CENTRAL TEXAS — What ethnic group grew the fastest in the latest U.S. Census numbers? The answer may shock you.
"I'm half Mexican... well half Hispanic, because I'm one-quarter Mexican one-quarter Spanish, and half Japanese and completely confused," said Michael Ramirez, Las Vegas Review-Journal and syndicated editorial cartoonist.
Confusion didn't stop Ramirez from becoming one of the most celebrated journalists in a generation.
Ramirez personifies the fastest-growing demographic group in America, a group the U.S. Census describes as, multi-racial.
"Just look at the number of the population increase access, of the people of two or more races," said Dr. Dudley Poston, of Texas A&M University. "That was a bigger increase than the Black population."
In 2010, African-Americans made up just over 12 percent of the U.S. population, at 41 million. Showing an almost 89 percent increase in 2020.
Those of two or more races zoomed from 9 million to almost 34 million, an increase of 276 percent.
And you can see it from coast to coast. In fact, Ramirez shares that same multicultural distinction with Christopher Cano of Beeville, Texas.
"We have Nigerian, we have German, we have Basque, Muslim, [and] my mother's side has Aztec," said Cano. "And we also have Spanish. We also have Sephardic Spanish, Sephardic Jewish Spanish. I recently had reconverted back to Judaism."
But having a similar background in no way makes these two men the same as Ramirez will tell you.
"I've got two brothers and two sisters, and they're all doctors and their spouses are doctors, I'm the loser in the family you know I'm a journalist," he said.
"We are five independently different people with the same ethnicity, but we couldn't be five more different people," he added.
In Texas, we keep bringing more of those different people together.
"Our country, even the state of Texas, has always had a lot of diversity in it. Houston especially has been a very diverse city," said Cano.
"Houston is probably the most diverse city in the entire country," said Poston.
How does the future look? By 2030 we’ll see yet another significant demographic shift.
By then all baby boomers will have turned 65, expanding that group to the point that one in every five Americans will have reached retirement age.
Later that decade, by 2034, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history.
And those children may look different too.
"Between 2010 and 2020 Texas lost more white youth and than they gained. The youth population's mainly non-white," said Poston.
Ramirez doesn't seem too worried about that, though he does acknowledge a "harder edge" most young people seem to have.
Ramirez said America's founding fathers created a field where anyone can succeed if they take into account the good of all.
"There is no limitation if you dedicate yourself to a cause, and you work hard to achieve that goal. And I don't believe that anybody in any ethnicity, cannot achieve whatever they dream to do if they work hard enough at it and I think that's the thing that my father taught me because his father beforehand, told him that."
A man who brought his family here from Mexico and saw that family grow into 4 doctors and a journalist with a long list of national honors. All of whom symbolize America's growing diversity.
