The 2010 Census is well underway and many governmental agencies, educational institutions, and providers of goods and services are eagerly awaiting the findings to determine how they might affect many of their operational decisions in the years to come.
As the current Census is being completed, now is a good time to look back over the last century and see how the face of America has evolved.
The diversity of the American people constitutes a profound component of the American experience. For a country known for being the “melting pot” of the world; during the past century, the United States has evolved from a multi-ethnic nation into a multi-racial one with a minority presence across each of the 50 states.
In the early 1900s, America absorbed the largest influx of immigrants in its history, primarily from southern and eastern Europe, transforming the nation’s demography and culture. Today, the United States is experiencing its second great wave of immigration. This time around, the immigrants come primarily from Latin America and Asia, and possess more diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds than those who arrived 100 years ago.
During the first two decades of the 20th century, 85 percent of the immigrants to the United States came from Europe. In contrast, by the end of the century, almost 80 percent of the immigrants came from countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
For respondents to the 1900 Census, there were only two race options: White or Colored, so Native Americans counted as separate total from the rest of the nation’s population. Even as recently as 1970, the primary classifications of the U.S. population were either White or Black. People of races other than white or black represented less than one percent of the total U.S. population between 1900 and 1960. Although the White population continues to be the largest race group in the United States, with over 200 million people, the Black population’s 13 percent share was less than one percentage point higher than in 1900. By 2000, people of other races made up 12.5 percent of the population, an increase that occurred primarily in the last two decades of the 20th century. In that brief time, the Hispanic population doubled and the Asian and Pacific Islander population tripled, a development attributed to increased immigration and birth rates of both groups.
In 2003, an updated version of the 2000 Census announced that Hispanics outnumbered Blacks in the United States, a somewhat surprising development considering the fact that the Census did not count Hispanics as a separate ethnic group until 1980. They now make up over 13 percent of the nation’s population. The list of top 10 most common names in the United States reflects how Hispanic migration has permeated American culture. Although Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, for the first time in the nation’s history, two Hispanic surnames, Garcia and Rodriguez, made the top 10, coming in at number eight and nine respectively.
Overall, the median age of the United States population has increased over the century. In 1900, the White, Black and American Indian and Alaska Native populations were all relatively young. The largest segments of those populations were children under the age of five. In contrast, the Asian and Pacific Islander population in 1900 consisted largely of working-age men in their 30s and 40s, because of the heavy influx of Chinese and Japanese workers to the U.S. during the latter part of the 19th century. By 2000, Asians more closely resembled the age structures of the other populations in the United States. While all racial groups have older populations today, the median age of the White population is the highest, at 40 years. Asian Americans are slightly younger, at a median age of 35 years, and the median age for Blacks and Native Americans is 31 years. In 2000 Census, the largest segment of the Hispanic population was children under the age of five, and their overall median age was 27 years.
The age structure of minority populations will certainly affect future demographic trends in America. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau released population projections for 2100. According to these estimates, the nation’s population will increase to 571 million, as both racial and ethnic diversity continue to grow as well. While White, Native American, and Black populations will increase at a slow, steady rate, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander populations will become more prominent because these groups are younger than the nation as a whole today, with a higher number of potential parents in the future.
While America has become increasingly diverse overall since the 1900s, as the century progressed racial and ethnic diversity spread across the country. A major factor is that unlike the beginning of the 20th century, Diversity is not confined to certain regions or cities. There has been a steady increase of minorities living in every one of the 50 states.
In 1900, the most diverse region of America was the South, where Blacks made up about 30 percent of the population. Although approximately 55 percent of Blacks, still reside in the South, it is a significant drop from the 90 percent who lived in the region at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, more Blacks have settled in the Midwest and the Northeast, and to a lesser extent, the West.
The West is the most diverse region in America, according to the 2000 Census, followed by the South, the Northeast, and the Midwest. We will need to await the completion of the 2010 Census to see whether this trend remains. In contrast to the racial make-up of the South in 1900, today, the West hosts a rich diversity of races, including 50 percent of the Asian and Pacific Islander population and 40 percent of the Hispanic population of the United States. The American Indian and Alaska Native population was concentrated in the West at the beginning of the century, and their regional distribution has remained stable.
The steady increase in regional racial and ethnic diversity has occurred primarily within the past three decades. By 2000, 40 states and the District of Columbia had populations with at least 10 percent races other than White. Today, Hawaii, California, and New Mexico have become “majority minority” states, where minority populations make up over 50 percent of the state.
An emerging multi-racial and multi-ethnic pattern will characterize our nation’s future. Early in the 20th century, a blurring of ethnic lines occurred when Irish immigrants married German immigrants and Catholics married Protestants.
Intermarriage among ethnic groups, over time, obscured ethnic stereotypes that once defined White Americans. The rates of intermarriage among many minorities now rival those of the second-generation immigrants at the turn of the century. This American marital melting pot will also result in a greater number of children in the United States who are of mixed race, eventually blurring established racial boundaries.
The number of interracial marriages jumped tenfold since 1960, but still only accounts for about three percent of all marriages. However, the primary increase occurred in the first decade of the 21st century, indicating a future trend to watch. Although Hispanics, Asians and Native American men and women marry white spouses at a rate of 30-40 percent, rates of interracial marriage involving blacks is much lower; about 10 percent of black men and women took white spouses.
A fluidity of racial identity is emerging in America, with Americans increasingly defining themselves in multiracial terms. For the first time in history, the United States Census in 2000 allowed individuals to identify themselves as more than one race. Almost seven million people indicated that they were of more than one race, a number that exceeds the Native American and Alaska Native population. Another indication of our future as a multi-race society is that there was a 10-fold increase in children identified as multi-racial on the 2000 Census. No doubt, the 2010 Census will show an increase in that trend.
Further complicating the issue of racial and ethnic identity is the fact that the federal standards of race classification do not necessarily correspond to how a person views their ethnic heritage. For the U. S. Census Bureau, “Asian” refers to people with roots in the Far East, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, including Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese. “Hispanic” refers to people of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South, or Central American, or other Spanish culture of origin, regardless of race. Most Asians and Hispanics identify more with their fellow countrymen than with the broad geographical or linguistic categorization put on them by the federal government. The conflict between the rigidity of race categories and the fluidity of racial and ethnic self-identification makes many people resistant to census classifications.
Despite the best efforts of the U.S. Census Bureau, it is difficult to predict what American demographics will look like in the next 100 years, or even in this year’s official Census. A recent study completed by the Pew Foundations predicts that within the next four decades—by 2050—the United States will be a country of minorities.
The United States has evolved from a country that defined itself racially as black and white only 100 years ago, into a nation that is growing exponentially with millions of people that transcend traditional racial boundaries; an unstoppable trend which will almost certainly redefine how Americans address the subject of race in the future.