奇速英语

将来的美国人口多元化

Springfield, a community in the state of Virginia, is about 24 kilometers down the road from the U.S. Capitol building. There you will find what could be the face of the next generation in America. In a word, this is the face of diversity(多样性), the face of many races and ethnic backgrounds.

Thirty languages are spoken at Crestwood Elementary School in Springfield, Virginia. With about 660 students from kindergarten to sixth grade, many are recent immigrants who came with their families, looking for a new life in America.

They came from Afghanistan and Korea, Vietnam and El Salvador, Ethiopia and Indonesia. At home, they still speak the 30 languages of the countries from which they came.

Four states, California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Texas and Washington D.C., now have minority-majority populations. That means that there are more minority people than white people. Minorities are people who identified(识别) themselves as black, Native American, Asian, and Hispanic(西班牙的).

Within the next generation, minorities will be in the majority across the United States. The U.S. will become very different than the one current people have seen in their lifetimes, says William Frey of the Brookings Institution. He says there will be many more people of color in the United States.

"Hispanics, Asians, African Americans. And it's that part of the population is going to grow rapidly, especially among people in the younger ages and that's really important because this growth of minorities is happening just in time to counter the very slow growth and rapid aging of the white population."

In just the last decade, the population has become more racially and ethnically diverse. The Census Bureau said the percentage of minorities climbed from 32.9 percent in 2004 to 37.9 percent in 2014.

With the declining white population, Mr. Frey says that the growth of the young minority population is important to keep the U.S. economy strong.