United Satates of Hispanica

[Gob]

This year's US census is expected to confirm that Hispanics are now the largest minority in the country, thanks to rapid growth since the last census 10 years ago.

It's a headline that underlines their influence on the US society of the future.

Hispanics, or Latinos, are responsible for about half of US population growth since 2000. In three states with high Latino populations, whites are already a minority and it's widely predicted they will be a minority in the overall population by mid-century.

No wonder some commentators are concerned by what they see as the relative failure of Latinos to assimilate into US society.

But the picture inside the US melting pot is changing, as generations change.

The growth of the Latino population has been fuelled largely by the rise of a new second generation - the US-born children of a vast immigration tide from Mexico, Central and South America that started in the 1970s.

These children - who now make up half of the overall Latino population - have quite different prospects in life than their parents did, experts say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/latin_ ... 208781.stm

[loCAtek]

Well yea, I knew that.

[dales]

Assimilation?

Let me smoke the peace pipe with some of the Miwoks

[loCAtek]

[rubato]

Why are people so hysterical about this kind of thing?

yrs,
rubato

[loCAtek]

Because some were still buying into the myth that the USA was a country of white people?

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think there was a time in history when African Americans were the largest population of people in the country ...that they didn't have rights as citizens on the census was a kinda sneaky way of not counting them.