The 2011 Forum Event

Can the Garden State Become a Label-Blind (or "Label-free") Society? Should it?

If the reality revealed in the 2010 Census is that everyone in New Jersey will be a member of a "minority" within little more than a decade, is it possible that we can become a "label-bind society" by 2022?

And while "diversity" is certainly NOT all about race, it seems clear that "the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability."

So, whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we are "approaching a profound demographic tipping point".

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities -- blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians -- will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042.

And it will happen in the Garden State much sooner, by 2022.

Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

Some speculate that steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage will lead to the "beiging" of America. Which, of course, is just antother "label".

The real point may be that generations of preconceptions about all forms of being "different" are giving way to a society in which labels matter less and less.

Are all labels "bad" or is the validity of their use merely situational?