Orange County’s Ethnic Mix
* Your Dec. 18 headline “O.C. in 2040: Near-Majority Latinos, Far Fewer Whites” simplifies complex demographic realities.
With very high intermarriage rates among all ethnic groups, the neat divisions among them--so loved by journalists, politicians and academics--will be totally blurred in 40 years.
By that time, so many Orange County residents will be so mixed ethnically that new categories will have to be invented--or dropped altogether.
Even now, the division between “white” and “Latino” is problematic. Ethnically, most Latinos are all or part European, and the vast majority of U.S.-born Hispanics speak English as a first language.
This is also true among Asians, where mixed-marriage rates are rising even faster. Why saddle tomorow’s children with the increasingly irrelevant labels of today?
Rather than trumpet future ethnic divisions, we should hail the day when these differences are increasingly meaningless.
CHRIS NORBY
Fullerton City Councilman
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