Area Soon to Be Mostly Minority

Shift in 4-8 Years Will Reshape Politics, Priorities, Experts Say

"You get looks sometimes, but it doesn't bother me," Tinisha Weigelt says of her interracial marriage. She and husband Matthew met on Capitol Hill. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)

The minority population in the Washington region will become the majority in well under a decade, a benchmark of the racial and ethnic change that is reconfiguring the area's political, economic and social identity.

Among residents younger than 40, minorities already outnumber whites, and experts say the trends that have driven up those numbers are certain to continue.

When it hits the majority-minority threshold, the Washington region will join a handful of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, among them Miami, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The New York City region will soon be among them.

Washington will cross the threshold in four to eight years, according to various forecasts.

The continuing demographic shift will inevitably affect everything from voting patterns to the products on grocery store shelves. History shows that as groups mix, more people marry across racial and ethnic lines.

Some experts say this will cause racial divisions to fade. Others predict that the changing demographics will ignite turf battles and wonder whether institutions built to serve mainly white populations will be able to adapt.

Demographers say the change is sure to happen because it is driven by long-running, even accelerating, trends. The area's racial and ethnic minorities, who make up 47 percent of the population, are more likely to be in their young childbearing years than whites. They have larger families, especially if they are immigrants. And although whites continue to move to this region, Asians, blacks, Hispanics and other minorities are arriving in greater numbers.

Based on current trends, Brookings Institution demographer William H. Frey predicts that the region will become majority-minority in 2010. Claritas, a market research firm, puts the date at 2011. Woods & Poole Economics Inc., which forecasts demographic and economic trends, predicts 2014. All rely heavily on Census Bureau estimates on race and ethnicity for the metropolitan area defined by the federal government, which stretches from West Virginia to Southern Maryland.

In 2004, non-Hispanic whites made up just over half -- 53 percent -- of the region's population, according to the most recent census figures. Some embassy officials and community groups say that figure could be even lower because census estimates substantially undercount minorities.

For example, Salvadoran Ambassador Rene A. Leon estimated that 500,000 Salvadorans live in the area, while census estimates and surveys put the number at 125,000. And the Guatemalan Embassy said as many as 100,000 Guatemalans may be here, while census data suggest 40,000.

The region has experienced an explosion of immigrant entrepreneurship, more weekend culture classes for Chinese American children and a tripling since 2000 in the number of people who listen to Spanish-language radio stations.

"Schools, young adult clubs, politics and the dating scene in D.C. will be increasingly multiethnic, creating a sharp contrast with the old, white establishment and the black-dominated minority population of the past," Frey said.