Latinx and the Future of Whiteness in American Democracy

Given the oncoming demographic changes—which are primarily driven by the growth in the Latinx community—the United States is predicted to become a minority-majority country by around 2050. This seems to suggest that electoral strategies that employ “dog-whistle” politics are destined for the dust-bin of history. Following the work of critical race theorists, such as Ian Haney-Lopez and Derrick Bell, I want to suggest that pronouncing the inevitable demise of dog-whistle politics is premature. This is because there are reasons to suspect that certain segments of the Latinx community—much like the Southern and Eastern Europeans in the early part of 20th Century—might be co-opted into American whiteness.