RACIAL AND ETHNIC COMPOSITION

Ethnicity is a socially important demographic marker throughout the world. In many countries, however, it is not collected or reported in official population statistics, typically for reasons of social policy. Race is a concept with a contentious history and is no longer in use in anthropology. But in the United States, both concepts have long been, and continue to be, prominent features of population statistics. This article is therefore focused on the U.S. case.

The racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population has changed markedly since the founding of the nation as successive waves of immigrants arrived from an ever-shifting array of countries around the world. Classifying persons as members of particular racial or ethnic groups is, however, far from straightforward, not only because of the increasingly complicated mix of identities among children whose parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were members of different groups, but also because social definitions of race and ethnicity have changed through time. Despite these complexities, it is clear that the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population has been becoming increasingly diverse especially since the 1970s, and this trend is projected to continue.

The Racial and Ethnic Classification System

Ethnicity can be defined as a social boundary between groups reflecting distinctions made by individuals in their everyday lives based on cultural differences, such as language, religion, dress and food preferences, and entertainment and artistic expression, as well social and physical differences between members of specific groups. Scientists long ago abandoned the search for rigid biological distinctions between races, but insofar as racial distinctions continue to be drawn in everyday life, race can be viewed as a particular type of ethnicity in which social perceptions regarding physical characteristics play an important role in characterizing group membership.

Reflecting their socially constructed nature, racial and ethnic categories differ substantially across societies, and from time to time within particular societies, as individuals assimilate across boundaries, as boundaries erode with intermarriage or through the adoption of cultural practices across boundaries, or as new groups enter a society through immigration. A long historical perspective on the changing racial and ethnic classification system of the United States is provided in the series of population censuses conducted every ten years. Questions in past censuses designed especially to identify key groups have focused on country of birth (along with year of immigration, citizenship status, and language), ancestry, and race and Hispanic origin.

Cultural differences between the foreign-born and native-born populations have long been prominent. Country of birth was asked in each census since 1850, and mother's and father's countries of birth were asked in the censuses between 1870 and 1970. The latter provide the basis for distinguishing the second generation from the foreign-born and from third- and later-generation Americans. Responding to the great wave of immigration from Europe between 1880 and 1930, the censuses asked additional questions about year of immigration (1890–1930), citizenship status (1900–1950), and language spoken (1900–1940). With the blurring of ethnic distinctions among European Americans who were the grandchildren of those immigrants, questions on father's and mother's countries of birth were replaced with a question on ancestry beginning in the 1980 census. With the second great wave of immigrants after 1960, mainly from Latin America and Asia, questions were reintroduced asking about language spoken (1960–2000), year of immigration (1970–2000), and citizenship (1970–2000).

Questions seeking to ascertain race have the longest history in U.S. census data collection. The censuses from 1790 to 1820 distinguished free whites, other free persons, and slaves; the category "free colored persons" was added in 1830. Whites and blacks (referred to as Negro between 1930 and 1960) were each identified in every census since 1850. The mixed-race category of mulatto was included between 1850 and 1890 and again between 1910 and 1920, while the 1890 census also sought to distinguish among mulatto (a person with three-eighths to five-eighths black ancestry), quadroon (a person of one-quarter black ancestry), and octoroon (a person of one-eighth or any trace of black ancestry). American Indians (Native Americans) have been identified since 1860. With the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959, the terms Eskimo and Hawaiian were introduced in 1960, and Aleut was introduced in 1970.

Successive waves of immigrants from Asia and the Pacific islands were identified not only through the country of origin question but also with new explicit racial categories on the census form: Chinese (1860–2000), Japanese (1870–2000), Filipino (1930–2000), Korean (1930–1940 and 1970–2000), and Samoan, Guamanian, and Vietnamese (1980–2000). Asian Indians were distinguished beginning in 1980 but had also been identified in two earlier censuses (1930 and 1940) under the rubric of Hindu. Mexicans were included as a racial category once, in 1930. With increasing immigration from Latin America, ethnic identifiers specific for that region were introduced in census data collection: Spanish surname in 1960 (for the five southwestern states only) and Hispanic origin (with categories including Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban) from 1970 to 2000. (The Hispanic category refers only to Latin American countries.)

Thus, persons of European origin were identified only through country of origin and related questions until the introduction of the ancestry question in 1980. But persons with origins in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have been identified both through immigration-related questions and, typically from early in their presence in substantial numbers in the United States, through questions regarding race or ethnicity. These specific racial or ethnic categories, however, usually refer to countries, such as Mexico, Cuba, China, Japan, the Philippines, or Korea. The most important innovation in the 2000 census was the provision for the choice and reporting of more than one race for an individual, that is, multiple- or mixed-race reporting.

Historical Transformations in Racial and Ethnic Composition

In 1790 more than one-half of the population (56%) within the then geographic boundaries of the United States had origins in Great Britain, and an additional one-fifth (19%) had origins in other northwestern European countries. As the number of immigrants per decade rose steeply from 143,000 in the 1820s to an average of 4.5 million in the 1880s and 1890s, the flow from Britain fell far short of the Irish immigration between 1820 and 1860 and the German immigration between 1830 and 1900. The Irish and Germans were commonly viewed as racially inferior to and/or religiously and linguistically incompatible with the native-born U.S. population of predominantly British origin.

This first great wave of immigration involved a dramatic shift in countries of origin at the end of the nineteenth century. During the two decades from 1900 to 1920, the majority of the 15 million immigrants entering the United States were from southern and eastern Europe. Anthropologists, scientists, and policymakers of the era shared the public sentiment that these southern and eastern European immigrants were racially distinct from earlier arrivals and that they were likely to dilute the racial and the cultural character of the American population of the time with its mainly northwestern European origins. The Irish, Germans, and southern and eastern Europeans were each, in turn, treated with often intense hostility and more than occasional discrimination.

Ethnic assimilation can be defined as a form of ethnic change taking place on one or both sides of the ethnic boundary involving a diminution of cultural, social, or physical distinctions. By the end of the twentieth century differences among European Americans on many measures, including language

FIGURE 1

spoken, fertility, and socioeconomic measures such as educational attainment, had largely disappeared. For European Americans, assimilation occurred as race and ethnic boundaries were blurred, stretched, and otherwise altered through intermarriage and through the expansion of mainstream culture to accommodate cultural differences.

While European-American ethnic groups have maintained some distinctive patterns, these are now slight compared to other, historically long-standing, racial and ethnic boundaries, most notably those separating non-Hispanic whites from American Indians, blacks, and Hispanics. In 1830, whites accounted for about 82 percent of the U.S. population but made up only 65 percent of the population within the territory now encompassed by the continental United States. With the continuing decimation of American Indians, the abolition of slave trade, and increasing immigration from Europe, the proportion of whites in the United States grew to 86 percent in the 34 states constituting the United States in 1860, and to 90 percent during the period from 1920 to 1950. Blacks accounted for most of the remaining 10 to 14 percent during these years.

Recent and Projected Transformations in Racial and Ethnic Composition

Following a sharp drop in the number of immigrants during the Great Depression, steady increases occurred during each decade between the 1940s and 1970s, followed by much larger influxes during the 1980s and 1990s. During the 1960s, 54 percent of immigrants came from Mexico, other western hemisphere countries (excluding Canada), and Asia. This proportion rose to 79 percent during the 1970s and 85 percent during the 1980s. In the 1980s Mexico and other western hemisphere countries (excluding Canada) accounted for 47 percent of all immigrants and Asia for an additional 37 percent. Most of these immigrants and their children are counted among the racial and ethnic minorities of the U.S. population.

Dramatic growth in the number of immigrants and major shifts in countries of origin are rapidly transforming the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. Non-Hispanic whites declined sharply from 83.5 percent to 69.1 percent of the population between 1970 and 2000. Most of this 14 percentage-point-drop is accounted for by the 8 percentage-point-rise in Hispanics, from 4.6 percent to 12.5 percent of the total population. Non-Hispanic Asians and Pacific Islanders also grew substantially, from 1.6 percent in 1980 to 4.1 percent in 2000. Meanwhile, non-Hispanic blacks increased slightly, from 10.9 percent in 1970 to 12.1 percent in 2000, and American Indians continued to account for less than 1 percent of the population. An additional 1.6 percent of non-Hispanics listed two or more races in the 2000 census: These people are not included in the single-race categories noted.

Looking to the future, the U.S. Bureau of the Census projects that most U.S. population growth during the twenty-first century will occur through immigration and births to immigrants and their descendants. Thus the proportion of the population belonging to the current racial and ethnic minorities is projected to continue expanding to about 50 percent by mid-century and 60 percent by century's end, with a corresponding decline in the non-Hispanic white proportion. The emergence of racial and ethnic minorities as (in combination) the majority of the population is occurring most rapidly and will first become a reality among children. Census Bureau projections indicate that the proportion of children who are Hispanic, black, Asian, or of some other racial minority will rise above 50 percent before 2040, up from 31 percent in 1990 (see Figure 1).

Differences in the rates of change by age have important consequences. In 2030 the baby-boom generation born between 1946 and 1964 will be in the retirement ages of 66 to 84 years old. The Census Bureau's projections indicate that by that year, 74 percent of the elderly will be white, non-Hispanic, compared to only 58 percent of working-age adults and 52 percent of children (see Figure 2). The growing elderly population of the predominantly white (non-Hispanic) baby-boom generation will increasingly depend for its economic support during retirement on the productive activities and the civic participation (i.e., voting) of working-age adults who are members of racial and ethnic minorities, many of whom lived in immigrant families as children. Consequently, research and public policy addressing education, the labor force, and health should increasingly

FIGURE 2

attend to the circumstances of racial and ethnic minorities.

To what extent will members of various racial and ethnic minorities, including immigrants and their children, experience economic advance or constitute a permanent underclass during the coming decades? Four major scenarios (pluralist, structural, segmented assimilation, and traditional assimilation) provide different answers to this question. Taken together, these scenarios suggest that the outcomes experienced by racial and ethnic minorities, both as individuals and as groups, will depend on external factors, such as racial and ethnic stratification and discrimination, the availability of economic opportunities, and residential and educational segregation; as well as factors intrinsic to the group, such as the group's human and financial capital, cultural patterns of social relations, and community organization and infrastructure.

Will various racial and ethnic minorities of the twenty-first century experience the improved life chances associated with assimilation that benefited generations of white (non-Hispanic) groups during the twentieth century as the boundaries between these groups and the mainstream blurred? Or will the racial and ethnic minorities of the twenty-first century experience severely constrained opportunities and deprived circumstances similar to those that confronted many American Indians, blacks, and Hispanics throughout the twentieth century? The social, economic, and political future of the United States will be profoundly shaped by the answers to these questions.

See also: African-American Population History; Census; Chinese, Overseas; Ethnic and National Groups; Immigration Trends; Residential Segregation.

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Donald J. Hernandez