By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Don't look now, but Texas is turning blue.
Not today, to be sure, nor tomorrow. But to read the newly released census data on the Lone Star State is to understand that Texas, the linchpin of any Republican electoral college majority, is turning Latino and, unless the Republicans change their spots, Democratic.
Figures released last month by the Census Bureau show that during the past decade, Texas joined California as a majority-minority state: The percentage of whites in the Texas population declined from 52 percent in 2000 to 45 percent in 2010, while the percentage of Latinos rose from 32 percent to 38 percent. Nearly half of all Texans under 18 - 48 percent - are Latino.
Texas is hardly alone in this epochal demographic shift. In the first four states for which the Census Bureau released detailed information - New Jersey, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia - the number of whites under age 18 actually declined in the past decade. The numbers of Latinos and Asians among the young, by contrast, are soaring, and they are highest among the youngest.
Nationally, whites are now a minority - 49.9 percent - of Americans age 3 and under. In eight states and the District, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution's William Frey, minorities comprise the majority in pre-K and kindergarten. Looking at all school enrollment, from pre-K through graduate school, Frey told the New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise, whites were 58.8 percent of all students in 2009, down from 64.6 percent in 2000 ...
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