A friend was recently discussing immigration and made the observation that “we would not be a majority anymore.” I gave that statement a little thought, and considered who are the “we” that my friend had in mind.

The original inhabitants of what is now the United States were a diverse collection of Native Americans, including Polynesians in Hawaii. They were the majority 400 years ago. Since then, the population demographics have been continually changing.

Fred Camfield lives in Vicksburg. E-mail reaches him at fecamfield@bellsouth.net.

At least four of my ancestors were among the 50 Mayflower passengers who survived the first winter in Plymouth. They were among the original boat people who arrived uninvited, looking for a new life, and competed with the existing population for available resources. By present standards, they would have been classified as illegal aliens. The Native Americans could have shoved them back into the sea, but the tribes were divided, and at least one tribe saw some advantage in forming an alliance with the arrivals.

Once the Pilgrims had their feet firmly planted, the kudzu effect took over. Invading foreigners displaced the native population, massacring some tribes like the Pequots who opposed them. Eventually, the Eastern Seaboard became populated by English, Scots, Dutch, Germans and others, while Hispanics were making incursions into Florida and the Southwest. The Native Americans still occupied the middle of the country.

Planters in the Southeast begin importing African Americans who became a large part of the population in that area. Tight-fisted Yankees in the North, using a different economic model, imported Irish laborers who paid their own passage (sometimes incurring debts at high interest rates) and did not cost anything. Eventually, the demand for labor resulted in large immigration of Italians, Slavs, Poles, Swedes and many others. Out West, laborers were imported from China. More recently we have immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, along with Southeast Asians, Japanese and a medley of other ethnic groups.

Somewhere along the way, someone created that strange category called “white.” Nobody is really that color. The people we call white actually come in a variety of skin tones, generally fair-skinned, but sometimes swarthy. It seems to include people with origins from every European country except Spain, and even includes a sprinkling of Lebanese, Turks, Israelis, Palestinians and Gypsies. Europe was the first melting pot, so people with European origins have varying degrees of mixed backgrounds. My known distant ancestors, who included a caliph of Damascus and a khan of the Cumins from the Asian steppes, were a mixture of “native populations,” invading tribes, soldiers of fortune, concubines picked up on slave raids and various wanderers from unknown origins.

The people we call white are somewhat like an uneasy coalition of minority political parties who, while not being quite the same, band together to form a majority. Most certainly, people of English ancestry (who have always had their own class system) never considered Irish, Italians, Poles or others as being equal, and never invited them to join their clubs, although they counted them as being among the white population in order to obtain a majority.

The exclusion of people from Spain seems related to longstanding animosities between the English and the Spanish dating back to the 16th Century, along with the fact that the United States and Mexico fought a war.

Attempts by this white majority to regulate immigration, giving preference to people like themselves, have always leaked like a sieve. At one time, my hometown in Washington State had a thriving business bringing in Chinese across the beaches in that area. Borders and coastlines have always been long and difficult to patrol. There have been different types of boat people for the last 400 years, and entrepreneurs of various sorts who found ways to import foreign labor either legally or illegally. There are also immigration allowances for refugees, family reunification and special occupations; and that is compounded by people who overstay visas and melt into the population. It is really a matter of definition determining who is here “legally,” as that can also be a matter of perception.

It has always been a bit odd that dog breeders may recognize a couple of thousand breeds, but people get classified into a half-dozen categories. We have Whites (that diverse group noted above), Asian Americans (that includes everyone from Afghanis to Japanese), African Americans (a diverse group including Somalis, Zulus, Nigerians, Moroccans and others, none of whom are really the same), Hispanics (everyone from south of the border, although some of them were here before the Whites), Native Americans (everyone who was actually here first) and Pacific Islanders (who would seem to include native Hawaiians). Of course, many people are a blend of two or more of these groups. Some of my cousins are part Native American and some relatives are part Asian American. I describe myself as a fair-skinned person of European descent, whatever that means, so I am classified as “white,” although I tend to be a light tan when I have been out in the sun.

To repeat the original question, who are the “we” that has a majority? Ethnic identities sometimes become blurred, and the recent majority has always been a coalition. Coalitions change depending on which way the wind blows. Today, Hispanics (sometimes referred to as Latinos) are in a separate category. Who knows what ethnic groups may be broken out tomorrow.

As an added thought, one can always wonder what goes on in the minds of the real Native Americans when people debate about immigration and “illegal aliens.” If we send all the aliens back to where they came from, where do we begin?