STATS AND STUFF

Some of us have an enormous affection for statistics. As our ancestors once gathered together animal entrails and tea leaves to understand their world, we now gather together numbers that have been sliced and diced by well-paid statisticians. Only, once we have all the numbers we usually have only half the truth...!

Grab your calculators, for here are some spanking new numbers to crunch about our population mix by 2050 --

White: 65% TODAY, 46% THEN

Black: 12% TODAY, 12% THEN

Hispanic: 16% TODAY, 30% THEN

Asian: 4% TODAY, 8 % THEN

Live alone: 16% MEN, 22% WOMEN


So how is America to understand and extrapolate from these data? Well lets see now -- between 1890 and 1920 tens of millions of Italians, Greeks, Poles, and Jews migrated into a nation once predominantly English, German, Irish and Scandinavian. According to the records, America from those year forward emerged as the most cultural exciting, economically powerful society on earth.

Not bad for a "melting pot" which admittedly did brew some occasional bitter recipes. If I were a betting man, I'd bet we'll do it again. But then I wouldn't ask the statisticians to explain how. I'd ask our children and their children....!