
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 11, 1991                   TAG: 9103110328
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CENSUS CITES DRAMATIC CHANGE IN RACIAL, ETHNIC MIX

The racial and ethnic complexion of the American population changed more dramatically in the past decade than at any time in the 20th century, with nearly one in every four Americans having African, Asian, Hispanic or American Indian ancestry. In 1980, one in five Americans had such a minority background.

In the field of population statistics, where change sometimes seems glacially slow, the speed at which the country's racial and ethnic mix was altered in the 1980s was breathtaking, Census Bureau figures show.

The rate of increase in the minority population was nearly twice as fast as in the 1970s. And much of the surge was among those of Hispanic ancestry, an increase of 7.7 million people or 53 percent, over 1980.

"About half the Hispanic increase is due to immigration," said Jorge del Pinal, the bureau's chief of ethnic and Hispanic statistics. "But there would have been a tremendous growth even in the absence of any immigration."

The increase was also a result of high birth rates among Hispanic people, the legalization of many new Hispanic citizens and the counting of illegal residents.

With the wave of immigration from Latin America, and separate influxes from the Philippines, China, India and Southeast Asia, the total number of minority residents rose to almost 60 million.

The exact figure will not be known until the people who identified themselves as "other race" are statistically allocated among the four categories recognized for census purposes: white, black, Asian or Native American.

Whites now make up 80.3 percent of the nation's resident population. This group includes the vast majority of Hispanic residents, who can be of any race.

Whites of European or Middle Eastern backgrounds make up slightly less than 76 percent of the resident population of 248.7 million people.

"This is the dawning of the first universal nation," said Ben Wattenberg, an author and demographer. "It's going to cause some turmoil, but on balance it's an incredibly poetic fact."

The predominant racial group still traces its roots to Europe.

"If you believe that the descendant of an English lord and a descendant of a Polish shtetl are part of the same group, then that group is going to continue in the majority for a long time to come," said Wattenberg.

"Still, there's a big difference between being a 90 percent majority, a 70 percent majority or a 55 percent majority."

by CNB