Majority minority in the United States

In the United States of America, majority-minority area or minority-majority area is a term describing a U.S. state or jurisdiction whose population is composed of less than 50% non-Hispanic whites. Racial data is derived from self-identification questions on the U.S. Census and on U.S. Census Bureau estimates. (See Race and ethnicity in the United States Census). The term is often used in voting rights law to designate voting districts which are altered under the Voting Rights Act to enable ethnic or language minorities "the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice."^[1] In that context, the term is first used by the Supreme Court in 1977.^[2] The Court had previously used the term in employment discrimination and labor relations cases.^[3]

• Six states are majority-minority as of July 2019: Hawaii (the only state that has never had a white majority), New Mexico, California, Texas, Nevada,^[4][5][6] and Maryland.^[7]
• The District of Columbia reached a majority-black status during the latter stages of the Great Migration. Although the district remains majority-minority, the Black population made up only 40.9% of the district in 2020.^[8] The shift has mainly been driven by an influx of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites.^[9]
• Per the 2020 United States Census, the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents has fallen below 60% in Georgia (50.1%), Florida (51.5%), New Jersey (51.9%), New York (52.5%), Arizona (53.4%), Mississippi (55.4%), Louisiana (55.8%), Alaska (57.5%), Illinois (58.3%), Delaware (58.6%), and Virginia (58.6%).^[8]
• All populated United States territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa) are majority-minority; none of them have had a non-Hispanic white majority.
• As of 2012, 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. are majority-minority.^[10]
• As of 2015, 12% of U.S. counties are majority-minority.^[11]
• The whole United States of America is projected to become majority-minority by the middle of the 21st century if current trends continue, making the U.S. the first major post-industrial society in the world where the dominant group transitioned from majority to minority.^[12] With alternate immigration scenarios, the whole United States is projected to become majority-minority sometime between 2041 and 2046 (depending on the amount of net immigration into the U.S., birth/death rates, and intermarriage rates over the preceding years).^[13][14]
• Ethnic minority children will make up the majority of children in the entire United States by 2020.^[15]
• Minority children are the majority among children in the following ten states: California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Maryland.^[16]

States[]

From colonial times to the early-twentieth century, much of the Lower South had a black majority. Three Southern states had populations that were majority-black: Louisiana (from 1810 until about 1890^[17]), South Carolina (until the 1920s^[18]), and Mississippi (from the 1830s to the 1930s^[19]). In the same period, Georgia,^[20] Alabama,^[21] and Florida^[22] had populations that were nearly 50% black, while Maryland,^[23] North Carolina,^[24] and Virginia^[25] had black populations approaching or exceeding 40%. Texas' black population reached 30%.^[26]

The demographics of these states changed markedly from the 1890s through the 1950s, as two waves of the Great Migration led more than 6,500,000 African-Americans to abandon the economically depressed, segregated Deep South in search of better employment opportunities and living conditions, first in Northern and Midwestern industrial cities, and later west to California. One-fifth of Florida's black population had left the state by 1940, for instance.^[27] During the last thirty years of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, scholars have documented a reverse New Great Migration of black people back to southern states, but typically to destinations in the New South, which have the best jobs and developing economies.^[28]

The District of Columbia, one of the magnets for black people during the Great Migration, was long the sole majority-minority federal jurisdiction in the continental U.S. The black proportion has declined since the 1990s due to gentrification and expanding opportunities, with many black people moving to Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Maryland and others migrating to jobs in states of the New South in a reverse of the Great Migration.^[28] In 2019, the black population represented only 44.2% of the D.C. population^[29] — a considerable decline from 75% in the late-1970s. At the same time, Asian and Hispanic populations have increased in the District, keeping it a majority-minority area.

Since 1965, foreign immigration has spurred increases in the number of majority-minority areas, most notably in California.^[30] Its legal resident population was 89.5% 'non-Hispanic white' in the 1940s, but in 2019 was estimated at 36.5% 'non-Hispanic white'.^[31]

Cities[]

Many cities in the United States became majority-minority by 2010.^[32] Out of the top 15 cities by population, Columbus, Ohio is the only city not classified as majority-minority.^{[clarification needed]}

Data collection[]

The first data for New Mexico was a 5% sample in 1940 which estimated non-Hispanic whites at 50.9%.^[33] Hispanics do not constitute a race according to the U.S. census but an ethnic and cultural group: of respondents who listed Hispanic origin, some listed White race, roughly half gave responses tabulated under "Some other race" (e.g. giving a national origin such as "Mexican" or a designation such as "Mestizo" as race), and much smaller numbers listed Black, American Indian, or Asian as their race.

In U.S. censuses since 1990, self-identification has been the primary way to identify race. Presumption of race based on countries or regions given in the ancestry question is used only when a respondent has answered the ancestry question but not the race question. The U.S. Census currently defines "White people" very broadly as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa,^[34] i.e. Caucasoids. This definition has changed through the years.

Although the census attempts to enumerate both citizens and non-citizens, the undocumented immigrant population of the United States has proven hard to quantify; the census uses a 12 million base estimate nationally. However, current estimates based on national surveys, administrative data and other sources of information indicate that the current population may range as high as 20–30 million.^[35]

Maps and graphs[]

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, 2005 (for the year 2000)

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 (for the year 2019)

Institutions[]

In the United States, the vast majority of African Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans attend schools where white Americans are in the minority.^[37] 2006 research from The Civil Rights Project found that, on average, white students attend schools that are 78% white, while black and Hispanic students attend schools which are 29% white. A study on this suggested that; "This data is important because "majority minority" schools have the worst facilities (buildings, labs, libraries, athletic facilities), the least qualified teachers, the worst overcrowding, and the least financial support."^[38] At a national level in the US with regards to racial classification, public schools obtained majority minority status in 2014.^[39] At the university level, in 2017, Harvard University's first case of a majority-minority freshman class was reported.^[40]

Other uses[]

Normally, a state is considered to be majority-minority because of its ethnic or racial makeup, but other criteria are occasionally used, such as religion, disability, or age. For example, the majority of Utah residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Christian denomination that is a religious minority throughout the rest of the United States. In addition to Utah, Rhode Island and Louisiana, which have Roman Catholic majorities, are the only states in the U.S. where a single denomination constitutes a majority of the population. However, no U.S. state has a majority composed of any non-Christian group, except for Hawaii, where 51.1% of the population follow religions that would be non-mainstream in the rest of the United States. Hawaii is classified as religious majority of Unaffiliated, including agnostics, atheists, humanists, the irreligious, and secularists (non-practicing).

Criticism[]

In January 2016, CUNY sociologist Richard Alba wrote an article in the American Prospect arguing that the way in which majority-minority calculations are made by the Census are misleading. Anyone with any Hispanic, Asian, or black ancestry is seen as non-white, even if they also have white ancestry. Alba argues that the incomes, marriage patterns, and identities of people of who are mixed Hispanic-white and Asian-white are closer to those of white people than monoracial Hispanics or Asians. Thus, when the Census says that non-Hispanic whites are projected to be less than 50% of the population by the 2040s, people of mixed-race ancestry are improperly excluded from that category.^[41]

See also[]

• List of majority minority United States congressional districts
• Lists of U.S. cities with non-white majority populations

References[]

External links[]

• U.S. Census demographic estimates
• 10% of U.S. Counties Now 'Majority-Minority'