Micro Melting Pots - Census findings about racial statistics - Statistical Data Included

American Demographics, June 1, 2001

In the wake of Census 2000, newspaper headlines have bombarded us with messages about the growing and pervasive racial and ethnic diversity across the United States. And nationwide, statistics not only confirm that minorities grew at 12 times the rate of whites, but that fewer than 7 in 10 Americans consider themselves to be white - or "non-Hispanic white only" in census terminology.*

Still, a careful examination of the torrent of statistics flowing from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that the nation's minority groups, especially Hispanics and Asians, are heavily clustered in selected regions and markets. Rather than witnessing the formation of a homogeneous national melting pot, we are seeing the creation of numerous mini-melting pots - in contrast to the rest of America, which is much less diverse. Through intermarriage and the blending of cultures, each of these melting-pot metros will develop its own politics, tastes for consumer items, and demographic personalities. Commentators, marketers, and political analysts should understand and take into account these multiple melting pots and the new ethnic frontiers presaged by their spillover as predictors of America's changing racial/ethnic landscape.

Regional Differences

In a broad swath of the country the minority presence is still quite limited. As the map at left makes clear, America's racial and ethnic patterns have taken on distinctly regional dimensions. Hispanics dominate large portions of counties in a span of states stretching from California to Texas. Blacks are strongly represented in counties of the South as well as selected urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest. The Asian presence is relatively small and highly concentrated in a few scattered counties, largely in the West. And Native Americans are concentrated in select pockets in Oklahoma, the Southeast, upper Midwest, and the West. Multiethnic counties are most prominent in California and the Southwestern U.S., with mixes of Asians and Hispanics, or Hispanics and Native Americans.

The most notable aspect of this map is the broad stretch of counties from the upper West and Rocky Mountains to the Midwest and Northeast that are mostly white, and where none of the minority groups come close to approximating their national averages. Of the 3,141 counties in the U.S., over three-quarters (2,419) of them have white shares greater than the nation as a whole, and well over half of all counties (1,822) are at least 85 percent white.

In contrast, only 381 counties have a greater than national representation of Hispanics, as do 117 counties for Asians, and 697 counties for blacks. It can certainly be argued that there has been a greater diffusion of minorities, especially Hispanics, across the counties. The vast majority of U.S. counties (2,990) have shown some increase in their Hispanic populations during the 1990s, and in about a quarter of all counties, that increase exceeded 1,000 persons over the past decade. Yet their overall gains are heavily concentrated in the core counties of immigrant metro areas, and in the West and Southwestern U.S. Just 100 of these core counties accounted for more than 70 percent of all the nation's Hispanic gains during the decade. The diffusion of Hispanics outward from these core areas, in terms of total numbers, is far less rapid than recent press accounts imply.

While there was some dispersal of immigrant Asian and Hispanic groups during the 1990s, the greater tendency was a continued concentration in established ports of entry. The eight metros with the largest Hispanic gains account for 46 percent of all Hispanic growth in the U.S. over the decade, now home to 51 percent of the total Hispanic population. These gains were due to immigration and domestic migration, as well as the relatively young age and natural increase of the Hispanic population.

Indeed, a mere 30 of the nation's 276 metros accounted for fully 70 percent of all Hispanic growth. New to this list is Phoenix, which more than doubled its Hispanic population over the 1990s - thanks to direct immigration and a spillover from California. Las Vegas and Atlanta are also relative newcomers, which more than doubled and tripled their Hispanic populations respectively.

The concentrated gains among Asians in areas with existing Asian populations are even more apparent than with Hispanics (see chart at top right of next page). The three Asian population juggernauts - New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco - account for 37 percent of all Asian gains in the U.S. in the '90s. The top six areas account for almost half. Metros with fast-growing but smaller Asian populations include Dallas, which doubled its population, and Atlanta, where it tripled.

The New Ethnic Frontiers

There is some directed diffusion of Hispanics and Asians outward from these immigrant ports of entry. With rising employment opportunities in states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Utah, and parts of the Midwest, new immigrant minorities have made pioneering moves to these areas, establishing new minority frontiers. At the forefront are metros that house a minimum of 50,000 members of the minority, and have more than doubled that group's population over the 1990s. (see chart at left).