The numbers are brandished so firmly as if to say, It's going to rain tonight, take an umbrella. Already in 1992, the Census anticipated that the non-Hispanic white population would decline by 2050 to 52.7 percent. The current report estimates that the non-Hispanic whites will end up at 52.8 percent. No huge news here. So the first point is that projections come and go, but rarely is the current round juxtaposed to the previous one.
Institutional amnesia applies.
Were readers reminded of the last round, all of them would have to be seen as evanescent. Consider further that such projections assume that people will continue to be identified as they are now. But racial and ethnic categories don't grow on trees. There is one race, and it's called human. Our labels are matters of convention, often racist in origin, and conventions change.