When did the U.S stopped being a "white" country?

Historically the U.S has been a "white" country and I think it was founded as such. I don't think the founding fathers would of known in their wildest dreams that the U.S would eventually become a diverse and multiracial country like it is now. In fact the founding fathers would of been in opposition of the U.S becoming a imperialistic and diverse country that one of the reason why the founding fathers and early U.S history presidents were isolationists and against expanding the U.S into other territories was because they didn't want to absorb "lesser" beings according to early American historians. Now 200 years later America has accepted the fact that are men are equal but it wasn't until the Civil Rights movement that it was finally accepted more. It wasn't until the 1980s or so that the culture of America changed and was deemed wrong to held past views of their fore fathers. That's also when America started to change demographically. What time for you did America stopped being a "white" nation?

Have you seen the kind of people in Trump's administration? It hasn't stopped being a white country.

I'm a little bit confused. Do you mean white as in the color of someone's skin or policies for the color of someone's skin?

I don't think America has ever been white. It's been about freedom, opportunity, and liberty.

The United States have been around for 250 years, a lot of what we understand about different races has changed a since then and America has been at the forefront of those changes.

We have changed over time but the core values are solid.

@perfect_blue: That's what a lot of people feel and why they are pissed about the reasons for the protests IMO. I fear Trump will further divide the country.

Why is everything being made into a race issue?

It's not an overnight process, it was a gradual transition. I don't believe that US was necessarily founded on a racial ideology. The founding fathers might have held racist views but they were product of their times (John Adam was among the few notable exceptions). However had the founding fathers meant US to be a strictly nation of whites they would have wrote in the constitution some languages to permanently racially discriminate against non-whites from engaging and holding public offices. They didn't. Instead they developed a framework of governance which can be revised to reflect the shifting views of subsequent generations.

@n64dd: probably because while it's not an issue everywhere mistreatment due to race is still a thing here. Take the north Dakota pipe line white citizens didn't want it going through their water source so they're trying to do it on native land and Tramp just signed the go ahead to have the pipeline built anyway. The Flint Michigan crisis it took 2 years for anything to be done, and the problem still hasn't been fully dealt with. If the city was mostly white it would have been dealt with ages ago. White people look out for their own more than they would any other race.

Because racial harmony isn't going to come by ignoring the race issue and not talking about it. "Colorblind" is biggest load of bullshit ever and it's often used by white people to whitewash (npi) a long history of institutionalized racism.

America has always been a white country. The problem now is that many whites are trying to make amends through a combination of exaggerated self-hatred and some bullshit "I don't see color" mentality. These people are a cancer and have failed to earn the respect of minorities and fellow whites alike.

Another problem is that they're decentralized while the two largest minorities are united in fierce hatred towards them. Since I'm European myself, I am mostly apathetic to this development...it's just sad to see what became of our colonial cousins.

The land known as the US was predominantly Native American/Indian at first, then it became predominantly white/European after that, and now it's multi-racial. In the future, Hispanics are likely to become the largest ethnic group. And most Hispanics have Native American/Indian ancestry (to various degrees), coming full circle.

Still is a white country. If you're white you're top dog.

Between the immigrants, the native Americans and slaves it was only white at the eyes of the ignorant.

I think people are conflating white ethnicity with western culture. American isn't a white country in the former sense as much as it's a white country in the latter sense.

Sorry bro, this country was built on the backs and blood of the people who where indigenous to this land mass, poor indentured Europeans, African slaves and later on in the 1800's the Chinese help build the first transcontinental railroad.

So when exactly was this a "white" country?

No it wasn't. Natives played a very minor role in the creation of the US...unless you count being in the way and obstructionist conflicts as playing a role. Same goes for the slaves.

To answer your question...it is and was a white country until Europeans no longer make up the majority.

Wow, according to who's HIS-STORY ? You sound like a fan of Richard Spencer and if that's the case, I totally get that you guys like whitewashing, minimizing or totally denying the roles and contributions of other people.....I understand :)

Agreed. I just think when race issues get brought up, it's usually in the extreme in one way or another.

It never was. Sure the White Europeans were those with power but it was never ONLY a white country.

Wow, do we agree on something?

Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States

1780 - 79.3% white (possibly including Hispanics), 20.7% black (possibly including Native Americans)

2010 - 63.7% white (non-Hispanic), 16.3% Hispanic (any race), 12.6% black, 4.9% Asian, 0.9% Native American

Not much has changed.

Please explain how a minority of less than 10 % played any relevant role in creating the USA.

Richard Spencer is a socialist sympathizer. You sound like a rabid leftist so you seem to have more in common with him than me.

He's right about the white-washing of American history. I just looked up the historical statistics. In 1780, just a few years after the US was founded, blacks (possibly including Native Americans) accounted for 20.7% of the US population.

As for Richard Spencer, he's a far-right white nationalist, who called for the ethnic cleansing of minorities in America.

Never.....:P

I'm buying a lotto ticket.

@Jag85:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States

From 1780 and onward whites make up the VAST majority. Especially during the industrial revolution and early 1900s which is when the US became a great power.

EDIT: I assume that we're looking at the same statistics.

The industrial revolution in America is roughly dated from 1815 to 1860. Let's compare:

• 1780 - 79.3% white (including Hispanic), 20.7% black (including Native American)
• 1820 - 81.6% white (including Hispanic), 18.4% black (including Native American)
• 1860 - 85.6% white (including Hispanic), 14.1% black, 1.1% Native American, 0.1% Asian

The increase in the white % during this period was due to racial immigration policies that favoured white European immigration, while restricting non-white, non-European immigration.

Now compare that to today:

• 2010 - 72.4% white (including Hispanic), 12.6% black, 0.9% Native American, 4.9% Asian, 6.2% other

The difference isn't that huge. The white % has decreased, but so have the black and Native American %, while the Asian and other % have increased.

Many many people disagree with what you just said. Even black people:

@Jag85: Yeah and the percentage of whites goes even higher after 1860 and stops at around 90 % during the entire era where America was an influential world power. Given that the minority groups during this period had almost zero legal rights and couldn't participate in any social undertaking, it's not controversial to claim that their influence on the nation was also close to zero.

It's not "white washing" when whites make up between 85 - 90 % of the population during the time period I'm talking about.

It's still pretty white, but why does that matter? It shouldn't matter at all.

Well, same could be said about most things nowadays. People are being forced to polar extremes when expressing their opinions because others tend to be more receptive of it when the message is concise and clearly in support of one position or another. I think that's more of a result of the ease of information access rather than fault of any individual or group of individuals. The increase in amount of data and speed at which they come across has resulted in the preference for the simplified or watered down versions in people.

@jointed: The US economy was built on slavery.

I don't know a lot of black people who would feel the same way. I think most people (mostly whites) have taken that interview out of context and maybe Morgan Freeman didn't really meant that we could potentially resolve an issue by simply ignoring it. This is a pretty close approximation on my response to that particular quote would be:

@jointed: What exactly is your point? How does ethnic demographics relevant to US' success as a nation? Could US not been as great had majority of its population not been white? Not trying to put words in your mouth but that seems to be the direction you are headed in your arguments.

It's whitewashing to ignore that America was economically built by the mass exploitation of minorities at the hands of white people for centuries.

The only true melting pot in America is the assimilation of different European races into the de facto majority.

That's not true, and it completely ignores the history of discrimination and racism against the Irish immigrants.

@bmanva: Irish immigrants still suffer from institutionalized racism to this day? What they went through was truly horrific but let's not pretend anyone would have a sign in front of their business that says "No Irish" if the law allowed.

@smearygoose1768:

America was never a white country out of the entire time that I have been alive. I'm 26. To me, it was always a country that was the unification of all types of people from all parts of the world who believe in freedom. (whatever that means.)

You know, many years ago, I used to think Morgan Freeman was right. There's a certain logic to it after all. When most people think back to how they saw black people when they were children they never thought twice about it. Hell, that's what I remember myself, but at some point, before racism really existed in its current form, someone (or even multiple people) had a racist thought that they taught someone else. They did that all on their own accord. My guess is that it stems from tribalism, but that's getting a bit off topic.

The idea (I think) that Morgan has on this is that because you didn't use to think differently about black people we could go back to that if we all just shut up about it for a few generations of people, and that racist thinking would naturally disappear. This ignores the fact that it came into being in the first place without the aid of others. Not to mention the naivety that it takes to hope that a country of 300-400 million people will all just agree to stop discussing any particular subject for a hundred plus years is astronomically large.

You don't need to pretend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment#21st_century

I'm not trying to compare racism against one group of people to another or get involved in an argument about who had it worse, just correcting your assumption that white people are somehow united by their race.

@bmanva: In the context of modern day America and white people still benefitting from the past actions of other white people within past America then Irish do get to tag along with that inclusion. Irish people suffering open discrimination within present-day UK and Australia is obviously horrible but that's possibly a discussion to be had in another topic that isn't specifically about America.

In the context of modern day America, black people are benefiting from the past actions of past white people. I'm not getting your point.

@bmanva: I read too much into the OP in that it was purely about demographic makeup and not about white superiority and white nationalism. My apologies for dragging the topic into a direction it was never originally intended.

All good bro. Honestly I agree with you that there's a tint of white nationalism in the op's post, so it's not just you.

You people in here are racist. =(

Not really

But i would love to hear your sources for that claim.

Found this under 2 mins of googling. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/slavery-and-anti-slavery/resources/was-slavery-engine-american-economic-growth

In the pre-Civil War United States, a stronger case can be made that slavery played a critical role in economic development. One crop, slave-grown cotton, provided over half of all US export earnings. By 1840, the South grew 60 percent of the world's cotton and provided some 70 percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. Thus slavery paid for a substantial share of the capital, iron, and manufactured goods that laid the basis for American economic growth. In addition, precisely because the South specialized in cotton production, the North developed a variety of businesses that provided services for the slave South, including textile factories, a meat processing industry, insurance companies, shippers, and cotton brokers.

"Slavery hindered the development of Southern capitalism in other ways. Eugene Genovese, writing in 1961, reckoned that the antebellum South was not profit-seeking. In fact, slavery was not even meant to be profitable. Slaveowners were keener on flaunting their vast plantations and huge reserves of slaves than they were about profits and investment. Rational economic decisions were sacrificed for pomp and circumstance."

Correlation doesn't equal causation. So while you could argue that slavery played a impact, you cannot say that America's economy as a whole was built on slavery.

A lot of factors played a impact on America's economy

Um, America was built upon the backs of a shit ton of white people as well, and they were exploited as well. You ever heard of the Irish? What this country was actually built upon, enlightenment values by men like Hume, Paine, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison, minorities themselves under the crown's despotism, created a foundation in which even the bad views of those men, like racism, were not set in stone for eternity, nor sanctified by a king in a foreign land. Granted we still have a long way to go, but to act as if our society was founded upon keeping minorities down, eesh. The colonists were the minority when they revolted.

Simple fact is that if you want to see who historically exploited the most African people, look at African societies. If you want to see who hurt the most Arabs, look at Arabic societies and kingdoms. Who was hurt most by The White English? White Irish, Welsh and Scottish. The English crown's mistreatment of people did not magically become egregious when they entered India, whose ruling class kept their own people under brutal conditions for centuries in a rigid caste system, something Gandhi and his absurd spinning wheel program would have subjected Indians to again, despite partition, if he could.

I guess those Irish, fleeing English Imperialism and famine, only to come to this country to be labeled subhuman, forced to earn pitty wages building tunnels without safety equipment for 12 hours in a row were perfectly fine with it, because eventually they would become part of the de facto majority.

@hillelslovak: We're talking about present-day America and nowhere else. If you want to open a new dialogue then feel free to create a new topic not to mention "they did it too" is never a valid excuse. On the subject of the Irish that has been discussed but it should be easy to see that they currently reap the benefits of a system that once exploited them whereas other minorities still suffer from institutionalized racism.