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The Americans of today and of tomorrow
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Visions of a Newropean
By Franck Biancheri President of
Tiesweb
Director for Studies and Research of Europe 2020
Preface by John Van Oudenaren
Chief, European Division Library of Congress,
Washington DC
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The future Americans : Growing diversity and growing
ignorance of the outside world
Why the Americans … and not America ?
Because
it is a choice : to talk about the Americans , and to
forget America for a while ! Because it is easier :
indeed, the word, the concept " America " conveys such
a mass of clichés, prejudices, images… that it results
in more opacity than clarity Because it is lucid : America
is diverse, a lot more diverse than we, Europeans, want
to admit. Therefore talking about the people renders
the task easier while stressing the fact that the subject
is multiple.
Because there is this profound conviction gradually
gained by the author : America is the creation of the
Americans (and not of God Himself, as many Americans
prefer to believe !); and just like any human creation,
it is in constant evolution. And this evolution is all
the more unpredictable that the history of America is
so short. Moreover it is strongly shaped by immigration
knowing that the demographic evolution of the US can
record important changes in 2 or 3 decades.
Therefore these Americans of tomorrow, who will they
be ?
| Americans
less white, and a lot less " European " |
Of course, they will in the first place be yesterday's
and today's Americans. If we look towards 2020, we shall
find the same ethnic components than in 2001 … but in
very different proportions. The human cocktail that
America is will have a colour, a flavor and therefore
a relation to the world, fundamentally different from
that of today. Whites, Afro-Americans, Asians, Native
Americans, Latinos, Arabs…. ; catholics, protestants,
jews, muslims, buddhists, members of all sorts of sects.
All of them will be there … but nothing will be like
the mythical America as it has been fixed by the images
dating back to the 1950's-1960's, and that we, as much
as most Americans, still bear in mind.
The last census (Census 2000, http://www.census.gov
) clearly states these trends : the Latinos precede
the Afro-Americans in percentage of population, the
Asians continue to grow and belong increasingly to the
richer category, California has lost its white majority.
Here are three examples of a trend that has already
begun and that will most certainly carry on and intensify.
When you look at the immense space of the United-States
on the map of a world that is more and more " full ",
you can not but suppose that the migration pressures
coming from Asia, Africa and Latin America will increase.
The Europeans occupied the American space namely because
their populations were in full expansion and poor ;
but for the last few decades already, it is no longer
Europe which has a problem of population " surplus "
… and it is rich now, mostly. The American West Coast
already records a growing Latin and Asian (mainly Chinese)
presence ; the South-West is practically " reconquested
" by the Hispanics. Florida has become the " gate of
Latin America " (Miami is de facto becoming the capital
of South America) and no longer belongs to the " WASP
" cultural model. By addressing the Hispanic community
in Spanish, candidate George W. Bush proved that he
was more adapted to these Americans of tomorrow's American
than candidate Al Gore, incarnation of the East-Cost,
WASP, culturally European model that now belongs to
the past of this country (not as an individual of course,
but as the incarnation of a future America).
