Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America

Abstract

If current trends continue, non-Hispanic whites will no longer be a majority in the United States (US) by 2050. In his fascinating book, Diversity Explosion, Frey discusses why this is happening, how it could cause a cultural and political generation gap, how it will affect different regions, and how trends have changed over time. Slow population growth among non-Hispanic whites partially explains why minorities make up an increasing share of the population. However, the increase also reflects the rapid growth of Hispanic, Asian, and multiracial populations, groups that Frey calls the “new minorities.” He notes that between 2015 and 2060, the Hispanic population should increase by 96%, the Asian population by 103%, and the multiracial population by 300%. By contrast, the non-Hispanic white population will fall by 10%, and the AfricanAmerican population will grow by only 37%. Frey notes that reducing immigration would slow, but not reverse, these trends. While the first chapter focuses on the overall trends, later chapters describe how diversity has evolved in different regions. Frey also notes that trends that were visible before the 1990s have changed dramatically. Immigrant Asian and Hispanic populations no longer cluster in a few cities and states. The great migration of African Americans from the South to the North has reversed, and ‘white flight’ from cities to nearby suburbs no longer drives suburban growth. Frey divides the country into three broad regions. The first, which he refers to as the traditional melting pot, is where most Asian and Hispanic immigrants entered the US in the 1980s and early 1990s. The melting pot states of California, New York, Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, and Florida became diverse quickly. California, Texas, and New Mexico became majority-minority states by the early 2000s; non-Hispanic whites made up less than half of their populations (Teixeira, Frey, and Griffin 2015). Frey argues that this growth led to fears the country would become balkanized, with new minority populations growing in the melting pot states, while the rest of the country remained predominantly white. This pattern, however, ended in the late 1990s as other states started to become increasingly diverse. States in the West and Southeast like Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and Virginia, which Frey refers to as the new sunbelt, were growing during the 1980s and early 1990s. This early growth, however, was due to internal white migration from other states. In the late 1990s, more new minority immigrants started moving to the new sunbelt and African Americans started migrating from the North to the South. Some new sunbelt states, including Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, should become majority-minority states by the mid-2020s (Teixeira, Frey, and Griffin 2015). The remaining states, which Frey calls the heartland, were growing slowly or shrinking in the 1980s and early 1990s, but these states also started attracting new minority immigrants in the late 1990s. Although many, like Alabama, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming, will remain