When Fox News host Laura Ingraham lamented “massive demographic changes,” across the United States, she was channelling racial anxieties held by a large but shrinking group of Americans, confirmed in a recent survey by PRRI/ The Atlantic, “American Democracy in Crisis: The Challenges of Voter Knowledge, Participation, and Polarization.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2043, whites will not be the major racial demographic in the United States. Instead, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other mixed racial and ethnic groups are expected to outnumber white Americans. Recent PRRI data looks at how Americans feel about the “massive demographic changes” Ingraham speaks of and shows that for the most part, people are fine with it.
The survey asks, “As you may know, U.S. Census projections show that by 2043, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other mixed racial and ethnic groups will together be a majority of the population. Do you think the likely impact of this coming demographic change will be mostly positive or mostly negative?” Sixty-four percent of all Americans think the demographic shift would have a mostly positive impact. Thirty-eight percent of White, non-Hispanic Americans said they believe it would have a negative impact.
“The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore,” Ingraham said on her primetime program. “Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like.”
In his 2016 book, The End of White Christian America, PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones looked at the evolution of white Americans losing their footing as the majority racial demographic. Jones told CNN that he has seen Ingraham’s fears before.
“It was exactly these kinds of fears about cultural change, cultural displacement and immigration that were the key drivers of support for President Trump,” said Jones in a recent CNN piece.