Asians are now largest group in these two Bay Area counties, new data shows

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Asians, the fastest growing racial group in the United States, now make up the largest share of Alameda County’s population, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The latest census numbers on race and ethnicity, released Thursday, highlight the Bay Area’s increasingly diverse population. In Santa Clara County, one of the first minority-majority counties in the nation, Asians have been the largest racial group since 2014.

The change in Alameda County has been unfolding slowly for years. The county’s Asian population increased almost 32 percent since 2010. Last year, it reached 518,400, according to the census, just slightly ahead of the white population at 518,000.

In San Mateo, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties, white residents make up the largest share of the population. Asians make up the second largest share in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, while Hispanics rank second in Contra Costa, the data showed.

Samir Gambhir, a program manager with the Haas Institute who co-authored a 2018 report on segregation in the Bay Area, said in an email that the Asian population in the nine-county region has been growing rapidly for decades.

“The plurality of Asians within the region is not surprising given the trajectory of rate of growth of this racial group,” Gambhir said. Between 1980 and 2010, he said, the Asian population in the Bay Area increased 300 percent.

Nationwide, the Asian population increased 27.7 percent from 2010 to 2018, making it the fastest growing racial group, the census reported. The nation’s population of white residents increased 0.1 percent. Asians make up less than 6 percent of the U.S. population compared to Hispanics at 18 percent and blacks at 12.5 percent.

In Santa Clara County, Asians make up nearly 38 percent of the population. In Alameda County, Asians make up about 31 percent of the population, just barely ahead of the share of white residents. Alameda County also has the largest share of black residents in the five-county Bay Area at 10.3 percent.

Asian is a broad census category that includes U.S, and foreign-born residents from vastly different origins, including India, China, Vietnam and Pakistan.

Despite the Bay Area’s diversity, few neighborhoods and cities match the region’s population distribution, according to the analysis by the Haas Institute. Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Atherton, for example, have larger white populations that the regional as a whole, the report noted. Fremont and Union City, meanwhile, have larger Asian populations.

“These patterns of racial segregation are not ‘natural,’ or simply the result of individual housing preferences, but the byproduct of exclusionary policies as well as private housing discrimination,” Gambhir said.

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