Many pieces of my earlier work feels like they came together with this work on you know here to four. Ive studied muslim politics the politics of a lot of minority out groups the politics of white workingclass people and nativism and backlash to diversity and minorities and nativism and i studied immigration policies both here in the United States and abroad across 30 different countries, and i think that overshadowing all of these different topics overshadowing our politics Public Opinion and our policy has been the specter. Of the majority minority milestone the moment when Minority Groups become become the majority group, they outnumber the original or native based ethnic or religious minority. And so i think that you know in acknowledging that shadow cast over all of our politics. I want to kind of take it on, you know head on and for for viewers. Im not quite sure everybody might know what majority minority is referring to but the nation has been under a lot of demographic change. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the story of where we are today, and were the nation may be going in terms of its demographics. Well, mark, you know better than anyone really better than me even you know about about where our nations demographics are going but, you know certainly in the most simplistic high level way the country is diversifying on dramatically. So its its not the kind of thing that happens overnight, but this was a white colonial settler state at its founding and steadily over the centuries. We have diversified from the sort of ang. Protestant Northern European protestant basis of our population along with of course a large group of slaves that were present from almost the inception of the country and that population is diversified in almost every way possible whether its ethnically and religiously, you know, and of course culturally that comes with it. And so what were now seeing our trends that are pushing us to the point where people who selfidentify as white and Nonhispanic White will no longer be at least 50 of the countrys population and im referring to then its generally referred to as the majority minority milestone. Its very interesting because the latest 2020 census figures do show just yet even more how diverse the country is become about 60 of the nations population is as you said white nonhispanic and i think thats a really important distinction that i want to come back to a little bit later. But also when we talk about this racial ineptic composition of the country the other interesting thing i find about majority of minority as a concept is we talk about these as mutually exclusive racial and ethnic groups blacked on hispanics asian on hispanics native americans who dont have any hispanic originally and multiracial people who are not hispanic hispanics and then white not hispanics not sure the country thinks about itself in that way, but that leads me to my next question, which is really about the way you structure the book which i found absolutely fascinating which is to talk about some examples about whats happening around the world. Where other countries other societies have faced. This milestone. Where did you go . Where did you do some of your research . And what did you find . Sure so many people think about american politics think that were exceptional and in many cases, of course, we are exceptional. We are very exceptional place, but i think when it comes to the majority minority milestone, there was the sense that were in sort of New Territory that no country has ever experienced this before and certainly no large country like us as ever experienced it before but i think that we can learn from smaller countries that actually have experienced it they act is almost like living laboratories microcosms of human nature and the changes that take place when demographic change really is is ushered in and so i visited a number of countries and theyre quite diverse not just you know, sort of in terms of what ethnic groups youre talking about. But also what time period and geographically different and as a result we really can see some some themes that are threaded through all of them over the over the course of history and so in brief, i study singapore and bahrain which are two by theyre all island states. I should mention and yes and i like that about that. I thought the island part was a really being part of want to come back to that too, but you have some happily. Lets definitely come back to these island nations, but theyre all island nations and singapore and bahrain are two island nations, obviously in Southeast Asia and off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula respectively that are really characterized by the suppression of minorities and we can get into that more later if you like mauritius and Trinidad And Tobago are islands in the indian ocean and the east Caribbean Sea respect respectively that are democracies, but are consumed and gridlocked by ethnic tension. And then third the third group of countries are new york, which is not a country. Although many new yorkers would like to think that theyre a country or would like to become their own country and also hawaii, which is not its own country today, but it was up until american the american annexation of hawaii in 1893 and at that time they were already past the majority minority milestone and those two societies the Hawaiian Kingdom and new york were had a different type of history. It was it was subject to a sort of redefinition of the identity and therefore much more peaceful path towards demographic change. And so i study all six of these countries all three different paths and try to generalize what to eat and expect and what are the sort of critical junctures in that process and what should we factor what might we expect this majority. Minority. Milestone is an interesting interesting phenomena happening in the country. Its something thats gonna take some time to happen, but we kind of know that its coming and its something thats gonna seem to have a lot of potential a lot of impacts on multiple parts of american life. Political life but what might we see come from a minority majority milestone in the United States and what you saw in some of these other places sure. Well, i think that the most important thing to recognize is that theres going to be nativism. Theres going to be prejudice prejudice and nativism are a consistent human response to demographic change particularly approaching a majority minority milestone, and thats true even in societies that cope really well and to me thats really important to recognize its not something obviously to be celebrated. You know, we want to try to mitigate the extent of racism and nativism and prejudice in our societies, but so many people think that we are not going to be able to properly adapt to this demographic change unless we eradicate racism unless we eradicate nativism but what i find is that actually those sentiments among people who are experiencing this change. Thats the turf on which change needs to happen. So majority minority milestones. Effectively governed theyre highly subject to the management of governments and Civil Society and businesses how they respond to demographic change really matters because the the prejudice is a sort of natural reaction to gross change. And so its about how we cope with that that matters. And so this this is why the story for singapore is so interesting. Can you talk about how singapore has managed this transition . Give us a little bit about a history of singapore too because i do think its one of the interesting examples that you talked about in the book well for the purposes of television, this is such a long story to share and so im going to necessarily, you know, really truncate it for for our viewers, but certainly they could double click on any of these things by reading the book and its chapters on singapore. So singapore is an island city state at the very bottom of Southeast Asia and for almost all of its history. It was an integral part of malaysia. What is now concerned malaysia previously the Malay Federation in previously, its british, malaysia and during that period singapore grew and and to a major commercial metropolis that was fueled by immigration and it was effectively predominated by people of chinese origin. Theyre also people of Indian Origin some westerners, but generally it was predominated by the and overnight in 1965 not necessarily out of nowhere because there was troubles but out of almost out of nowhere overnight the Malay Federation which was recently independent from britain seceded effectively. They broke ties with singapore leaving the singaporeans sovereign at their own country, but really suddenly in a way that they had no infrastructure to maintain but all of a sudden this malay citystate became a chinese dominated country because of those historic demographics and so overnight you had a majority minority milestone where malays previously feeling like they were, you know, effectively in control the territory. Were no longer. And the and the singapore government has made incredible strides. I trying to create a Multiracial Society a Multiethnic Society on the city state and to maintain very peaceful relations mostly for the purposes of prosperity and in large part, theyve been incredibly successful but to do so they have invoked number and passed a number of policies that actually do not overcome race on racial differences. But actually deepen and and thicken the boundaries the racial boundaries inside of their population. They select immigrants based on their racial profiles. They assign people to housing depending on what race they are. And again, its usually going to be chinese malay indian or other what they call cmio and so its going to be a sign by race and this is also true for schooling. So its a society that is actually defined by race, but that has never actually but has actually never really experienced much conflict as a result though. And so through these through these levers of policy the singaporean government has been able to maintain the distribution of the racial and ethnic groups within this population, which i think if im correct around 73 chinese for example precisely so they have basically frozen the distribution of their population to the distribution that it was in 1965 when that majority milestone suddenly took place and by contrast theres a story of hawaii, which is another island, it was an island nation not part of the United States talk a little bit about the hawaiian majority minority story because its a very different built set of circumstances but difference it outcomes sure. So, you know, hawaii the archipelago of hawaii didnt really have contact with anyone outside of polynesia until the late 18th century. And so, you know, this was an island that was isolated. So let alone having a majority minority milestone driven by immigration. There was no immigration. There was no contact until 1778, but after that after contact with the british and americans thereafter on the plantation economy began to grow a lot of White Planters established plantations with the consent of the monarchy and those plantations needed labor and hawaiians were not prepared to actually supply it with labor for two key reasons one the population was decimated by an epidemic of variety of diseases that were coming from westerners and then secondly, which really absolutely killed an enormous amount of relation and then also many of the remaining hawaiians did not want to participate in the plantation based economy. They had historic economic norms and norms for how to grow plants and actually participate in a Broader Community ecosystem and natural ecosystem and they didnt want to participate and so the regime the hawaiian monarchy allowed extensive immigration to fuel the labor appetite of these plantation owners beginning in the 19th century and very quickly because the hawaiian population the native hawaiian population was so decimated the demographic share of foreigners began to grow and just before the americans and exit forcibly without much blood but forcibly on the last they reached that majority minority milestone interesting and and today hawaii is a place. That is the most diverse states on most diverse of states in the United States in terms of its racial and ethnic composition, i think a first date action to reached this majority of minorities status. There are other states though as well who have reached it in recent years. What are those other states . I think its california, california, arizona taxes, i think in new mexico and new mexico new mexico is the one where latinos i think are about half of the of the states population. Um, so i its also intrigued as you read through these examples and youre in your qualitative work youre talking with folks in these different places to see the different levers of policy that are in place to address demography. Im wondering if you could talk a little bit about that because usually demographers think about that equation that is what drives to go up and go down. Its natural increase births minus. Thats its the arrival of immigrants into a new place and there are maybe a few other things that also that might affect the demography of a place, but can you talk a little bit about the ability of governments to actually be able to shape demography or maybe theyre inability to do so yeah, i mean in many ways, you know demography is is almost you know seems at least in the outside to be uncontrollable because you cant force people to have children. At least. I mean, i would hope no government would do so, you know, but yet thats very important for a country that children are produced for the sake of population stability on you know, you cant you cant stop people from intermarrying which obviously changes the racial composition of a country depending on how people selfidentify there are lots of things and you also cant control when people die. Usually i mean you can provide government sponsored healthcare and you can have you know, antiobesity, you know initiatives like Michelle Obama did theres lots of things that governments can do to promote good health. Thats right, but ultimately, you know, if people want to have bad habits and die early, theres only so much of government can do but there are some things that governments can do and they have gotten quite good at it over the years and i refer to these three ways of controlling demography and demographic change as who comes who counts and who connects and just breathe very briefly on each of these who comes as a matter of immigration. And of course the state is sovereign when it comes to controlling who is admitted into a country and governments have become very sophisticated at who they want to admit who they dont want to admit even if theyre not very effective at always implementing those policies sometimes strategically. So who counts is a matter of how much power is given to Minority Groups. How much power is given to newcomers . You give them citizenship. Do you naturalize them and in franchise them with the right to vote . Do you give noncitizens the right to vote municipally as some cities have now start to do in the United States and extensively in europe. So who counts really matters gerrymandering also affects who is counting, you know in you know, electoral institutions like the Electoral College effects, who counts and then finally who connects relates to the amount of interaction intergroup contact between a population and you know various policies like segregation have an enormous effect on whether a population is actually connecting and creating a sense of social solidarity and and linked fate so governments have actually taken a lot of action in responding to demographic change in many ways to compensate for the ways that they cant control it. And the in terms of who counts i found that part of your of your of your framework very very interested because it brought to mine a lot of the conversation in 2020 18 2019 2020 about including a Citizenship Question on the decennial census in 2020 the idea being that who is a us citizen us citizens are those who are allowed devoted in federal elections. What if you talk a little bit about how this applies to whats happening in America Today as we look at our discussion around immigration around counting people and about connectedness. Sure. Well census is are in immensely important tool as of course anyone from the Pew Research Center will acknowledge. So, you know, the census isnt imperative tool to understanding demographic change. Naturally. Its our most important tool but it also distributes power it distributes money and resources and so whether people are counted by the census really matters and so the initiative to not count or at least to distinguish in those who are documented in the United States and not documented would have affected who counts not only because it could be used to determine who counts but it also may have suppressed the counting of people who are do not have legal status or people who may have legal status but fear deportation. Anyway, however, you know, irrationally and of course that is exactly what people feared is that it would have a suppressing effect on people like that and and ultimately affecting perhaps even the count in those states that might then lead to perhaps not getting that additional congressional seat during a reapportionment that may be a state was expecting like in arizona and all the resources that come with it and the research, you know, and of course theres a constitutional debate about who should count right, you know that the census, you know, it says in the constitution that the census will count all persons. It doesnt say all legally present persons. It doesnt say no conditions on what type of persons but we dont talk count cattle or dogs, but we do count all persons. And so, you know, i think thats pretty clear. There is that legal and constit. National debate, but that aside theres also the political debate about what the intentions of the