Day: September 19, 2018

The most and least diverse states in the USA

The identity of the least diverse state is kind of a surprise to me. (I guess because I know almost nothing about this state.) I would have guessed New Hampshire, Vermont or Maine to be the least diverse. They are all in the running, to be sure, but not the very least.

Interesting note from the comments section:

By one measure, the most diverse neighborhood in the USA is the Mountain View section of Anchorage, AK. It’s a hodgepodge of Whites, Filipinos, Native Alaskans, resettled Sudanese refugees and Anchorage’s Little Samoa district. (Samoans like moving to Alaska. No, I don’t know why.)

Scoop’s comment:

I lived in the northern suburbs of Austin, Texas, and played volleyball every day near my house. I was the only white person in the group of 30-40 people. The others were Mexicans, South Americans, Vietnamese, a couple other Asians, one Native American, and various dark-skinned people of assorted origins (African-Americans and people from the Caribbean). Of course, those people were all in their 20s and I was the only old fart in the group. The older people I knew were all white. That contrast is an exaggerated microcosm of America.

In 1960, America was 85% non-Hispanic white. As of now, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites is about 60-62%. The implication there is that old America and young America are quite different. The percentage of non-Hispanic whites among Americans less than 18 years old is hovering around 50 and declining steadily, but the group aged 60 or more is still more than 80% white, reflecting the demographics of the era when they were born. The new diversity scares a lot of older people, as change always does.

It was the New America that elected Barack Obama. Some pundits have pointed to Obama’s election as a sign of greatly diminished racism in the USA, but that’s a conclusion drawn from a superficial view of the stats. If white people had their way, Obama would have lost re-election in a landslide. Whites voted for Romney 59-39. Obama won because non-whites voted for him by the astounding margin of 83-17. Back in the old days that massive white margin would have been enough to steamroll over even that vast surge of non-white support for Obama. The way the math works out, Romney would have won if whites had comprised 77% of the voters. Unfortunately for him, whites were only 72% of the voters. But here’s the shocking deal: as recently as 2004, when Dubya won re-election, whites WERE 77% of the voters. If the ethnic composition of 2004 had held steady until 2012, Obama would not have been re-elected, and President Romney would have been running for a second term in 2016. There would have been no President Trump. America’s changing demographics mean that political power has been altered rapidly, just in those 8 years from 2004 to 2012, and we have already seen the impact of that.

As I noted above, any change frightens people. Rapid change terrifies them.

FYI, Obama also lost the white vote in 2008, and he lost convincingly (55-43), albeit not as dramatically as in 2012.