Chicken Scratch

Last year the U.S had more ethnic than white babies

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/18/minority-report-new-u-s-data-shows-more-ethnic-babies-than-whites/

I’ve known about this news for awhile, but I wanted to talk about it just a bit more.

U.S is a melting pot, and has been a fascinating culture experiment. How to you keep a country whose parts are radically different from each other under one flag? But it worked. It worked VERY well. But now with the poor economy, things are different and more homogenous countries such as China are on the rise. Its a lot easier for a homogenous country to get things done in a sense because the majority are operating under the same agendea. So the U.S position as the number one world power is in a definite decline.

But. We are still changing as a country.  We are going to look very different and think differently. These different mentalities moving in are going to clash.  A stereotypical Asian mentality is very different from a stereotypical Latin one. This has happened many times before, the ghettos of New York during the early influx of immigration is a prime example of this. But they are also going to bond.  And this bond, this integration, this exchange of mentality and ideas. The way all kids in schools are going to perceive and adjust to each other, how our government is going to tilt and run, how the education system is going to change, all of this is exciting. 

To give some background on myself, I’m a  U.S citizen and a TCK (third-culture kid) so I spent the majority of my life overseas in intercultural settings. After  coming to my home country to finally live there for extended amount in high school I learned how much my TCK experience affected my world view and how I perceive other cultures, and where I feel comfortable- which is in diversity. To a TCK kid interactions with people is all about adjusting. We don’t make the same typical automatic assumptions about people when we come in contact. We expect differences in belief and behavior in others. And because we expect them, we can more readily accept them. Not only do we do that, but we seek it out. We recognize the value of  these different POVs and culture, they enrich us. And out flows an exchange of ideas. This kind of mentality is exactly what the future of the United States is going need.

With travel more accessible, there will be more TCK kids. But not only that, kids growing up in the same place surrounded with this new diversity, for these communities to succeed they are going to need to grow up with a similar mentality.


Things are changing. A lot of this is going to be very difficult. But when I think about the U.S someday looking and operating the way it did inside the positive atmosphere of my International Schools, I can’t help but get excited.