EthnicMajority

(LatinaLista.net) How long does a person have to live in a foreign country before he/she calls it home?

Six months? One year? Three years? Ten years?

The answer, of course, is however long it takes for that person to feel comfortable in their surroundings. While some people quickly adapt and make themselves at home, for others it may take a few years. But it's a safe bet to assume that if a person has been living in a foreign country for 15 years or more, then they're feeling right at home.

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(St. Louis American) Recently the Pew Research Center released an alarming report highlighting the fact that white Americans now have 20 times more wealth than African Americans and 18 times more wealth than Hispanic Americans. While this came as a shock to some, it is par for the course for others.

Historically, whites have always earned and accumulated more wealth than minorities in American society. Despite this, the white-black wealth gap is the widest it has been since the census began tracking the disparity in 1984, when the ratio was roughly 12 to 1.

The collapse of the housing market bubble coupled with the recession caused median wealth to fall by 53 percent for African-American households, 66 percent for Hispanics and 16 percent for whites. One of the main reasons for such a major decline in minority wealth is due to the fact that African Americans and Hispanic Americans tend to invest heavily in their homes without investing in other asset building products such as stocks, bonds and savings accounts.

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(NPR) Over the past decade, the story of population growth in the United States was defined largely by the story of Latinos emerging as the nation's largest minority.

They surpassed African-Americans for that distinction, by accounting for 56 percent of America's growth from 2000 to 2010. They now number more than 50 million. Put another way, 1 in every 6 U.S. residents is Latino.

Hispanics remain heavily concentrated in states such as California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida and New York. The majority reside in just three of those states — California, Texas and Florida.

Yet the 2010 count showed that Hispanics have begun to fully spread across the nation.

Their populations increased in virtually every state. And on the local level, Hispanics increased their populations in 2,962 of America's 3,142 counties. They declined in number in 108 counties.

The greatest gains occurred in the South and Midwest, which have had traditionally low Hispanic populations, but have attracted Hispanics with lower costs of living and jobs in agriculture.

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(CNN) s a musician and social justice activist, online social media has helped Maria Isa sell more CDs and mobilize the growing number of Latinos in her home city of Minneapolis.

Isa wasn't surprised that a study published this summer said Hispanics are among the most active social media users.

"Social media is about accessibility for me," Isa said. "I can send information to my audience with the push of a button on my cell. I'm able to expand my message of social justice in the Latino community and also my work and the works of others who network with me."

There's a growing online audience of people of color. Latinos and African Americans are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as white non-Hispanics, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

Much of the reason? Cell phones. Nearly 90% of English speaking Hispanics use mobile devices. But New York Daily News columnist and author Juan Gonzalez said it's an extension of Latino culture.

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(The Root) In his jobs speech earlier this month, President Barack Obama spoke eloquently of a time when Americans felt that hard work invariably paid off. We "believed in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share."

I'm not convinced that most black Americans ever really felt that way. Many of us instead were convinced that the deck was stacked against us, that no matter how hard we worked, we would never get a fair shake. But even in the midst of our deepest despair, we were hopeful for our children. We believed that, whatever we had to go through, life would be better for those who followed.

A major new study has dashed a bucket of cold water on that dream. The report, by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, points out that a third of Americans who are born in the middle class (defined by Pew as those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of the income distribution) lose their middle-class status as adults.

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(RedOrbit) According to a survey released on Wednesday, more American adults are using Twitter these days, and the micro-blogging service is more popular among African Americans and Latinos.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project said that thirteen percent of the online adults aged 18 and older use Twitter, which is up eight percent from November 2010.

Twenty-five percent of the African-Americans surveyed told Pew they use the service, while 19 percent of the Hispanics and nine percent of the whites said the same thing.

“One in 10 African-American Internet users now visit Twitter on a typical day — that is double the rate for Latinos and nearly four times the rate for whites,” Pew said.

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(Fox News) A new study from the Pew Hispanic Center found that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States dropped significantly for the first time in two decades — but the population out of Mexico has held steady since reaching its peak in 2007.

Though the study could show up as ammunition in the debate over anti-illegal immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, the data does not show that unauthorized residents are fleeing back to Mexico. Fewer illegal immigrants from Mexico are coming to the United States, but those here are generally staying put — apparently unfazed by the economic downturn, hostile climate and federal enforcement.

The data shows “no evidence of a recent increase in the number of Mexican-born migrants returning home
from the U.S.,” the study said.

The bulk of the dropoff comes from those immigrants out of other Latin American countries, in South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Among illegal immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico, the population declined 22 percent between 2007 and 2009. The total number of illegal immigrants fell 8 percent during that time, from 12 million to 11.1 million.

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(The Hill) African-Americans and Hispanics talk and text on mobile phones significantly more than their white counterparts, according to the Nielsen Company.

The results correlate with an earlier Pew survey that found minorities are more likely to use their smartphones to access the Web than whites. The latest data shows minorities are generally more likely to use mobile devices to communicate, meaning any proposals targeting wireless communications may disproportionately affect black and Hispanic Americans.

African-Americans talk on their cell phones an average of 1,300 minutes per month, more than twice the 647 minutes averaged by whites. Hispanics were next, at 826 minutes per month, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders at 692 minutes per month. Blacks and Hispanics were also the most like to send and receive text messages, averaging 780 and 767 per month respectively.

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(CNN) Each election cycle is dubbed “the year” — a time when Latinos will show up at the polls in droves and transform the political landscape.

President Obama’s renewed push last week for immigration reform has brought with it fresh expectations for the Latino vote in November’s midterm elections.

The issue is considered one of symbolic and substantive importance for the community. Four out of five undocumented immigrants are from Mexico or another part of Latin America, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

While voter turnout among the Latino community has risen in recent years, the adage that there’s “strength in numbers” has yet to manifest itself.

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