USA—A
Multicultural Society, a Mission Field
Dr. Roberto Hodgson, Mission Director
for Hispanic Ministries
In recent decades,
the U.S. and Canada has become a fertile
multicultural mission field. According
to Census Bureau estimates released
in March, the U.S. foreign-born population
has reached a record high of 32.5 million
foreign-born residents, 2 percent more
than the 31.8 million recorded a year
ago.
In a population of 282.1 million, the
foreign born amounted to 11.5 percent.
The growth rate tripled between March
2000 and 2001. Nearly 17 million people,
or just over half of the foreign-born
population in 2002, came from Latin
America. Over half of the 17 million
arrived after 1990. About 2.4 million
people arrived in the country in 2001
according to demographer William Frey.
Joel Kotkin and Thomas Tseng in Happy
To Mix It All Up write the following:
“Today's young Americans represent the
most multiracial group in modern American
history. According to Census 2000, 40
percent of people under the age of 25—"echo
boomers" and younger—belong to some
race or ethnic category other than "non-Hispanic
white." Overall, during the 1990s, immigrants
and their children were responsible
for a remarkable 70 percent of total
U.S. population growth.
The kind of culture these new Americans
are shaping is most evident in cities
such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Miami and Houston—where immigrants,
and, more importantly, their offspring,
are molding street-side realities. Roughly
30 percent of second-generation Latinos
and Asians now wed people from outside
their own racial groups. Mixed-race
births in California have grown from
40,000 in 1980 to more than 70,000 annually;
one out of every seven babies born in
the Golden State in 1997 had parents
of different races. This unprecedented
mixing alone guarantees the development
of an increasingly blended culture,
not only for Latinos and Asians in particular,
but for young Americans as a whole.
The post-ethnic reality is also expressed
in how people of different ethnicities
increasingly live and, yes, shop in
America. A generation ago, Americans
were warned about becoming a country
bifurcated between inner-city minorities
and suburban whites. But this is no
longer a danger. Today, nearly 51 percent
of Asians, 43 percent of Latinos, and
32 percent of African Americans live
in the suburbs. The immediate suburbs
around Denver, for example, experienced
a 50 percent increase in their Latino
populations during the 1990s.”
(c) 2008 Apostolos Missions, Inc. All rights reserved
