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Affichage des articles du octobre, 2023

Become a Minority in America?

Become a Minority in America? Other majority-minority societies offer positive examples—and cautionary tales. By Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. An applicant holds a U.S. flag and a packet while waiting to take the oath to become a U.S. citizen at a naturalization ceremony in Salt Lake City on April 10, 2019. March 22, 2022, 5:31 PM In 2021, the U.S. population expanded at its slowest rate in history, and for the first time, the majority of its population growth came from immigration. So, despite four years of former President Donald Trump’s policies limiting the admission of foreigners, the United States is on track to reach its anticipated 2044 “majority minority” milestone: the moment when the majority ethnic group, non-Hispanic white people, becomes one of multiple minorities. This article is adapted from Majority Minority by Justin Gest (Oxford University Press, 424 pp., $29.95, March 2022). For centuries, countr...

Contre l’assignation identitaire qui gagne

Contre l’assignation identitaire qui gagne Publié le 10 mars 2021 Les questions identitaires sont au centre du débat politique depuis de nombreuses années déjà. Elles avaient jusque dans les années 2000 une dimension émancipatrice par rapport à l’appartenance à des minorités mal reconnues. Il s’agissait de trouver sa place dans une société française ouverte sur l’extérieur. Les questions identitaires avaient également une dimension politique très forte face à la montée de l’extrême droite qui en faisait un sujet politique contre l’immigration. Puis les revendications identitaires se sont développées également sur d’autres terrain : les questions de genre et la montée en puissance des revendications liées aux libertés sexuelles, à la procréation médicalement assistée ; les questions religieuses et notamment le port du voile dans l’espace public. Elles ont également investi le champ de la mémoire avec les débats sur le colonialisme, le « racialisme », l’esclavage, la repentance et pl...

Is the brown bag test real or is it an urban legend?

Question Is the brown bag test real or is it an urban legend? --Jeremy Village, Chicago, Illinois Answer Brown Paper Bag Test I am sad to report that the brown paper bag test was real. It was an example of colorism-discrimination based on skin color. In his 1996 book The Future of the Race, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the prominent Harvard historian, described his introduction to this practice as an undergraduate student at Yale in the late 1960s. According to Gates, "Some of the brothers who came from New Orleans held a bag party. As a classmate explained it to me, a bag party was a New Orleans custom wherein a brown paper bag was stuck on the door. Anyone darker than the bag was denied entrance. That was one cultural legacy that would be put to rest in a hurry-we all made sure of that. But in a manner of speaking, it was replaced by an opposite test whereby those who were deemed "not black enough' ideologically were to be shunned. I was not sure this was an improvement....