Chris Rock described it as a kind of temper tantrum.
This was in 2011. “When I see the tea party and all this stuff,” the comedian told Esquire, “it actually feels like racism’s almost over.” He likened the tea party – with its street theatrics, overwrought histrionics and overt panic at the idea of living under a Black president – to little kids throwing one last hissy fit at bedtime. “They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them – and the next thing you know, they’re f–ing knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now.”
The intervening decade has proven how right Rock was. And how wrong. Because, yes, a large portion of white America was certainly having a racial temper tantrum back then. But the idea that it would soon be over is refuted by the obvious fact that it is still going on.
And it’s about to get much worse.
The Census Bureau has dropped a demographic bombshell. According to its 2020 count, the number of white people in this country has fallen for the first time since the first census in 1790. To be clear: This is not a measurement of white as a percentage of the population, a figure that’s been dropping for years as we move toward a majority people-of-color population. No, this is white as an absolute number. It seems the group of Americans who identify as white alone (i.e., not biracial) shrank by 5.1 million, a decrease of 2.6%.