Young Americans more diverse than older generations

White supremacists, already spooked by a demographic future where they are not in the majority, probably won't like this bit of news from the Census.

For the first time, people of color were a majority of people under age 16 in 2019, a sign that for this generation, the future is already here. The demographic shift is expected to grow over the coming decades, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.

“We are browning from bottom up in our age structure,” William Frey, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press. “This is going to be a diversified century for the United States, and it’s beginning with this youngest generation.”

It's not a new trend but the numbers mark a turning point that demographers have been predicting for decades. In 25 years, when today's young people, Gen Z and Gen Z+, will be 26 to 51 years old, the white population in the U.S. will no longer be in the majority but will still be the largest ethnic group in the nation. 

As the white population has gotten smaller, the ranks of people of color, swollen by immigrants from Asia and Latin America, is getting larger.

Of the racial groups, Asians had the biggest growth since the last Census in 2010. The Asian population has grown almost 30%, spurred by migration from Asia. India and China are the biggest contributors to the immigration rate.

Hopefully, younger generations having grown up in a  society in which diversity is a common thing in everyday life, will have a better handle on how to treat race than the generations that preceded them.