The coming white minority

Sometime after 2050, America's entire population will shift to minority-majority status, but before this century's end, California will have a population that is less than half white. How the state - which has had a major impact on American race relations in the 1990s - chooses to adapt to its changing population, and whether it can produce a civil society, has enormous national consequences. The fevered debate over United States immigration policy began in California and has produced calls from legislators, pundits, and presidential candidates to halt legal immigration, to ban affirmative action, and to deny public services to immigrants. Already, these possible shifts in national public policy are being voted on by Californians - from Proposition 187, the anti-illegal-immigration initiative that passed in 1994, to the CCRI initiative that would ban affirmative action and will be on the ballot in 1996. Dale Maharidge, a 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner, has listened to Californians as they responded to the coming seismic shifts in their population and searched for common interests and common solutions. Moving beyond the heated rhetoric, The Coming White Minority eloquently documents the