One in seven residents in Columbus, Ind., a city of about 50,000, was born outside the United States. Public school students collectively speak more than 50 languages and dialects at home. Roughly three dozen foreign companies operate in the area.
A 45-minute drive south of Indianapolis, the manufacturing and transportation hub set in the middle of sprawling farmland is emblematic of how the nation’s growing ethnic and racial diversity, building for decades in coastal cities and other immigration hubs, is gaining in new areas across the U.S.
The first detailed data released from the 2020 Census on Thursday showed that the non-Hispanic white population declined for the first time in the nation’s history as growing numbers of Hispanics and Asians pushed the share of residents who identify as a minority to roughly four out of every 10 people.
Those changes are most apparent in pockets of the Midwest and northern Great Plains, which diversified at a faster rate than the rest of the nation during the past decade, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the new census data shows.
