Thirty years ago the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote a book entitled The Disuniting of America that included this: “A cult of ethnicity has arisen … to denounce the idea of a melting pot, to challenge the concept of ‘one people’ and to protect, promote, and perpetuate separate ethnic and racial communities.”
Hopefully you remember the phrase “one people” from our Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people ….”
That’s what Thomas Jefferson called early Americans. From this, Francis Bellamy’s notion of “indivisible” in our Pledge of Allegiance emerged.
A year after Schlesinger published his book, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal invited me, as a new College Board member, to submit an op-ed piece related to the U.S Supreme Court decision in Ayers vs. Fordice, Mississippi’s higher education desegregation case.
I built on Schlesinger’s question of whether America was about division or transcending division to pose the same questions for Mississippi.
I quoted the Rev. Edwin King, a longtime state civil rights activist, who said, “My own personal fear, shared by many friends, is that America is moving toward a two tiered society … and that is our choice and struggle here in Mississippi. Will we move forward or will we try to perpetuate separatism and segregation?”
Three decades later, racial division remains. More integrated workplaces and the recent state flag vote show progress. But few expect attitudes on racial separatism will do anything but dominate the upcoming redistricting battles at the state and local levels — white Republicans vs. black Democrats.
Sustaining some fiery white separatist attitudes is the fear that the white population majority will be overtaken by non-whites (a hope by black separatists). That fear was stoked in Mississippi by new 2020 Census data.
It revealed the state’s white population had declined for the first time. It was down 48,500 since 2010. Somehow the ratio of white to non-white residents stayed level at 56%, but that ratio has fallen from a high of 64% in 1980. Demographic trends indicate the gap will continue to close.
Undoubtedly, had not many non-white immigrants shied away from the Census last year, the gap would have narrowed this time.
Non-whites composed a majority of the population for over 100 years in Mississippi — from 1830 to 1930. Beginning in 1940, black population began to decline, a downward trend that persisted until 1970, while white population continued to increase.
Meanwhile, other non-white population sectors started to increase. The 2020 Census shows Mississippi’s population to be 56% white, 38% black, 3% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and less than 1% American Indian. By comparison, in 1940 the respective numbers were 50.6%, 49.2%, 0.04%, 0.03%, and 0.1%.
As long as Mississippians continue to view themselves as separate ethnic cultures, Edwin King’s fears will remain valid and the notion of indivisibility a dream.
