The Changing Face of America

The Yakima Valley, in central Washington State, has so many apple, pear, and cherry farms that it’s known as the nation’s fruit basket. It’s home to more than 100 sprawling vineyards. The majestic peak of Mount Rainier rises over the lush fields and thriving orchards. In many ways, it’s a picture-perfect American landscape.

But this community of nearly 94,000 people is quintessentially American in another, more surprising way: The number of Latinos here has doubled in just one generation, now making up almost half the total population.

Robert Ortiz, 17, has lived that transformation. “There are a lot more events and opportunities for Latinos in Yakima,” says Ortiz, a senior at Yakima’s Eisenhower High School, where he’s student body president. Even in just the past few years, he’s seen a big change.

“I notice Spanish being spoken a lot more compared to my freshman year,” says Ortiz, whose parents came to Yakima from Mexico about 30 years ago. “People are getting a lot more comfortable.”

The changes in this farming valley mirror demographic trends in many U.S. cities and counties where the population is becoming increasingly more diverse. In the past two decades, 109 counties in 22 different states, from California to Kansas to North Carolina, went from majority white to having populations in which people of color make up the majority, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center.

The Yakima Valley is in central Washington State. It boasts many apple, pear, and cherry farms. That’s why the area is known as the nation’s fruit basket. It’s home to more than 100 sprawling vineyards. The majestic peak of Mount Rainier rises over the lush fields and thriving orchards. In many ways, it’s a picture-perfect American landscape.

Yakima embodies another American trend: The number of Latinos here has doubled in just one generation. Nearly 94,000 people live in the community. Latinos now make up almost half of its total population.

Robert Ortiz, 17, has lived that transformation. “There are a lot more events and opportunities for Latinos in Yakima,” says Ortiz, a senior at Yakima’s Eisenhower High School, where he’s student body president. Even in just the past few years, he’s seen a big change.

“I notice Spanish being spoken a lot more compared to my freshman year,” says Ortiz, whose parents came to Yakima from Mexico about 30 years ago. “People are getting a lot more comfortable.”

The changes in this farming valley mirror demographic trends in many U.S. cities and counties where the population is becoming increasingly more diverse.

In the past two decades, 109 counties in the U.S. went from majority white to having populations in which people of color make up the majority, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. And those shifts have occurred in 22 different states, from California to Kansas to North Carolina.

America is becoming more diverse, and according to recently released 2018 data from the Census Bureau, that diversity is increasingly spreading out across the country and touching a much wider swath of Americans.

“There’s no question that the U.S. is growing more racially and ethnically diverse,” says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. “And there’s going to be a really rapid increase in diversity over the next couple of generations.”

The Census Bureau has projected that white people could make up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population by about 2045. Already, people of color make up the majority of the population in five states, plus Washington, D.C. The same is true in many major U.S. cities, including New York, Las Vegas, and Memphis. But unlike in decades past, people of color are no longer concentrated in major urban centers: They now outnumber white people in 372 of the country’s more than 3,000 counties.

Narrowing the picture to only the youngest Americans, people of color already comprise a majority in the U.S.: A recent Brookings Institution analysis of 2018 census data shows that among Americans under age 15, white people now make up just under 50 percent.

America is becoming more diverse. And that diversity is increasingly spreading out across the country and touching a much wider group of Americans, according to recently released 2018 data from the Census Bureau.

“There’s no question that the U.S. is growing more racially and ethnically diverse,” says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. “And there’s going to be a really rapid increase in diversity over the next couple of generations.”

The Census Bureau has projected that white people could make up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population by about 2045. Already, people of color make up the majority of the population in five states, plus Washington, D.C. The same is true in many major U.S. cities, including New York, Las Vegas, and Memphis. But unlike in decades past, people of color are no longer concentrated in major urban centers. They now outnumber white people in 372 of the country’s more than 3,000 counties.

Narrowing the picture to only the youngest Americans, people of color already make up a majority in the U.S. A recent Brookings Institution analysis of 2018 census data shows that among Americans under age 15, white people now make up just under 50 percent.

The shift is monumental for a nation that was founded by white English-speaking Europeans and has long wrestled with issues of race and ethnicity and engaged in highly charged debates over immigration. It also has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life, and its identity.

“This is an important tipping point,” says William Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He describes the change as a “transformation from a mostly white baby-boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Several factors have contributed to the shift. First, in the past four decades, immigration to the U.S. has been highest from countries like Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines—a result of the 1965 Immigration Act, which opened the doors more widely to immigrants from countries outside Europe. Second, people of color have higher birth rates than white people. And finally, the white population in the U.S. is getting older, and older people tend to have fewer children.

Social changes are also driving the shift. The number of mixed-race marriages—and, as a result, mixed-race children—is on the rise: Multiracial and multiethnic Americans are among the fastest-growing demographic groups in the U.S., with more than 11 million people identifying as mixed race in 2018, a 65 percent increase from 2000.

No country in the world has ever experienced such a quick and dramatic racial and ethnic change. So it’s still unclear what it will mean for people of color to become the majority in a nation with a large generational divide—a younger generation that’s racially and ethnically diverse and an older generation that’s still largely white (see graphs, below).

The U.S. was founded by white English-speaking Europeans. The nation has long wrestled with issues of race and ethnicity and engaged in highly charged debates over immigration. So this shift is game-changing. It also has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life, and its identity.

“This is an important tipping point,” says William Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He describes the change as a “transformation from a mostly white baby-boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Several factors have contributed to the shift. First, in the past four decades, immigration to the U.S. has been highest from countries like Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines. This has been a by-product of the 1965 Immigration Act. The law opened the doors more widely to immigrants from countries outside Europe. Second, people of color have higher birth rates than white people. And finally, the white population in the U.S. is getting older, and older people tend to have fewer children.

Social changes are also driving the shift. The number of mixed-race marriages is on the rise. As a result, so is the number of mixed-race children. In fact, multiracial and multiethnic Americans are among America’s fastest-growing demographic groups. More than 11 million people in the U.S. identified as mixed race in 2018, a 65 percent increase from 2000.

No country in the world has ever experienced such a quick and dramatic racial and ethnic change. Right now, the U.S. has a younger generation that’s racially and ethnically diverse and an older generation that’s still largely white. It’s still unclear what it will mean for people of color to become the majority in a nation with a large generational divide (see graphs, below).

One can see the social upheaval that accompanies this kind of demographic shift in Yakima. The Yakima Valley produces so much fruit that farmers have long had trouble finding enough workers to harvest it all. The work is delicate and difficult—most fruit must be picked by hand.

Starting in the 1940s, farmers found a willing workforce in people from Mexico, who began arriving in large numbers to fill wartime labor shortages. In the following decades, many more Mexicans came to escape unemployment and economic hardship at home. Initially, many came to Yakima on temporary work visas and returned home after the harvest.

As farms expanded and refrigerated warehousing created year-round jobs, some Mexican workers stayed illegally. In 1986, many participated in President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program offering the chance for citizenship. Their families grew and became part of the community, while workers from Mexico and Central America kept coming.

And that began to change the face of Yakima. Latino children began populating Yakima classrooms, some arriving with little or no English. In 1999, Yakima’s Eisenhower High School listed its student body as 23 percent Latino and 70 percent white. Today, those numbers are essentially flipped: Eisenhower’s student population is 73 percent Latino and 23 percent white.

“I think overall in the school, the change is very evident,” says Ortiz, the Eisenhower High student. “More people are speaking Spanish. We have clubs that are Hispanic based. We do events for Hispanics. And at assemblies, we do a lot more translating into Spanish.”

Dulce Gutiérrez was born in Yakima and grew up there. The daughter of migrant farm workers, she started school speaking little English. After high school, she got a degree from the University of Washington. In 2015, at age 26, she became the first Mexican American to be elected to Yakima’s city council.

When Gutiérrez was campaigning for office, she had an ugly experience that captures the tensions many older white residents of Yakima feel about their city’s changing demographics. She was speaking in Spanish to a group of students who’d volunteered to hand out leaflets in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood when she heard a white woman on her porch across the street yell out, “Go back to Mexico!”

One can see the major social changes that come with this kind of demographic shift in Yakima. The Yakima Valley produces so much fruit that farmers have long had trouble finding enough workers to harvest it all. The work is delicate and difficult. That’s because most fruit must be picked by hand.

Starting in the 1940s, farmers found a willing workforce in people from Mexico. Mexican workers began arriving in large numbers to fill wartime labor shortages. In the following decades, many more Mexicans came. They were looking to escape unemployment and economic hardship at home. Initially, many came to Yakima on temporary work visas and returned home after the harvest.

Farms expanded and refrigerated warehousing created year-round jobs. That led some Mexican workers to remain in the U.S. illegally. In 1986, many of them participated in President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program. It offered them the chance to become citizens. Their families grew and became part of the community. And workers from Mexico and Central America kept coming.

And that began to change the face of Yakima. Latino children began entering Yakima classrooms, some arriving with little or no English. In 1999, Yakima’s Eisenhower High School listed its student body as 23 percent Latino and 70 percent white. Today, those numbers are basically flipped: Eisenhower’s student population is 73 percent Latino and 23 percent white.

“I think overall in the school, the change is very evident,” says Ortiz, the Eisenhower High student. “More people are speaking Spanish. We have clubs that are Hispanic based. We do events for Hispanics. And at assemblies, we do a lot more translating into Spanish.”

Dulce Gutiérrez was born in Yakima and grew up there. The daughter of migrant farm workers, she started school speaking little English. After high school, she got a degree from the University of Washington. In 2015, at age 26, she became the first Mexican American to be elected to Yakima’s city council.

When Gutiérrez was campaigning for office, she had an ugly experience. She was speaking in Spanish to a group of students. The young volunteers were preparing to hand out leaflets in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. A white woman on her porch across the street yelled out, “Go back to Mexico!” This moment captures the tensions many older white residents of Yakima feel about their city’s changing demographics.

Today, new immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and other regions take jobs in fields as diverse as farming, healthcare, and high tech. Indeed, immigrants have always played a key role in the nation’s growth: From Scottish immigrant Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone in the 19th century, to Russian immigrant Sergey Brin, who cofounded Google in 1998.

Still, the racial and ethnic diversity that new immigrants bring can be uncomfortable for people in parts of the country that have seen this demographic change only recently, says Mather of the Population Reference Bureau.

“It’s more in areas that haven’t seen much diversity in the past,” Mather says, “where there’s this culture shock and concern about the changes that are taking place and what that might mean for our identity, our culture, and our economy.”

In some ways, these issues are as old as the nation itself. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin feared that his fellow Pennsylvanians—largely of British stock—would be overwhelmed by Germans, who “will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in my opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

Today, new immigrants arrive from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and other regions. They take jobs in fields as diverse as farming, health care, and high tech. Immigrants have always played a key role in the nation’s growth: from Scottish immigrant Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone in the 19th century, to Russian immigrant Sergey Brin, who cofounded Google in 1998.

New immigrants bring racial and ethnic diversity. But that can be uncomfortable for people in parts of the country that have seen this demographic change only recently, says Mather of the Population Reference Bureau.

“It’s more in areas that haven’t seen much diversity in the past,” Mather says, “where there’s this culture shock and concern about the changes that are taking place and what that might mean for our identity, our culture, and our economy.”

In some ways, these issues are as old as the nation itself. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin objected to more German immigrants in Pennsylvania. Most of the state’s residents were of British ancestry. Franklin feared that his fellow Pennsylvanians would be overwhelmed by Germans. He wrote that they “will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in my opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

And in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a solidly Protestant U.S. was wary of the influx of Catholics and Jews. Indeed, the Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans who arrived in droves weren’t universally considered white at the time.

So who will consider themselves Latino, Black, Asian, or white later this century? With the upward trend in interethnic and interracial marriages, ethnic and racial definitions may be different in 20 or 30 years.

“We’re headed in a direction where I think the categories that we use today to classify people will become less meaningful,” Mather says, “because we’re going to become so much of a melting pot.”

And in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. was solidly Protestant. During that time, Americans were wary of the influx of Catholics and Jews. In fact, the waves of Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants weren’t always considered white at the time.

So who will consider themselves Latino, Black, Asian, or white later this century? With the upward trend in interethnic and interracial marriages, ethnic and racial definitions may be different in 20 or 30 years.

“We’re headed in a direction where I think the categories that we use today to classify people will become less meaningful,” Mather says, “because we’re going to become so much of a melting pot.”