People of color a majority in Texas

Alicia A. Caldwell

EL PASO, Texas — With a growing Hispanic population, Texas has joined the District of Columbia and three other states, including Hawaii, as a majority-minority state, according to population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Hispanics are now the largest minority group in California, New Mexico as well as Texas. Asian-Americans are the largest minority in Hawaii while in the nation’s capital, it is blacks.

According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities accounted for about 47 percent of the nation’s second most populous state.

Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren’t far behind, with about 40 percent minorities. Blacks and Hispanics are the largest minority groups in those states.

While a state demographer said the new estimates should be no surprise, public policy analysts said these states and the country as a whole need to bring minority education and professional achievement to the levels of Anglos. Otherwise, these areas risk becoming poorer and less competitive in the world market.

With the nation’s under-18 minority population already nearing that of Anglos of the same age group — recent population data showed 42 percent of U.S. residents under 18 are minorities compared to 58 percent for Anglos — the nation should be more than half minorities by 2050, said Steve Murdock, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Lawmakers need to start with immigration reform, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

“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.”

Frey said bringing minorities’ education and salary levels in line with Anglos should be a top priority and needs federal support.

This demographic shift, which Frey and other experts attribute to Hispanic immigration, could also lead to more bilingual education. The demand already exists and is not being addressed, said Tatcho Mindiola, director of the University of Houston’s Center for Mexican American Studies.

Mindiola said the country should also expect to see an eventual political shift, which is likely to include more Hispanics running for public office at all levels of government.

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 growing 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.

Officials in states like Nevada will quickly have to figure out “how immigrant populations and an aging white population can be served at the same time,” Frey said.

Though some areas may never see this shift and Hispanics may not eventually reign as the largest minority group — as a group Hispanics have increased in greater numbers than any other minority — the country as a whole is expected to continue the trend first noticed more than a decade ago.

“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.”

(Associated Press)

Associated Press Writer Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.