NYT: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Gaining in Nation as a Whole

[DeepModem Mom]

Racial and Ethnic Minorities Gaining in Nation as a Whole
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: August 12, 2005


WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 -The nation as a whole is moving in the direction of its two most populous states, California and Texas, where members of racial and ethnic minorities account for more than half the population, the Census Bureau said Thursday.

Non-Hispanic whites now make up two-thirds of the nation's total population, the bureau said, but that proportion will dip to one-half by 2050, according to the agency's latest projections.

In a new report, estimating population levels as of July 1, 2004, the Census Bureau said Texas had a minority population of 11.3 million, accounting for 50.2 percent of its total population of 22.5 million. Texas is the fourth state in which minority groups, taken together, account for a majority of the population. But no one racial or ethnic group by itself accounts for a majority of the total population there....

***

Members of racial and ethnic minorities also make up more than half the population in Hawaii (77 percent) and New Mexico (56.5 percent). In California, state officials said minorities had accounted for more than half of the population since 1998, and the Census Bureau said they now made up 55.5 percent of the total. Minorities accounted for about 40 percent of the population in each of five other states: Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona....

***

Cecilia Muñoz, a vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, said...."the political strength of Latinos takes a while to catch up with our demographic strength," in part because one-third of the Latino population is under the age of 18 and many Hispanics are not citizens....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/national/12census.html

[SeanQuinn]

1. Immigration it is. nt