Area Soon to Be Mostly Minority

There also are tensions, including policy battles over how to respond to day laborers and multigenerational immigrant families crowding into small homes.

Yet the strains have been less acute than in other areas, experts say, because so many minorities here are well-off and integrated into the middle class.

The region is home to a substantial number of affluent blacks, as well as many Asians and Hispanics with college educations and high incomes. According to Scarborough Research, 45 percent of minority households in the Washington region make at least $75,000 a year, the highest figure for any metropolitan area. Among non-Hispanic white households, 59 percent earn at least that much.

Although the changes have prompted demand for government services and a growing market for ethnic products, many believe political change will be slower.

"We only are relevant the day of the election, and then we are forgotten for the next four years," said Jorge Ribas, a Montgomery County civic leader. He hosts a weekly talk show on a Spanish radio station, and his callers tell him that "many Hispanics feel their elected officials are worth nothing."

Political representation has lagged behind demographics elsewhere, too: Minorities made up more than half of New York City's population in the 1980s, but they did not become a majority of voters until this decade. Many immigrants are not citizens, and minorities who are young and poor are less likely to vote than older, more affluent whites.

Some predict that, down the road, younger minority residents who want more spending on schools may be pitted against older white residents who demand more services for senior citizens. Others suggest that prosperity may stave off tensions.

"If Fairfax County government can continue to expand, the likelihood of conflict is minimal," George Mason University political scientist Toni-Michelle Travis said, a statement that could apply to other well-off counties. "If money is tight, then conflict will arise among the groups."

Whether or not the majority-minority change brings conflict, it is likely to result in families blended ethnically and racially.

Matt and Tinisha Weigelt, a mixed-race couple living in Alexandria, said their diverse group of friends is one of the things they enjoy about the area. Both 28, each moved here to work on Capitol Hill, where they struck up a conversation in a hallway one day. Now they are married and expecting their first child.

He said he is "just plain white," from Minnesota. She is biracial, from Tennessee. They attend a multicultural church in Sterling where he said he has learned to sway in the choir. Born only a decade after the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage in Virginia, they said a few people still give them a second glance.

"What's he doing with her?" Matt Weigelt recalled a man in a group of black Shriners saying as the couple walked with his parents in downtown Washington. He said he laughed it off, but his mother and father were disconcerted.

"I enjoy it here," Tinisha Weigelt said. "You get looks sometimes, but it doesn't bother me. Most people are kind of mixed anyway, even if they don't know it."

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, noted that half of the grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants marry someone who is not Hispanic. Intermarriage rates also are high for some Asian groups, though lower among blacks, the area's largest minority group. As mixed couples such as the Weigelts grow in number, Pachon said, racial boundaries could blur.

"My personal perspective on that is 'white' is going to get darker over the coming decade," he said. "People will legitimately call themselves white, but they may be a shade darker, a cafe au lait sort of look."

Staff researcher David Barie contributed to this report.