EXPERT REPORT OF THOMAS J. SUGRUE
Gratz, et al. v. Bollinger, et al., No. 97-75321 (E.D. Mich.)
Grutter, et al. v. Bollinger, et al., No. 97-75928 (E.D. Mich.)
VI. RACIAL PATTERNS IN THE UNITED STATES
Demographic patterns in the United States have changed significantly over the last half century. Fifty years ago, a majority of African Americans lived in rural areas and in the south. Today, most live in urban areas and a majority live outside the south. At mid-century, the United States had few new immigrants. Most were of European descent, either family members of immigrants already established here or refugees from war-ravaged countries. Asian immigration had been restricted since the late nineteenth century; Central and South American immigration consisted primarily of temporary and seasonal workers. Today, the flow of immigrants to the United States is large, a consequence of the reform of immigration laws beginning in the mid-1960s. The face of the new immigration is non-European and non-white.
At the turn of a new century, the population of the United States is remarkably diverse (Table 1). The proportion of the population classified as white is shrinking and the proportion of non-white groups is growing.
Today, the largest non-white population in the United States is of African descent; 12.6 percent of the nation's population is black. The African American population of the United States has grown primarily because of natural increase, but also because of immigration, primarily from the Caribbean and Africa. Particularly striking has been the growth of the nation's Hispanic population, a category that includes Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico, as well as the descendants of Mexicans whose land was annexed to the United States in the nineteenth century. Today, 10.7 percent of the nation's population is Hispanic. The United States Bureau of the Census predicts that the nation's Hispanic population will soon exceed the African American population. The number of Americans of Hispanic descent is growing rapidly because of immigration and relatively high birth rates. The new immigration has also dramatically increased the number of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, a group now comprising 3.7 percent of the U.S. population. The American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut population of the United States is small, but has grown somewhat as the stigma of Indian descent has shrunk and as the native population has begun to repopulate after centuries of depopulation by war and disease.[*Note on terminology: The United States Bureau of the Census currently uses the terms white, black, American Indian/Eskimo/Aleut, and Hispanic. Hispanics may be of any race. I will follow customary practice and use the terms black and African American interchangeably. I will use the term American Indian as shorthand for American Indian/Eskimo/Aleut.]
The aggregate population of the United States is increasingly diverse, but the nation's
minority groups are concentrated in certain regions and, in some cases, certain states. Blacks live disproportionately in the former slave states of the south and in northeastern and midwestern cities where they settled in large numbers as migrants over the course of the twentieth century. The Hispanic population is heavily concentrated in just a few states. Nearly three quarters of the nation's Hispanic population lives in just five states: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. More than half of the nation's Hispanic population lives in California and Texas. (2) American Indians are scattered throughout the country in small numbers, but are heavily concentrated in a few states, most in the west, with large Indian reservations. Half of the nation's American Indian population lives west of the Mississippi River. Nearly three-fifths of the Native American population lives in just eight states: Alaska, Arizona, California, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. (3)
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