I suppose I should be celebrating this news:
The demographers agreed: at some point in 2014, Latinos would pass whites as the largest ethnic group in California. Determining when exactly that milestone would occur was more of a tricky question. Counting people isn’t like counting movie ticket receipts.
The official confirmation had to wait until new population figures were released by the Census Bureau this summer. The new tally, released in late June, shows that as of July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state.
But really, I doubt even my old California grandparents, one of whom was half-Mexican, would have celebrated this. There is nothing magic about geography, this is the simple and straightforward Mexification of California. And speaking as a great-grandson of a Mexican revolutionary, I can assure you, sooner or later, they will claim it for la raza cósmica.
“The concept of La Raza can be traced to the ideas and writings of Jose Vasconcelos, the Mexican theorist who developed the theory of la raza cosmica (the cosmic or super race) at least partially as a minority reaction to the Nordic notions of racial superiority. Vasconelos developed a systematic theory which argued that climatic and geographic conditions and mixture of Spanish and Indian races created a superior race. The concept of La Raza connotes that the mestizo is a distinct race and not Caucasian, as is technically the case.”
I look forward to hearing the complaints that I am a mestizo supremacist. And keep in mind that if there is one thing those of Spanish blood are good at, it is taking the long view towards Reconquista.