Playing to Stereotypes

Your article “O.C. Whites a Majority No Longer” (Sept. 30) plays on outdated stereotypes that fail to paint an accurate picture of Orange County.

Terms like “white,” “majority” and “minority” are social constructs. Their continued use serves only to divide us. For example, the first Irish in America were considered a minority group. For a long time, Italian immigrants were considered nonwhite.

Most Orange County Hispanics are American-born and speak English as their first language. To treat them as a permanent minority discounts their dynamic social and economic mobility. Highlighting ethnic divisions in Orange County also ignores rapidly rising intermarriage rates. Our schoolkids today are increasingly multiethnic. The racial bean counters should stop dividing them into meaningless categories.

Social divisions do exist in Orange County. But they are divisions of income and education more than of race. Percentages of those who are foreign-born, non-English-speaking or living in poverty would be far more instructive than dividing us into arbitrary ethnic groups.

If the majority is now the minority, then the two terms have truly lost their meaning. Though this may make good headlines, in our daily lives, most Orange Countians see each other as human beings first.

Chris Norby

Orange County Supervisor

Santa Ana