There is an interesting story at The Washington Post.

It says that 45% of children under five in the US are a minority. 70% of that 45% is Hispanic.

One in three Americans is now a minority.

We are told that in the Washington area as well as in Miami, Houston, and LA, minorities are now a majority in children under 5.

We are also told that:

• Census figures show the number of Hispanic and Asian children younger than 5 grew by double-digit percentages since 2000.
• The nation’s Asian population growth is dominated by immigration
• Hispanic births added more to the population growth than immigrants did this decade.

There is a graph at the bottom of the page. In it the Asian population is listed at 4% overall and 15% in the “younger than five” category.

I wanted to know more, so I went looking for the original Census report and found it here. At this site we are told that:

• The Asian population rose by 3 percent or 421,000 between 2004 and 2005.
• Of the increase of 421,000 in the Asian population between 2004 and 2005, 182,000 was because of natural increase and 239,000 was because of immigration.
• The Asian population in 2005 was younger with a median age of 33.2 years compared to the population as a whole at 36.2 years. About 26 percent of the Asian population was under 18, compared with 25 percent of the total population.

We are also told that “the non-Hispanic, single-race white population”, which represented just under 67 percent of the total population, accounted for less than a fifth (19 percent) of the nation’s total population growth. This means that “white people” are not reproducing at the same rate as the rest of the population.

What does this mean for our kids? I don’t know. I think there is a very real danger of a backlash effect, but I really hope the segment of the population most likely to react that way will be aging out of the workplace by the time our kids are working. I do think there has been a lot of progress since Vincent Chin’s murder, but I also think we still have a long way to go.

It is my hope that our kids will grow up in a nation that celebrates diversity instead of judging people based on stereotypes. But how do we get there?

Oh, one more interesting tidbit from the Census site. It appears that China isn’t the only country with too many boys. There were 104 males per every 100 females under 18.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under Race Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.