How young Americans are set to change the US forever

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2017-07-23 23:36Z by Steven

How young Americans are set to change the US forever

BBC News
2017-07-18

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow
Metropolitan Policy Program
Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

William H. Frey is the author of Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.


Getty Images

Older white Americans still hold most of the economic and political power in the US. But the great ethnic diversity of younger generations means that change is coming.

America’s workforce, politics and place on the world stage will soon be changed forever.

So great and so rapid are the shifts in the country’s population, that, in the coming decade, the US is set to be transformed far more than other nations.

Almost half of millennials and children are from ethnic minority groups and it is this great diversity that is at the heart of demographic changes.

As the country comes to rely on them for its future prosperity, everyone will have to consider how society must change to make a success of this new reality…

Read the entire article here.

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Census change may result in fewer ‘white’ Americans

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-22 22:15Z by Steven

Census change may result in fewer ‘white’ Americans

The Los Angeles Times
2015-11-22

Associated Press

The Census Bureau is considering changes to its race and ethnicity questions that would reclassify some minorities who were considered “white” in the past, a move that may speed up the date when America’s white population falls below 50%.

Census Director John Thompson told the Associated Press that the bureau is testing a number of new questions and may combine its race and ethnicity questions into one category for the 2020 census. That would allow respondents to choose multiple races.

The possible changes include allowing Latinos to give more details about their ethnic backgrounds and creating a distinct category for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent…

William Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, says the proposed changes would grant residents more freedom to define their races and ethnicities.

“I don’t know if this will make a huge difference in the 2020 census on whites becoming the minority, but it could later,” said Frey, author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.”

In the past, “white” was the only racial option available to Arab American respondents, a classification that didn’t truly reflect their social standing and hurt efforts for their political empowerment in post-Sept. 11 America, said Samer Khalaf, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

“If you are going to classify me as white, then treat [me] as white,” Khalaf said. “Especially when I go to the airport. So, yeah, it’s inaccurate.”…

Read the entire article here.

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Multiracial Gen Z And The Future Of Marketing

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Economics, Media Archive, United States on 2015-09-08 20:33Z by Steven

Multiracial Gen Z And The Future Of Marketing

Media Post
2015-09-03

Jose Villa, Founder and president
Sensis, Los Angeles, California

Millennials are generally believed to be the most ethnically and racially diverse generation in American history. Hispanics (20%), African-Americans (14%) and Asians (6%) make up 40% of the total millennial population. This diversity underpins the notion of the bicultural millennial, a young consumer straddling two worlds, balancing their cultural lives with their mainstream integration into popular culture. Yet, lost in the buzz around bicultural millennials is the growing multiracial U.S. population truly living in two worlds at home and in society…

Multiracial America

The large segment of multiracial Gen Z is the result of demographic trends at work for the last two decades. Starting with the 2000 census – the first census that allowed individuals to self-identify with more than one race – we have been seeing a steady demographic shift resulting from an increase in multiracial marriage. In a recent New Republic article, William Frey laid out how the blending of racial minorities through multiracial marriage is leading to a major demographic shift in the U.S. In 2000, 6.7% of all marriages were multiracial. That number jumped to 8.4% in 2010. Hispanics are driving the increase in multiracial marriages, accounting for 49% of all multiracial marriages in 2010 (Hispanics and Whites: 44%, Hispanics and Black: 3%, Hispanics and Asian: 2%). Furthermore, more than one in seven newlywed couples are now multiracial. This data also does not account for non-married multi-racial couples that are adding to the growing multiracial Gen Z population…

Read the entire article here.

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Black-white mixed race identity rises in the South

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2015-08-12 21:55Z by Steven

Black-white mixed race identity rises in the South

The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
2015-08-12

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow

As shown in my book, “Diversity Explosion,” the growth of black-white marriages in the United States is unmistakable, as are the gains in the population that identifies itself as “white and black,” particularly among the very young. As further evidence that the white-black divide is eroding, it is useful to look at the region most historically resistant to change: the South. Because of past prejudices and customs, the white-black population, as a percentage of all blacks, is still considerably lower in Southern states than in other parts of the country (see map). In a slew of states leading from Maryland to Texas, “white and black” populations represent less than 5 percent of the black-only populations. In Mississippi and Louisiana, “white and black” populations constitute only 1 percent. These figures compare with more than 20 percent of “white and black” persons in a handful of states with sparse black populations in the West, Great Plains, and New England.

Read the entire article here.

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Multiracial marriages are dispersing across the country

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2015-08-03 00:25Z by Steven

Multiracial marriages are dispersing across the country

The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
2015-06-18

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow

As I discuss in my book, “Diversity Explosion,” the geographic dispersion of minority populations from traditional melting-pot regions to the rest of the country sets the stage for the dispersion of multiracial marriages as well. To be sure the greatest prevalence of multiracial marriages are in melting-pot states such as Hawaii, where three in 10 marriages are multiracial, as well as Alaska and Oklahoma, where the share is nearly two in 10 (see map)…

Read the entire article here.

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Our rising white-black multiracial population

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2015-02-27 02:07Z by Steven

Our rising white-black multiracial population

The Avenue / Rethinking Metropolitan America
The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
2015-02-23

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

The fastest growing racial group in the country is those who identify themselves as “two or more” races. Yet, perhaps most encouraging, as discussed in my book Diversity Explosion, is the rise in the population that identifies itself as both white and black. The racial divide in the United States has been so stark that it was not until the 2000 Census that federal statistics allowed multiracial status. For a long period in our history, persons were identified as black according to the “one drop” rule which stipulated that if they had any black ancestors, they could not be classified as white…

Recently, a clear sign of the softening of racial boundaries was the 2010 Census report that persons identifying as black and white were the largest biracial population at 1.8 million—more than double those identified in the previous census…

To read the entire article, click here.

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How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America

Posted in Audio, Census/Demographics, Economics, Interviews, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2015-01-06 00:23Z by Steven

How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America

The Diane Rehm Show
WAMU 88.5 FM
Washington, D.C.
2015-01-05

Diane Rehm, Host

Mark Hugo Lopez, Director of Hispanic Research
Pew Research Center

Jim Tankersley, Economic Policy Correspondent
The Washington Post

William Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program (author of Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America)
Brookings Institution

Jamelle Bouie, Staff writer covering politics, policy, and race
Slate

America is becoming a country with no racial majority. In 2009, for the first time in U.S. history, more minority than white babies were born in a year. Soon, most American children will be racial minorities. The nation’s diversity surge played a key role in Barack Obama’s election as president. Many see these trends as necessary as a much-needed younger minority labor force is already boosting an aging baby boom population. But challenges loom, including clashes over public resources, overcoming a cultural generation gap, and fears over losing privileged status. Diane and her guests discuss how new racial demographics are remaking America.

Listen to the show (00:51:40) here.

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Multiracial Marriage on the Rise

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2014-12-20 17:13Z by Steven

Multiracial Marriage on the Rise

The Brookings Institution
The Avenue: Rethinking Metropoliitian America
2014-12-18

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow
Metropolitan Policy Program

One consequence of America’s diversity explosion is a rise in multiracial marriages. In 1960, before immigration levels to the United States started to rise, multiracial marriages constituted only 0.4 percent of all U.S. marriages. That figure increased to 8.4 percent in 2010 and for recent newlyweds, 15 percent.

Not surprisingly the prevalence of out-marriage is high for new minorities, Hispanics and Asians, in light of the large pool of potential partners who are of different origins. More than four in ten new marriages of each group marry someone of a different race—with whites the most likely partners…

Read the entire article here.

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New Projections Point to a Majority Minority Nation in 2044

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2014-12-17 16:05Z by Steven

New Projections Point to a Majority Minority Nation in 2044

Brookings Instituion
Washington, D.C.
2014-12-12

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow
Metropolitan Policy Program

New population projections released this week by the Census Bureau indicate that the U.S. population will become “majority minority” in 2044. At that time, whites will make up 49.7 percent of the population compared with 25 percent for Hispanics, 12.7 percent for blacks, 7.9 percent for Asians and 3.7 for percent multiracial persons. This tipping point will result from two countervailing trends that are projected to continue between now and 2060:…

…These trends underscore the minority driven demographic transformation analyzed in my book Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America, which outlines the challenges and opportunities associated with a nation whose youthful, growing minority population is juxtaposed against an aging, slow-growing, and soon to be declining, white population.

Read the entire article here.

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The Major Demographic Shift That’s Upending How We Think About Race

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2014-12-03 15:39Z by Steven

The Major Demographic Shift That’s Upending How We Think About Race

The New Republic
2014-11-28

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow
Metropolitan Policy Program
Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

Reprinted with permission from Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America by William H. Frey (Brookings Press, 2014).

The usual way that race labels are applied in the United States in everyday parlance and in government statistics fail to capture a phemenon poised to reshape how race is actually lived in America: the increase in multiracial marriages and births, which almost certainly will lead to more blended populations in future generations. As this trend continues, it will blur the racial fault lines of the last half of the twentieth century. The nation is not there yet. But the evidence for multiracial marriages and multiracial individual identity shows an unmistakable softening of boundaries that should lead to new ways of thinking about racial populations and race-related issues.

Sociologists have viewed multiracial marriage as a benchmark for the ultimate stage of assimilation of a particular group into society. For that to occur, members of the group will already have reached other milestones: facility with a common language, similar levels of education, regular interaction in the workplace and community, and, especially, some level of residential integration. This is what we saw with European immigrants from Italy, Poland, and Russia in the last century. After decades of being kept at arm’s length by “old” European groups such as those from Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia, the newer arrivals finally began to intermarry with the more established ethnic groups as they became more upwardly mobile and geographically dispersed. Hispanics and Asians differ from white Europeans, of course—most significantly, for these purposes, Americans tend to view them as racial groups rather than ethnic groups. And race divisions, especially between whites and blacks, have historically been far less permeable. So the blending of today’s new racial minorities through multiracial marriage is breaking new ground.

Multiracial marriages have been rising dramatically. In 1960 (before federal statistics enumerated Hispanics and before the 1965 legislation that opened up immigration to more countries) multiracial marriages constituted only 0.4 percent of all U.S. marriages. That figure increased to 3.2 percent in 1980 and to 8.4 percent in 2010. More than one in seven newlywed couples are now multiracial.

Amid this overall increase, the propensity to marry out of one’s racial or ethnicity varies. Among recently married whites, 17 percent were married to someone of another race, but for Hispanics and Asians, more than four in ten recent marriages are multiracial. Among minorities,blacks continues to have the lowest prevalence of multiracial marriages, a legacy of the anti-miscegenation statutes that persisted in 16 states until 1967, when the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional in the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision. It was only after this ruling in the post–civil rights environment that black multiracial marriages began to rise noticeably, but among recent, typically younger marriages involving blacks, nearly three in ten were multiracial marriages, signaling an important breakthrough in the long history of black marital endogamy.

Especially noteworthy is the rise in white-black multiracial marriages: In 1960, white-black marriages amounted to only 1.7 percent of all black same-race marriages, but in 2010, they amounted to 12 percent. White-black relationships are even more prevalent among recent cohabiting couples…

Read the entire article here.

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