After nearly 20 years in California, my wife is learning Spanish and I feel like it's past time for me. Where we live, everyone speaks English, but go down the hill toward Fresno and by the time you hit the first major hotel outside the park, many of the rooms cleaners barely speak English. Get closer to the cities and I suspect that being able to speak Spanish is a pre-req for hotel or restaurant management.
One thing that's often pointed out is when you look at areas that are becoming majority Spanish speaking, they are the same areas that were taken from Mexico during the war. So United States took those lands in one fell swoop and culturally Mexico has been slowly taking them back.
The map in The Economist article shows it really well (And Gurtie - as RC pointed out, The Economist is a British rag).
>>they are mixed race so I guess not really
So based on the articles linked, they actually belong the fastest growing classification. So you are on the forefront of the trend it would seem. No kids here, but a mixed race marriage, so I guess I'm on the cutting edge too
>>Keep in mind that we are far, far behind the EU on cultural diversity.
How so? I would be curious what the actual numbers are (or for that matter, what number is the right one to measure)
I get what you're saying - Emile Cioran predicted some years back that in a hundred years or so Notre Dame will be a mosque. But I remember a BBC reporter saying early in the Iraq war that there were two simple ways to tell British soldiers from Americans.
1. Americans are the ones with sunglasses.
2. Americans are the ones who aren't 100% white.
The degree of diversity depends a lot on where you are both within the US and within the EU. I remember a European friend visiting me and asking me to explain a sign to him that he saw on BART. I told him that was the phone company ad and those were the twelve (yes 12) different phone numbers for twelve (yes 12) different languages you could call to set up phone service. He was amazed and also blown away to realize there were only three "European" languages - English, Spanish and Portuguese - and none of those were there out of concern for Europeans. It was like his vision of the world expanded in one fell swoop and he saw there was this whole huge teeming world of migration that had nothing to do with German guys coming to United States to get PhDs. Granted, this was 15 years ago and Europe is changing fast.
I remember another similar conversation with a Euro where I said that something or other was only available in a few major languages. He said "Oh so just English, French, and German, like that?" And I explained, no English, Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese and Mandarin. His jaw dropped.
There's nothing *near* me, but if I drive far enough to see a Home Depot or a Best Buy, I'll see mosques, Sihk temples and, of course a zillion evangelical churches within 20 miles of the closest Home Depot.
>>not in general news yet
Again, this may be regional. In California, where some counties are already over 50% Spanish-speaking, I'd say it's been a topic of note for many years. But I grew up in what at the time at least was the whitest state in the Union (Vermont) and changing demographics of America was not really a topic (maybe it is now, I don't know).
>>Republicans and conservative right know they have a problem
We're going to hear about the demographics of party affiliation until we can't stand it anymore this cylce.
