Well, what do you know! After decades of using the term “minority” to describe racial and ethnic groups in the United States, Census officials are now saying that the next decade will show that no single race will constitute the majority of children under 18.
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The findings, released Wednesday, also say that in about three decades, no single group will constitute a majority of the country as a whole.
That means that no matter your race, no one group will be larger than the other. Are we finally equal?
The Census calls this a “plurality nation:”
“The next half century marks key points in continuing trends — the U.S. will become a plurality nation, where the non-Hispanic white population remains the largest single group, but no group is in the majority,” the bureau’s acting director, Thomas L. Mesenbourg, said in a statement.
The diversity of the nation’s children is increasing faster than the Census expected, a catalyst in the change in U.S. landscape:
The diversity of the nation’s children is increasing even faster than was previously expected, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “When the 2020 Census comes around, we’re going to have a majority-minority child population,” he said in an interview.
By 2043, the bureau expects that there will be no single majority group in the country as a whole, and that non-Hispanic whites will fall below fifty percent.
However, the Hispanic population is expected to double during that time to 128.8 million in 2060 from 53.3 million currently.
In 2060 nearly one in three residents will be Hispanic, up from about one in six now. (People who identify themselves as Hispanic may be any race.) The black population is expected to increase to 61.8 million from 41.2 million over the same period, with its share of the population rising slightly. And the Asian population is expected to double, to 34.4 million in 2060 from 15.9 million now, with its share of the population climbing to 8.1 percent from 5.1 percent.
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Not sure what all this means, but a changing landscape is always good, especially when the numbers are equally yoked.
SOURCE: NY TIMES
