into the melting pot (with a grain of salt?)

‘minority’ majority + bare majority only English

Crain’s New York Business had an on-line link yesterday to some "City Facts" that are intersting but that made me wonder if I needed salt with those (fries). (Their visuals are more … well, visual than my text will be….)

Crain’s Fact #1: in 2006, the racial/ethnic (not the same things, but oh well … that’s what the Census Bureau does too) background of the 8,214,426 estimated residents of New York City were (1) "White" 34.5%, (2) Hispanic/Latino 27.9%, (3) Black/African American 23.8%, and (4) Asian 11.5%. In other words, we are (and have been for a while) a city in which the so-called "majority" is a minority of the population. While 1.3% is reported as "other", 0.9% is reported as "two or more races", which I found to be surprisingly low.

Unfortunately, I can’t click to a source for these data from Crain’s, so I don’t know how reliable the data are.

Some salt: I went to the US Census Bureau web page, here, where I easily found information from 2000 (if they have updated ethnic/race data I did not dig for it). If the search page holds, you will see that in 2000 the White proportion was reported as 44.7% of the City’s population, with Hispanic/Latino as 27%, Black as 26.6%, and Asian as 9.8%. So, way back then us white folk were an overall minority, but not nearly as dramatically as claimed by Crain’s for 2006.

Could the mix have changed so much in 6 years? (Note that the Census estimates the 2006 population as the figure that Crain’s uses, 8,214,426, which is only a 2.6% overall increase — hardly enough to swing the ratios even if all the 2.6% were non-white.) And note that the Black/AA and Asian proportions are lower in the Crain’s 2006 numbers than in the Census Bureau’s 2000 numbers. So, use the salt here….

Crain’s Fact #2:  in 2006, out of a total of 7,637,820 people of the age of 5 or older (funny way to count, but, whatever) in the City, (only) 3,981,767 speak only English at home (which is 52.1% — a bare majority), while 1,883,804 (also?) speak Spanish, 381,506 (also?) speak Chinese, 193,563 (also?) speak Russian, and 174,140 (also?) speak French (including Creole and other derivatives). 

The remainder is a rather large number of ‘other’ New Yorkers — some 600,000+ folks aged 5 or older who may speak English at home but also (or exclusively) speak a language other than Spanish, Chinese, Russian or French.

Did you notice how the French and Russian language speakers seem to have been reversed (or something) in the Crain’s chart? Perhaps the Russian speakers were counted with a surge at the end, that upset their sequencing?? 😉 

Note to self: check other cities in the 2000 Census Bureau data to see how relatively diverse our NYC melting pot is.