What Does It Mean to Be White in America in 2017?

The percentage of the white population in the U.S. has fallen from 80 percent in 1980 to 62 percent in 2014. Nancy Eisenberg: The idea of whiteness is deeply entwined with the American dream, which is increasingly out of reach for lower-income whites. Recent events in 2017 show how this often unconscious belief in white universality can warp into a dangerous assertion of imagined white superiority," she says.