Census: A New Face of America
The nation ended the first decade of the 21st century much the same way it did a century ago: as a strikingly more diverse and less rural nation. The number of Hispanics surpassed the 50 million mark, growing 43% and accounting for more than half the national growth since 2000, according to the Census Bureau's first release of detailed 2010 national data.
By contrast, the non-Hispanic population grew 5%. Hispanics now make up 16% of the USA's 308.7 million people. For the first time, they increased faster than blacks and whites in the South. Hispanics doubled in South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.
"Not since the 1910 Census, when you saw waves of Eastern Europeans transform America...has such a change happened," says Robert Lang, urban sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "2010 brings the next step in the American story. This is the transformation of the U.S. into a post-European-dominated society."Read more...