When Demographics Change Faster Than Terms

Minority: a racial or ethnic group smaller than and differing from the larger, controlling group. Also may refer to religious and political groups if specified. People, usually African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, etc., who lack political and economic power due to a history of legalized discrimination. Handy synonym for “not white.”

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When minorities make up the majority of people in California, who then is a minority? Do the old balance-of-power issues embedded in the word suddenly disappear?

New language has yet to emerge, but the inadequacy of the word “minority” is increasingly obvious. The political questions are fraught with complexity, because race, ethnicity, politics and power are inextricably intertwined.

How do business and government pursue policies of minority inclusion when the minority population is numerically the majority? How does the electoral process keep pace with demographic change? At a fundamental level, questions such as these turn on niceties of language itself.

In fact, government officials say few programs are predicated on defining minority beneficiaries. “Actually, the government is trying to get away from using the word “minority,” said Tiffany Clements, a spokeswoman for the federal Small Business Administration. “Now we use ‘socially and economically disadvantaged.’ ”

Bureaucratic language is typical of the language also used by some sociologists and academicians, who wrestle to define demographic shifts in social and political terms.

“What’s become clear is that ‘us’ is them, and ‘them’ is us,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Institute in Claremont, a think tank affiliated with Pitzer College and Claremont Graduate University. “The traditional labels are going to change--but I don’t know to what.

“Really, how can we say Latinos are a minority? That’s very difficult to swallow when one out of three people will be Latino in the year 2010.”

“The classification machinery is very fragile,” said Fred Lynch, a sociologist at Claremont McKenna College. “Clearly as we speak now a lot of these boxes as far as ethnicity is concerned don’t make a lot of sense. Maybe for black and white, but who or what is Hispanic and who or what is Asian?”

In addition to the discussion about what to call each other, some groups do not even agree on what to call themselves. Naming can be political: Witness the movement of people who reject the terms Latino and Hispanic and take Nahuatl and Mayan names as a way to embrace their native heritage. What do immigrants from Sri Lanka and Korea really have in common, even though they are broadly referred to as Asian Americans?

The minority-ethnicity debate, however, tends to be location-specific--unique to California and other places with large populations of diverse ethnic groups and multiracial residents. For the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau invited residents on the 2000 Census form to mark one or more of 15 ethnic categories, providing a kaleidoscopic opportunity for real specificity.

According to the Census Bureau estimates for 1999, whites total 49.9% of the state’s 33.9 million residents. Latinos follow at 31.6%, Asians at 11.4%, blacks, 6.7% and Native Americans, less than 1%. State Finance Department demographers say the state will not officially become majority minority, however, until new census figures are released in July.

Los Angeles County, however, has been majority minority since 1990. “In numbers we might all be minorities here in California, but insofar as [political] representation, we’re still at a different stage,” said Guillermo Hernandez, chairman of the Chicano studies department at UCLA. “That creates a lot of tensions. Although minorities together make up the majority in California, that reality is not yet reflected throughout society,” Hernandez said.

Which is why the word “minority” continues to resonate. It is politically, if not numerically, accurate.

Los Angeles is one of the few melting pots in America, but America is not becoming a melting pot, said William Frey, a demographer at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. Many Midwestern cities, for instance, are not wrestling with minority definitions.

“If you’re in the Midwest where there’s still a large black population within a mostly white population, then minority status really means something: You’re in a different position power-wise,” Frey said. “The pros and cons of the melting pot are complex. The cons are you have to elbow your way in to get your place at the table; the good side is the eventual acceptance.”

In 1998, Jose became the most popular name for a boy in California, elbowing aside Michael and Daniel, according to a Social Security Administration report. But if Jose becomes the norm, does John then become ethnic?

Ethnic: also meaning “not white.” Carries annoying connotation of whiteness as a standard of normalcy against which other cultures vary. Exception includes ethnic white people, those not of Anglo-Protestant heritage such as Poles, Irish and Italians, who may have identifiable culture norms outside the mainstream. Also meaning exotic: curry, not cabbage, pad thai and not pot roast.

“Whether I think of myself as a minority depends on where I am,” said Pachon. “Typically I don’t think of myself as a minority in California; then I’m in Minnesota and suddenly I am.”

West Hollywood officials don’t use the term “minority” either. Officials refer not to minorities when addressing civil rights, but to people of a “protected class,” according to the mayor.

That sense of place can be critical, not just because numbers create a level of comfort, but also because of clout in numbers.

“In West Hollywood, the gay and lesbian community has had a sense of empowerment and participation that exceeds the reality in other places,” said West Hollywood Mayor Jeff Prang. “The downside is sometimes we forget in our little corner of the world that there’s a big civil rights struggle that’s being fought. We forget West Hollywood is not the norm, it’s an anomaly.”

Indeed, many Latino communities now wrestle with a concept once reserved for the former majority: “homogeneity.

Homogeneous: Archaic term for all white. Contains couched put-down: synonym for mildly boring, such as this refrain from L.A. dwellers: “Orange County is so homogeneous.”

Now, the most homogeneous school system in Orange County does not belong to say, Newport Beach, but rather to Santa Ana, whose students are virtually all Latino. Thus Santa Ana Unified School District two years ago began a student exchange with all-white Laguna Beach Unified, in order to give students practice with “diversity.”

Diversity: Slightly moldy term for the process of making predominately white male groups not predominately white male. Safe way of referring to unfamiliar customs, priorities and values with respect. Has grown to encompass age, religion, sexual orientation.

The old codes, however, are just that. Old. They ignore the social phenomenon of interracial relationships--California is a national leader in children born to parents of different races--and the fluidity of youth culture, which strains against many of the old categories and boxes.

“We’re not going to be talking about a majority or minority any more so much as a mix,” said Pachon. “What the numbers really mean is that in all of this what we’re talking about are families, with relatives and mixtures. The only question is the political reality going to catch up to the demographic reality.”