EL PASO, Texas - Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.
According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.
Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations — with Hispanics the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.
Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.
Public policy analysts said these states and the country as a whole need to bring minority education and professional achievement to the levels of whites. Otherwise, these areas risk becoming poorer and less competitive.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said lawmakers need to start with immigration reform, while striving to bring minorities' education and salary levels in line with Anglos.
"Immigration is good for the United States ... it's important for us to keep our doors open, but we need to keep an eye on the people coming in," Frey said. "While initially it will be a state problem, eventually it will be a national issue, and education is the best way to deal with it."
Complications from the cultural shift aren't likely to be exclusive to states that already have majority-minority populations, Frey said.
Nevada, for instance, has seen a massive influx of minorities in the last 15 years, reducing the percentage of Anglos since the 1990s from nearly 80 percent to about 60 percent. Such a rapid shift is likely to cause growing pains that include trying to balance the needs of a bigger and younger minority community with an aging Anglo community, Frey said.
"That's the kind of state that is going to have to deal with quick transition," Frey said.
Though some areas may never see this shift, the country as a whole is expected to continue the trend first noticed more than a decade ago.
The nation should be more than half minorities by 2050, said Steve Murdock, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
"If you look in the 1990s, in every one of the 50 states, non-Anglo Hispanic populations grew faster than Anglo populations," Murdock said. "It's a very pervasive pattern."
The nation's two largest minority groups are following strikingly different paths: Hispanics are moving to areas with few from their ethnic group; African-Americans are moving to suburbs in the South that have large black populations, Census estimates released Thursday show.
These are two major waves in America," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "One is the black return to the South. The other is Hispanics going to places where everybody else is moving, following the jobs."
The July 1, 2004, estimates show that the share of Hispanics living in counties with large concentrations of Hispanics is slipping.
In the 1990s, most Hispanic immigrants came to the USA through five "gateways": California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Florida. "Now, you're just as likely to go to Iowa, South Carolina or Tennessee," Frey says. (Related: Top 100 Hispanic counties)
The spreading out of Hispanics challenges the communities they settle in and Hispanics themselves. Schools and local governments often are not equipped to deal with Spanish speakers.
Hispanics make up at least 5% of the population in 28 states, up from 16 in 1990, Frey says.
"You've got a very large share of the population living not in stereotypical neighborhoods where all the signs are in Spanish," says Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a research group in Washington. "There are still a lot living in densely Hispanic neighborhoods, but there are more who are scattered all over the landscape."
Some are middle-class Hispanics moving to the suburbs. Others are less-educated, poorer immigrants seeking jobs in construction, service industries and retailing.
Blacks' patterns are very different. The percentage in counties that have the largest share of blacks is inching up. More than 17 million — almost half of all blacks — live in the 11 states that were in the Confederacy, up a million from 2000. (Related: Top 100 black counties)
Many black professionals are leaving Northern black strongholds such as Baltimore and Philadelphia and settling in mostly black suburbs of Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Charlotte and other Sun Belt metros.
"They have housing options," says Roderick Harrison, demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank specializing in African-American studies. "They're seeking places where there are other successful upper-income blacks, where people feel they'll be more comfortable."
The data also show that Texas has joined Hawaii, New Mexico and California as states whose minorities exceed 50% of the population.
EL PASO, Texas - Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.
According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.
Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations — with Hispanics the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.
Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.
Public policy analysts said these states and the country as a whole need to bring minority education and professional achievement to the levels of whites. Otherwise, these areas risk becoming poorer and less competitive.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said lawmakers need to start with immigration reform, while striving to bring minorities' education and salary levels in line with Anglos.
"Immigration is good for the United States ... it's important for us to keep our doors open, but we need to keep an eye on the people coming in," Frey said. "While initially it will be a state problem, eventually it will be a national issue, and education is the best way to deal with it."
Complications from the cultural shift aren't likely to be exclusive to states that already have majority-minority populations, Frey said.
Nevada, for instance, has seen a massive influx of minorities in the last 15 years, reducing the percentage of Anglos since the 1990s from nearly 80 percent to about 60 percent. Such a rapid shift is likely to cause growing pains that include trying to balance the needs of a bigger and younger minority community with an aging Anglo community, Frey said.
"That's the kind of state that is going to have to deal with quick transition," Frey said.
Though some areas may never see this shift, the country as a whole is expected to continue the trend first noticed more than a decade ago.
The nation should be more than half minorities by 2050, said Steve Murdock, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
"If you look in the 1990s, in every one of the 50 states, non-Anglo Hispanic populations grew faster than Anglo populations," Murdock said. "It's a very pervasive pattern."
