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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. Let's try and experiment that's going to go along with our next guest whose name happens to be Gest. The experiment is this. We want callers from immigrants and from people born in this country to say what it means to you to be an American. What should unify all of us under the banner, I'm an American? What does that mean and does it mean a different thing if you were born here than if you are an immigrant?

We're going to open up the phones, don't be insulted if we bump you or not trying to censor your thoughts, and feelings, and observations. We're just looking to get a balance between people born in this country and people who immigrated to this country. What does it mean to you to be an American? 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

I ask because one of the biggest things happening in the United States is that shape think so much of our politics, even if people are reluctant to say it out loud, is that the population is changing largely because of immigration to the point where white people will no longer be the majority in this country in about 20 years. No group will be the majority. This is largely due to immigration as well as variable birth rates and is a reason for the anti-immigrant backlash that helped elect Donald Trump and also other polarizing politics.

Maybe even the school curriculum war is taking place these days which are not explicitly about immigration. My next guest has written a fascinating new book. It gives six examples of other times in world history, when the majority population of a place has lost that status. Some places handled it well, some not very well at all in terms of the impact on all the groups involved.

Believe it or not, New York city in the 19th century is one of those examples even 200 years before the country of the United States becomes majority-minority. The others are Bahrain, Singapore, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, and Hawaii. With us now is Justin Gest Government and Policy professor at George Mason University and the author of a new book called Majority Minority. Professor Gest, that's G-E-S-T by the way. Thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Professor Gest: Thank you so much. It's great to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can you start with the projections for the US, what kind of change are we looking at and how quickly?

Professor Gest: Sure, so the US census bureau projects that by 2044 the country will be less than 50% white people. However, it is worth mentioning a variety of caveats because populations are complex, and when the census bureau refers to white people, they mean non-Hispanic white people. That is a very specific type of person because there are a number of Hispanics in the United States who do also self-identify as white. In fact 60% of Latinos identify as white and of course we also a lot of mixed-race people.

Depending on how they self-identify and the census is all about how people self-identify, that could postpone that very momentous milestone that you described so well, but nevertheless, I think independently of the complexities associated with demographic projections the very specter the shadow of a majority-minority milestone has informed our politics. Whether it means people are terrified, and anxious, and discomforted, or whether they are thrilled and look at it with great anticipation. It is influencing our politics right now.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that one clarification in my intro and really I stand corrected when I too simply said white people will not be a majority anymore around 2044. It's really non-Hispanic white is the more accurate category there. Let's go down these six examples of lessons from history that could help the US. Interestingly the two examples you give of a successful transition are actually both within the United States, New York city and Hawaii. Do I have that right?

Professor Gest: Yes, although it's worth mentioning and clarifying that at the time Hawaii was actually not a part of the United States. They were a sovereign kingdom, they were a monarchy in the mid-Pacific, but yes they are now part of of America and in many ways I actually think that it was in the backlash to American assimilation that was associated with America's conquest of the islands, that actually brought a lot of native Hawaiians together with immigrant-origin minorities.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us the New York story. I'm sure our listeners would find that fascinating.

Professor Gest: Oh, of course, and of course your listeners are a part of that New York story. Around 1845, the great famine, the potato famine began in Ireland. It led to an enormous Exodus of Irish to the United States and primarily to New York City but also Boston and up and down the Eastern seaboard. In those 10 years during the famine 1845 to 1854, more Irish set foot on the United States soil than all the immigrants combined from the beginning of the constitution to that period.

It was an enormous influx of people that really just changed politics and changed the complexion of New York City thereafter. Now the Irish were greeted with not a whole lot of welcome. They were viewed as the carriers of disease, violent, lazy, and poor, and troublesome. Public charges who would be [unintelligible 00:06:31]. They were excluded from New York society systematically so much so that many many of the proudest New York institutions today associated with Jesuits and the Catholic church were created thinking of Fordham or the various Catholic hospitals.

These were institutions that were created because the Irish as Catholics were excluded from mainline American, the New York Institutions at the time. That arrival of the Irish and then with the combination of Germans, and Italians, and Jews thereafter completely transformed what New York City was in the 19th century.

Brian Lehrer: I guess we could even look at New York today as an example of the contemporary shift that's taking place nationwide, because if you're talking about non-Hispanic whites as a minority of the population that's the case already in New York, and has been for a number of years. It won't be the case nationwide for another couple of decades, but New York is not falling into a war of all against all. Maybe even New York in 2022 is an example of a successful transition to this that the rest of the country can learn from.

Professor Gest: New York is a Canary in the coal mine. There are several many actually other US cities that are already majority-minority. In fact, there are four US states that are majority-minority. California, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, and also Texas actually. There's a number of examples of this now in the United States but New York has been there for a long time, and we're not seeing widespread ethnic conflict or a terrible politics along racialized lines that many people fear for the United States as a whole.

To be fair, New York is a different place. It's politics are different and of course, it's not perfect but the context matters, and what you have in the United States is a large group of white conservatives right now that are very concerned that their country is being lost with this demographic change.

They feel threatened, they feel discomfort by it, and they worry that they're losing their status in the only country that they know. Those politics are simply less present in New York City.

I think one of the reasons why is that the white population in New York City, the non-Hispanic white population is disproportionately professional, disproportionately middle and upper class and as a result they hook onto their identities to their professional identity to maybe their sexual identity to alternative forms of identity that are irrelevant to the racial and ethnic differences that have vexed other majority-minority societies.

Brian Lehrer: Working-class white people would feel more personally threatened in the model you are describing?

Professor Gest: They already do in many ways. Two of my earlier books were precisely about white working-class politics. Certainly, they're more prone to embrace their racial or ethnic identity more closely than people who are of the upper classes or more educated backgrounds, but that's not [unintelligible 00:09:55], that's not a universal generalization of course but it certainly has an effect on how

people self-identify, and the salient of their different identity components.

Brian Lehrer: What is it? Because I think a lot of let's say liberal white people in the New York area, as well as people of color, might not be able to put into words what it is exactly that these statistically more working-class, white people around the country, non-Hispanic white people. What is it that they fear about a majority-minority country? What is it that they fear will happen to them?

Professor Gest: At the core, it's a matter of power and status. this is what my research has shown, which is based on public opinion polling data. Much of it is consumed by a sense of loss. That is unfortunate because they have lost so much. I think that they fear losing more, and much of our politics on the right, right now in the United States is a matter of nostalgia. Looking back at an earlier period when white people had or felt more power or felt more in control of their society.

Brian Lehrer: Is it about money?

Professor Gest: Limitedly so. The United States is not an economically mobile society as much as it used to be. The American dream is in many ways mythologized, but it's also quite that, a myth. We are not seeing a lot of economic mobility today. Many of the folks who are poor today were likely to be working-class or poor previously. Their sense of economic loss is not what's driving them. What's driving them is a sense that they were once in the center of their societies, once had a sense of control, and feel out of control right now.

Brian Lehrer: If New York in the 19th century and even New York today is an example of a successful transition to a "majority-minority population", let's look at what happens in less successful situations, the four that you cite in your book, the nations of Bahrain, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius, and Singapore. Which one on your list was the worst?

Professor Gest: Oh, I think undoubtedly, it's Bahrain. Bahrain is autocracy, which makes a really big difference. Bahrain is unique because it's majority-minority twice over and I'll explain what I mean by that. On the one hand, more conventionally, the native population, the native-born population in Bahrain are outnumbered by people of immigrant origin.

57% of the Bahraini population is foreign-born, which is extraordinary and numbers that you only see in the Arabian Gulf region where Bahrain is located but what's more interesting about Bahrain is that among the nationals, among the citizens of the country, there is a majority-minority shift potentially brewing because it has historically been a Shia majority country, a sectarian majority.

The Royal court is run by a Sunni Royal family who has systematically manipulated naturalization trends to only naturalize, to only give citizenship to other Sunnis. They are in a sense engineering a Sunni majority now, and we don't know whether they have been successful because the regime forbids censuses from being taken but it is surely more Sunni than it ever was before, and possibly on the brink of a majority-minority milestone in the future.

Brian Lehrer: Pick one of the others.

Professor Gest: Just like the others. Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, pick one of the others from your list. How about Trinidad? [crosstalk] We definitely have listeners who come from Trinidad and Tobago, why did you use that as a negative example of adjusting to a majority-minority population?

Professor Gest: Trinidad and Tobago may be the closest dissembler of contemporary American politics and bear with me for a moment. Obviously, these are a set of islands in the east Caribbean but much like the United States, they are democracies, and much like the United States, their political parties have been racialized in a really problematic way.

In Trinidad and Tobago, you basically have two major ethnic groups people of African origin, Afro Trinidadians, and people of Indian origin, Indo Trinidadians, and they have their respective political parties that they predominate. The UNC, the United National Congress is predominantly of Indian origin and the PNM, the People's National Movement is predominantly of African origin.

As you can imagine, when you have parties that are this racialized, there's a sense of an existential threat when the other is elected, which makes people less willing to lose and more likely to bend the rules or break the rules to win. In Trinidad, you see this, they're basically paralyzed politically by gridlock and stalemates associated with these racial politics.

That should sound familiar to us here in the United States because while we don't have two predominant ethnic groups, what we do have are parties that are similarly racialized. Today, 83 to 85% of all Republicans are non-Hispanic white, and among the minorities in the country, racial and religious, they are predominantly supportive of Democrats.

Now that might be changing now as Latinos are marginally shifting towards the Republican party, but Democrats still win the majority of Latinos in the next few elections given current trends. Our parties are also becoming more and more racialized today. Trinidad and Tobago may be a harbinger or it's certainly presage what's happening in American politics.

Brian Lehrer: Where in your research do Black Americans fit in? I mean basically descendants of people who were enslaved in this country, not recent Black immigrants from Africa, although they would wind up-- or the Caribbean but they would wind up subject to some of the same forces? If you're talking about population change from immigrant, I'm sorry, from more native-born in this country to more immigrant well, most of the Black people are here today or were born in this country and have families in this country for decades or centuries. Where do they fit in to the model that you write about in your book and the research that you've done, because mostly we've been talking about white, native, born grievance and fear?

Professor Gest: Absolutely. Black Americans are integral to majority-minority politics precisely because they have been on the outside of whiteness and white nationalist politics basically since the inception of the country. Now, what's complicated [unintelligible 00:17:09] and then just to clarify, majority-minority milestone in the United States is not contingent on people being of immigrant origin, it's contingent on them being not part of the majority group.

In the case of Blacks, you are not necessarily part of whiteness in the United States and therefore they are grouped in with the various smaller minorities in the country that make up the non-white population that is projected to overtake white people in population in 2044. Now where it gets complicated is that unlike Trinidad and Tobago, where there's a sense of solidarity among the different ethnic groups, the idea that there is solidarity among people of color in the United States as they're often called, is not necessarily as reliable.

These are very different populations, and even inside of them, they're not monolithic. We group Latinos together, but actually there's enormous amounts of diversity, both ethnically and nationally among Latinos and religiously. Similarly, with the Asian American population. There's a lot of heterogeneity there.

The idea that these two major ethnic groups will together with African Americans, and form a solidarity that counterbalances the power of white people in the United States is really quite farfetched, and yet that is precisely the kind of concern that occupies many white nationalists and fear mongers today.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take some phone calls as we transition to the next part of this and the final part of this with my guest, Justin Gest, government and policy professor at George Mason University, an author of a fascinating new book called Majority Minority, which looks at six different societies that went from one majority population to another, or to no majority population like we're headed toward in this country. Some adjusted well, some adjusted not so well.

Actually, help me set-up these callers. We're getting great calls from immigrants from all over the place. With your concept for how to successfully create a national identity that includes everybody. It's not going to be a war of all against all political and hopefully not an actual civil war at some point, of course, which people fear these days as well but your idea is create a narrative of nationalism that includes everybody because right now, when we say nationalism, we think of the right-wing. We think of white people waving the US flag, but the US flag doesn't mean everybody in the way it's often

used these days, the American flag. What is this concept of a new nationalism that people on the left and everybody theoretically could embrace?

Professor Gest: Sure. Let's head off, most people's first go-to when it comes to this. There's a sense in the United States, I think, especially on the left, that if we could just conquer racism, if we could just eradicate prejudice, we would be so much better positioned to address the politics of demographic change. What my book finds is that the prejudice that we condemn and the racism that's so vexing, these are components of societies that actually endure, even in the best settings, in the situations where you have the best results, racism, and prejudice endure.

What I actually find is that majority-minority countries and societies have to be governed. It requires governance, not just necessarily inside of government institutions, but also in businesses and civil society groups. It has to be managed well. To manage it well, it requires a redefinition of who we are. That's where civic nationalism comes in because nationalism is too strong of a force, too powerful of a political force to simply be relegated to an ethnic form and to the far right in American politics or any country.

There has to be a civic nationalism that unifies people around a common idea of what it means to be an American that is both inclusive of people of different racial and religious and ethnic backgrounds, but also exclusive of people who are not part of the American project. There has to be something distinct about it to make us feel special. I think that America has the components there.

We are a society that hinges itself on dreams but also is incredibly sensitive to struggle and open about talking about our struggle and our vulnerability along the way to chasing those dreams. The idea of America is always evolving and I think that we as Americans have always embraced that evolution in a way that most other countries don't. I think we have the components to lean into that side of our identity, but so much of our nationalism today is being politicized and exploited for political gain.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear from a few different immigrants from different places in the world who have called in on what it means to be an American and see if we can help plant the seeds of what you're trying to get at which is a new nationalism that includes everybody. Miguel in Clifton, originally from the Dominican Republic, I see. Miguel, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Miguel: No, no. Thank you. Thank you for your great program. You know what? You hearing-- it's like everything going on is now encapsulated in this book, in this solution. I came to the United States in 1991. I didn't speak English and coming to this area, to the New York greater area, gave me the openness of having so many races together. I didn't feel the problems of other people maybe in the Deep South, they feel. Then I could grow. I grow my family. My children are all graduated right now.

I feel like being American, answering to your question, is enjoying what is the United States? United States is for better or for worse, it's the greatest country in the world. We have the best music, we have the best art institutions, we have the best open-- the outdoors, we have so many good things that we can enjoy together.

Now, resolving the struggle for the people who have the power, as your guest so eloquently said. There are things that we'll endure even in the best societies, but when we know-- we have the likes of the [unintelligible 00:24:16], the likes of the people who grow in this country, the Hemingway, all the big things about this country. Then we can do a real nationalistic and then take away the stupidity of having the flag representing only the White Americans and all that. This is great.

Brian Lehrer: Miguel, that's so beautiful. That's amazing. I think this is your first call to the show, so please call us again and [unintelligible 00:24:46] your voice again.

Miguel: I never called before, but I listened to you for the last 20 years.

Brian Lehrer: Miguel, you make me feel really good. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and do call again. Let's go next to Abdul, originally from Guyana, in Kew Gardens. Abdul, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Abdul: Hi, Brian. Thank you for putting me on. The question was asked why we come to America. That's what your guest was saying.

Brian Lehrer: Why you come, but also what is America about? If you were listening to the last caller, what is America about that can tie everybody together in a new, more inclusive nationalism?

Abdul: Okay, basically the reason for coming is to get my children educated, higher education. Growing up in Guyana, I didn't have that privilege and I want them to be further education. Also, I think the way I teach my children is to assimilate. I would say this. I hope they are listening. I asked them as teenagers, I want to see you cross-culture dating. I tried to get them assimilated.

They're very much assimilated into this society. They love it. They did well in school and I'm happy. For me, we were supposed to go back after my kids get educated and are on their own, but it never happened. We love this country. We love New York. I look at other states and I think New York is the place to be.

Brian Lehrer: Abdul, thank you. Thank you so much for your call. I appreciate it a lot. Peter in Scarsdale, born in this country. You're on WNYC. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hi. I'm a fifth-generation Chinese American and people still tell me, "Go back to your country." I'm American. What does it mean to be American? My dad fought in World War II for the US. We've been here five generations. We're still not considered Americans. What does it mean to be American? I was born here, I was raised here. I think-- what's our ideals? It's land of opportunity. That's what makes us different from all other countries, that you can come here and raise your children and they can be anything.

You still have a lot of obstacles, but I think that's the idea that makes us different. I talk to a lot of immigrants, not just from China, from many countries and they come here because we don't have the class system or we still have class. It's not like in old Europe where you can move among classes. That's our ideal. Like I said, there's still a lot of obstacles, a lot of prejudice, but I think that's what makes US different from other countries.

Brian Lehrer: Peter, thank you. Thank you so much. One more. Victor in Forest Hills, originally from Ukraine if I'm not mistaken. Hi, Victor. You're on WNYC.

Victor: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Long-time listener, first-time caller. My point of view is I identify primarily as a New Yorker, then as a Ukrainian, and then as an American because I think New York really has a-- not America. I don't know about America, but I think New York, per se, really has that feeling of what I think America should be. I think that's because everybody has come together.

Everybody who's here comes together and builds this city. Everyone's so curious outside of the city to come here and when they come here, they experience all these different balances of nationalities and different kinds of people and cultures that they're curious about it. Then they go and try to find out about it.

My experience has been, especially with recent events, I've been primarily educating a lot of my friends and people that I know because I've lived in other cities that aren't as balanced nationality-wise. You have these big bubbles of White Americans that don't have a lot of culture, frankly, and don't have a lot of history. I think a lot of people are scared of that. I don't know how to fix this problem, but I look at New York and I think that--

Brian Lehrer: New York's a model for you. Victor, thank you so much. There we heard people with immigration stories or in the case of Peter in Westchester, he's fifth-generation American, but of Chinese descent. You heard the tensions in those calls, but I'm just curious as we run out of time. Professor Gest, did you hear some of the strands of the new unified nationalism that you're aiming for?

Professor Gest: I did, there's so much fodder that came out of these interviews. They were so just superb really. A couple of things that stood out to me. Abdul mentioned intermarriage and intermarriage in his case it was encouraged actually by the family. That's not always the case. Intermarriage is a really powerful way to fight exclusion and to fight the politics of racialization because those politics and white nationalism relies on simple boundaries to divide people.

People who are of mixed religious or mixed racial origins, they embody the transcendence of those boundaries. They don't let divisive politicians and leaders win because they show that those boundaries are hollow and that they can be transcended. The other thing that came to mind, Miguel mentioned a number of artistic and cultural products of United States and how they bring people together and is a beacon for the world. It really is so important.

Culture is such a big difference-maker in bringing people together and the United States has so many cultural products whether it be art or cuisine or music or film or literature or sports than actually cross these different dividing lines and that's really powerful too. Here's one point I want to make to everyone though and that you may not be expecting, and that is that the successful society and if America's going to be successful at navigating these thorny politics, it is imperative that white native-born people also feel a part of that future, that they also feel like they belong.

That doesn't require any special treatment but it requires the same effort to ensure that we are honoring and revering American heritage as much as we are throwing our country head first into the future. I think that in our excitement particularly those among on the left and cosmopolitans and globalists who are so thrilled and invigorated by our country's diversity, we often forget that we are in many ways imposing that future on people without a lot of consultation.

It's important that we bring native-born people in the United States along with us so that they don't actually push back, so that they don't rebel and they feel like they can be invigorated by our demographic future as us.

Brian Lehrer: We should have this conversation about every week for the next 20 years, a really important, fundamental aspect of US politics today even in ways that people may not realize as other things seem you the issues on the surface. I want to thank Justin Gest, government and Policy Professor at George Mason University for inspiring this conversation today with his new book which is called Majority Minority. Thank you so much.

Professor Gest: It's my pleasure and if your listeners are interested in more, they can check out my website justingest.com or follow me on Twitter @_justingest. It was a pleasure and I'm happy to have this conversation with you guys anytime.

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