By David Cruz
Correspondent
The browning of America continues and New Jersey is no exception. A new report issued by PewResearch.org finds 78 counties around the country where whites are no longer the majority of the population. Four of those are in New Jersey.
Passaic County saw the non-Hispanic white population go from just over 52 percent to around 43 percent, down almost 9 percent.
In Cumberland, that population has gone from just over 58 percent to just over 48 percent, down almost 10 percent.
In Union, it went from almost 55 percent to just over 43 percent, down 11.5 percent.
And Middlesex saw the biggest drop, from 62 percent to just over 46 percent, down almost 16 percent.
George Castro has been selling real estate in Union County for over 20 years. He has seen the demographics in places like Elizabeth — the county seat — shift dramatically in his time here.
“They establish themselves in a city, like in this case Elizabeth,” he said. “And after they have established many businesses in Elizabeth, once they grow economically, you have seen them definitely — in the real estate business I have seen them — selling their houses in Elizabeth and moving into a more affluent neighborhood like Scotch Plains, Westfield, Cranford.”
But it’s not always the typical American dream of upward mobility for new arrivals here. A slow economy has made things tough for everyone, immigrants particularly. It will surprise few of you to learn the biggest challenge to newcomers in Paterson is finding work.
“Our unemployment rate is double the size of the state’s and so we have a lot of immigrants coming to Paterson, but there aren’t job opportunities like there once were lets say in the mid-1950s and 60s and even before then [when there was much more of a manufacturing base],” said Paterson Councilman Andre Sayegh. “We haven’t manufactured silk in about 50 years.”
Paterson Mayor Jose Torres says creating those jobs is critical to the success of his city, but integrating new arrivals into the education system and getting that system to speak their language is also a challenge.
“You know, at one time bilingual education was targeted primarily to Spanish-speaking students. And it’s not the case today. Today if you go to my south Paterson area, the second language is Arabic,” Torres said. “And so those are the things that I think are the challenges for cities that enjoy this mosaic, or this antipasto as I like to call it.”
The report found that only two of the 80 or so counties in the study had became majority white over the past 13 years. Still, the nation’s population as a whole remains more than 60 percent non-Hispanic white. But the face of New Jersey continues to change and that is a trend that shows no sign of letting up.