Latinos may have eclipsed non-Hispanic whites as the dominant population in Texas, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
The metrics: Texas Latinos make up 40.2% of the state’s population in 2021, while non-Hispanic Texans made up 39.4%. The estimates come from the bureau’s American Community Survey for 2021. While not as certain as a decennial census, the finding highlights a prediction that demographers have made for decades.
In the ACS estimates of July 2021, a third of the state is of Mexican origin, 1% is of Puerto Rican ancestry, followed by Cubans and then by “other Latinos,” who make up about 6%, according to the data released Thursday.
Latinos can be of any race, or a mixture of races, including white.
“The future is based on Latinos,” said Jeronimo Cortina, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “If we want the Texas economy to keep growing ... we need the human capital here ready to go. That has to be a call of action for state leaders to seriously invest not only in Latinos but in all communities.”
Cortina called for more investment in education to bring up the levels of high school and college graduation and for more investment in health care so that Latinos have better life outcomes.
Latinos tend to have a lower median age, as well, noted Cortina, who is the associate director at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston. “So it is imperative for the state to stop and think about how we’re going to invest in order to get the best outcome possible, not only for Latinos but for the state.”
And, he added, “It is not only the future of Texas. It is the future of the nation.”
While the change is small, the metric speaks volumes about a cultural and economic shift in Texas.
It’s as though the final scene in the iconic Texas Western film "Giant" of 1956 has come to real life. In the final scene, a brown-skinned child and a white-skinned child share a playpen, a clear reference to Texas’ future. Now the two populations, Anglo Texas and Latino Texas, are roughly even, with Latinos maybe taking the edge by a few hairs.
In the movie, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, one of the rancher’s grandchildren has a mother of Mexican descent and an Anglo father.
Nationally, Latinos and Latinas make up 19%, or nearly a fifth, of the U.S. population, per the 2020 census.
(Jose Luis Adriano contributed to this story.)
