Historically-based structural disadvantages impinge on AIAN people’s civil rights, and redressing these issues requires plausible information about the future size, age structure, and locational distribution of the population. AIAN people and Tribal Nations are also subject to statistical racism, in which their data (and thus their successes and needs) are ignored because they are relatively small populations. This report presents population projections of the racially-identified American Indian and Alaska Native population from the present to 2050 using a traditional demographic method that has been modified to account for net response change – one of the most significant data-related challenges.
This research projects the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population over the next 3 decades, and finds that it is rapidly changing in response to decades of sustained large-scale immigration.
This report catalogues the growth of the modern mixed-race population in the United States and highlights the many complications this population presents for the future of civil rights law and policy. What is most distinctive of today’s mixed-race individuals is their assertion of a mixed-race identity which they claim embodies a different experience compared to those who report to be a single race such as “white” or “black.” This emphasis on personal identity presents a new dimension that must be considered in the development of new civil rights policy.
