EthnicMajority

(Hispanic Ohio, Ruben Navarrette) Latinos in the United States have been betting on the numbers – their numbers.

In the last three decades, I’ve heard politicos, academics, activists and others boast that a swelling population would eventually bring the Latino community power and respect.

They include President Barack Obama, who just last month told a group of Latino online journalists gathered at the White House that he was confident that he’d see a competitive Hispanic candidate running for president during his lifetime.

“Just look at the demographics,” Obama said. “With numbers comes political power.”

Not necessarily, Mr. President.

The assumption has been that, at some point, the Latino population would become so large and its influence on everything from business to sports to food to pop culture would be so profound that it would be impossible to ignore.

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(BlackWeb) There’s more evidence of smartphone usage in the United States enabling a kind of “leapfrog effect” over the digital divide. According to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American LIfe Project, 44 percent of African Americans and Hispanics say they own a smartphone, compared to just 30 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

That said, class and education levels are also strongly related to smartphone ownership, with just 22% of people making less than $30K/yr saying they own one, compared to about 40% of people between $30K-$75K, and nearly 60 percent of people making more than $75K. The younger you are, though, the more likely you use a smartphone–even among people making less than $30K a year, 39% of those who are 18-29 years old say the have one. Older seniors, by contrast, are less likely, and poorer older seniors especially unlikely, to own a smartphone.

Read the rest of this article at TechPresident.com

(Clickz) Eight percent of adult U.S. Internet users now use Twitter, representing six percent of the overall U.S. population, according to research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The survey, the results of which were published today, questioned a sample of over 2,250 nationally representative respondents, and also concluded African-American and Hispanic users are over twice as likely to make use of the social network compared with white users. 18 percent of Hispanic respondents and 13 percent of black respondents said they use the service, compared with 5 percent of white respondents, suggesting it has far greater penetration among non-white audiences, although those audiences are likely smaller.

The research also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that 18- to 29 year-old users are the widest adopters of Twitter, with 14 percent in that age range claiming to use it, compared with seven percent of 30- to 49-year-olds, six percent of 50- to 64-year-olds, and 4 percent of users over 65.

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(New York Times) About 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States in 2008 — or 8 percent — had at least one parent who was an illegal immigrant, according to a study published Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Because they were born in this country, the babies of illegal immigrants are United States citizens. In all in 2008, four million children who were American citizens had at least one parent who was in the country illegally, the Pew study found.

Children of illegal immigrants make up 7 percent of all people in the country younger than 18 years old, according to the study, which is based on March 2009 census figures, the most recent data on immigrant families. Nearly four out of five of those children — 79 percent — are American citizens because they were born here.

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(USA Today) Broadband adoption in the home is slowing in the U.S. That’s what the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is saying in a fascinating report that is just out.

Sixty-six percent of American adults now have a broadband Internet connection at home, the report says, little changed from the 63% mark recorded a year ago. That follows years of double-digit growth.

What’s more, Pew says that most demographic groups had flat to modest broadband adoption growth over the last year with one major exception: 56% of the African-American community now have broadband connections in the home, compared to 46% in 2009.

There are a variety of reasons why African-Americans are bucking the trend, starting with the notion that the group was starting out from a smaller base of users. But Pew’s Senior Research Specialist Aaron Smith, the author of the report, also thinks African- Americans are now more likely to own cellphones, use the mobile Web and social media apps, and that Internet providers themselves may be more aggressive in targeting populations with historically lower adoption rates.

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(CNN) The first time Priya Merrill, who is Indian, brought her white boyfriend home for Thanksgiving in 2007, the dinner was uncomfortable and confusing. She still remembers her family asking if Andrew was the bartender or a family photographer.

The couple married last August, and her Indian family has warmed up to her husband despite their racial differences.

“I think we get the best of both cultures,” said Merrill, 27, of New York. She added, “Sometimes I just forget that we’re interracial. I don’t really think about it.”

Asian. White. Black. Hispanic. Do race and ethnicity matter when it comes to marriage?

Apparently, race is mattering less these days, say researchers at the Pew Research Center, who report that nearly one out of seven new marriages in the U.S. is interracial or interethnic. The report released Friday, which interviewed couples married for less than a year, found racial lines are blurring as more people choose to marry outside their race.

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