The changing face of America? Tell me, what is the face of America?!

So, according to the census folks, we hit the 300 million American mark. Good for us...In a world where developed countries aren't having babies and semi-developed countries are loosing hoards of people to more-developed countries and undeveloped countries are just barely hanging on, we are growing. We are changing. We are ensuring our future, building our workforce.

But I know that many of us are worried. We're worried that the "face of America" is changing. We're worried that most of these births are in the minority groups. Huge chunks of that 300 million are foreigners, many of whom do not speak much English and "steal" American jobs because they'll work hard for less money than "real" Americans. Unknown amounts of those immagrants are in the US illegally. Amazingly, within our lifetimes, white European Americans will only amount to about 50% of the population. To many of us, that is a scary statistic.

But to those of us who feel this way, I say get over it. Every single one of the white European Americans living in the US are there because someone in their bloodline came to America in a group that the people already in America thought would bring down the country (how much did people fear and despise the Irish, the Italians, the Poles?) Each of these groups changed the "face of America," took jobs from existing Americans, and had a hard time learning English (yes, I am including the Irish in this.) With all these years of change, I would like to pose the question:

What exactly is the face of America?

If it can change, there must be one. But as far as I can tell, America is always changing faces. Once upon a time those faces were tan and wise and living in harmony with nature. Then some paler faces from Anglo-Germanic Europe came by and began to build a replica of the homes they left behind. They brought over darker faces to help them build their great society. Later Slavic faces and Hispanic faces and Asian faces and Latino faces and Green faces and Purple faces and (oh wait, this isn't a Dr. Suess book) came and all put themselves into the flow of the people already in America. They brought their food, their holidays, their languages, and all of it mushed together and made, apparently, a big pluralistic face. The Face.

But can't you see?...The Face is change. The Face expands and contracts and changes colors to accomodate the change. It always has, and it always will. To fear the change, to fear the pluralism, is to be unAmerican. It's who we are. It's who we've ALWAYS been. Without it, we are not America. Stagnicity would be the ultimate "change of face."

I am not saying it will be easy. It never has been. We will have to watch our resources (human, educational, environmental and financial) but to be honest, we should be doing that anyway.

I say that we celebrate this. We are now 300 million people...THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE! and that shows we will continue to be the same, interesting country we always have been.