ABSTRACT
The publication of figures from the 1990 United States census showed that there had been a rapid increase in persons of Hispanic and Asian birth or ancestry living in the United States. When combined with a large but relatively static African American population, these statistics helped to set off a wave of confused press speculation and “scare” stories about the country having a “non-white” majority as early as the middle of the twenty-first century. What the data actually showed was that white persons made up some four-fifths of the population, blacks about an eighth, Hispanics about an eleventh, and Asians less than a thirty-third (Table 3.1). Some of the confusion stemmed from the way in which the Census Bureau listed its figures. Many journalists and others added up all of the non-white figures to get a false total of 28.6 per cent non-white. This was a flawed calculation. All the Hispanics had already been counted in other totals: as an often ignored Census Bureau footnote cryptically reminds us, Hispanics—an amalgam that includes persons of Mexican and Central and South American heritage as well as Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and some other Caribbean peoples—had already been classified as either black or white. In addition, the 9.8 million persons who were classified as “other” were not of some strange race but persons who had either given “wrong” ethnic information—that is, not using the bureau's criteria—or had left the ancestry part of their questionnaires blank. In previous censuses, procedures for what the bureau calls “allocation and audit” have resulted in an eventual classification of more than 90 percent of such persons as white, and there is no reason to believe that the final result in this census will be any different. 1 Population of the United States by “race,” 1990 Census https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
Race
Percentage
Millions
White
80.3
ca 200.4
Black
12.1
ca 30.2
Asian/Pacific Islander
2.9
ca 7.3
American Indian Eskimo, Aleut
0.8
ca 2.0
Other
3.9
ca 9.8
[Hispanic
8.9
22.4]
Source: United States, Census, 1990 (preliminary).