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Research Series: The Minoritized-Majority Society to Come is Here Already: Who Counts and Who Does Not?
Friday, September 8, 2023 , 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm CDT
The Sociology and Anthropology Department will be hosting its first of six brown bag research series events this semester. For this first event, Dr. Victor Ortiz, Emeritus Professor of Latino & Latin American Studies at Northeastern University, will be giving a research talk on the implications of the United States’ transition towards becoming a minority-majority society.
The U.S. is projected to become a minority-majority society in merely two decades—
if not before. The aggregated percentages of people of color will be larger than
those of euromericans in the total population. Many implications of the eventful
transition are uncertain. However, emergent and long-established inequity trends
are at play, foreshadowing mounting problems. This paper examines exclusionary
institutional dynamics reinforcing established privileges over new demographic
balances. Through ethnographic fieldwork in a middle-class suburb undergoing
demographic transformations, the paper analyzes institutional restrictions on
people of color’s efforts to consolidate social advancements. Focusing on Latinos—the
largest minority group in the country and one with its least share of wealth—this
paper argues that the minority-majority transition depends on the politics defining
the distribution of people and resources. In plain words, on how marginalized
groups remain “minoritized” despite—and because of—their growing number.
