of mainstream society here, which is going to be very diverse. But whites are going to be a big part of that. It’s not like they’re going to disappear and be supplanted,” Alba added. 

The word supplanted is a keyword to take note of in Alba’s comments since some of the country’s more conspiratorial-minded citizens have grasped onto the idea that America’s shrinking white majority is part of a great push to replace white people in the U.S. 

The notion of the great replacement theory, or replacement theory to some, has entered into the lexicon of the country’s white nationalists and become a tool used to divide the nation at a time when Americans should be celebrating their growing diversity.