Ethnicity and Race

“The 20th century has witnessed the transformation of the United States from a predominately white population rooted in Western culture to a society with a rich array of racial and ethnic minorities.” (Pollard and O’Hare). This quote simply explains how in the 20th century, there has been a significant increase of minorities and the number is still increasing, that The America’s isn’t just about white anymore, but all the different kinds of people. “Minority” has a different meaning in the 21st century of America today. In this paper, it will simply describe the changing racial and ethnicity composition of America’s voting population, compare and contrasts the ideas of functionalists and conflicts on this, and describe how symbolic integrationists would describe this change.
The racial and ethnic makeups of the people in America are dominating national growth. “New immigrants from Asia and Latin America have added a large measure of cultural and phenotypic diversity to the American population in recent decades, just as waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe did a century ago.” (Bean and Stevens) The race and ethnic composition of America’s voting population has changed dramatically over the recent years. Minorities are Democrats’ strongest electorate, and their numbers are growing rapidly. “Overall, the share of minority voters in the national exit poll rose to 26 percent in 2008 from 23 percent in 2004.That’s a rise of 11 percentage points over 20 years, or about half a percentage point a year.” (Ruy Teixeira). As a whole, the minority groups of 2012 have increased in far more numbers than before. Since more immigrants have been making their way to the United States, they have been exercising their rights to vote. They have particularly been voting for democrats because they feel as though, they will support minority groups and are for them. America isn’t about just the white population dominating anymore; it is the rise of the minority groups,