When a minority is no longer a minority. And where.

Everyone "knows" that America is divided between white and black, and that the majority white has "oppressed" the minority black.

But in the 21st century, at least a few observers have noted that "the" minority has not only challenged the majority in a country where democracy supposedly rules.

The most conspicuous example is that of African-Americans, who make up among the overall population of the United States one in eight Americans.

Obviously, in the world of pro sports--football, baseball, basketball--African-Americans constitute the majority.  Whites are the minority, and Asian-Americans and Hispanics even smaller minorities (especially Asians, 5% of the population, who are hardly ever present except for the very recent Jeremy Lin).  African-Americans are not a minority within the NBA or NFL.

In the world of pop music, again, African-American singers consistently top the charts in a wildly disproportionate share (Beyonce selling 300,000 albums within what was it 24 or 48 hours).

Going to the movie theater would lead a foreign visitor to the U.S. to even believe that African-Americans are 1/3 of the population rather than one minority among other minorities (although for historical reasons arguably the "most significant").

Nor in many of the largest cities of the U.S. such as Detroit or Philadelphia or Atlanta or D.C. are blacks a minority.  They are the majority (or the largest racial group).

In California, Hispanics, not blacks, are by far and away the largest minority, 35% of the population compared to 5% (Asians, 12%; whites, 44%).  If you'd watch a Hollywood film, however, you'd think the percentages were reversed, blacks 35% and Hispanics 5%.

At the metropolitan YMCA in Seattle, you're often more likely to see blacks as whites (or Asians, for that matter, who are actually the largest minority here) on the gym floor.  You can certainly hear them more.

Obviously, with the black birth rate twice that of whites and significant immigration, legal and illegal, from Latin America, demographics are in flux, with whites in proportional decline.

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It would be far more significant to refer to minorities as minorities within a particular geographical locality or demographic segment.

But in this way, I think, some minorities would lose their hold on victimhood.