Ethnic and racial minorities in Northwest Arkansas will grow to one-third of the region's population by the end of 2026, according to a study released Wednesday by the nonprofit Northwest Arkansas Council.
Diversity fuels the region's growth and enriches the culture, the study says. The region in the study is the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Benton, Washington and Madison counties.
"The Northwest Arkansas Council, through its EngageNWA program, works with partners to foster belonging for everyone who calls the region home," the study says.
The council is a group of regional community and business leaders. The group said it will increase its efforts to diversify its membership and will promote inclusive polices at the local, state and federal levels. Those efforts will include policies that address issues going beyond ethnic boundaries to include, for instance, sexual orientation.
Benton and Washington counties' population was 95.4% white in 1990, the study shows. That proportion fell to 70.9% by last year and will be 67.9% by 2026 while the overall population growth rate will remain high, the study says.
By 2026, the minority population of Benton and Washington counties will exceed what the total population of the region was in 1990, according to the study's figures.
The region's Hispanic population drives most of the minority growth, accounting for more than 17% of the region's population in 2021 and expected to grow to 18.9% by 2026, the study found. Asians will grow to 4.1%, mixed race to 3%, Blacks to 2.8%, Pacific Islanders to 2% and American Indians to 1.3%.
"Hold on to your britches," said Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, of the report's figures. History shows the majority population gets "a sense of threat" about its political and cultural dominance when minorities reach the 30% threshold, she said.
Elliott is outgoing chairwoman of the Arkansas Legislative Black Caucus. She has a record of supporting inclusive measures in the Legislature, such as hate crimes legislation.
"The advantage of Northwest Arkansas is that you get to learn from the mistakes other people have made," Elliott said in a telephone interview.
Residents of the Northwest region can see the strife and other costs of declining support of public schools and people choosing to move to segregated neighborhoods in other areas around the state and nation. Northwest Arkansas can avoid those mistakes if it tries, she said.
Parts of Northwest Arkansas are already past 30% minority without any of the tensions Elliott warns about, said Nelson Peacock, the council's president.
"We don't get the sense of any overriding issues related to the region's demographic changes, including those communities in Northwest Arkansas that have already crossed this 30% threshold," Peacock said.
"Rather, we have found that leaders across the region understand the economic benefit and cultural richness that these demographic changes can bring. Our goal will be to continue to highlight all voices, bring people together and identify best practices to move the region forward in a way that benefits everyone."
The region is avoiding one mistake made by the state as a whole by doing the study and others like it, said Mireya Reith. She is executive director of Arkansas United, a Springdale-based immigrant rights group. Northwest Arkansas is the only part of the state where any entity collects information like that found in the study, she said.
This study would be more valuable if it could be compared to trends in the rest of Arkansas, she said.
"The state should collect information like this," she said. "Northwest Arkansas can't silo itself from what's going on in the rest of the state."
The report does compare Northwest Arkansas to fast-growing "peer regions" around the country that track demographic change, such as Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, N.C. Those regions also show minorities increasing their share of the population.
Immigrants build the houses, do the landscaping and provide the daycare that makes the growth in Northwest Arkansas possible, Reith said. Now, with their growing numbers, they will insist on a fair share of the political representation.
"If we don't, we die," Reith said. "Covid taught us that."
"During the summer of 2020, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the National Institutes of Health found that the Marshallese population comprised 19% and the Latino population 45% of all covid-19 infections in Northwest Arkansas," figures in the study show. "The Marshallese community makes up less than 3% and the Latino community accounts for 17% of the total population.
"The Marshallese also accounted for 14% of all covid-19 related hospitalizations in the area and suffered 372.4 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to the regional average of 5.10 per 100,000," according to the study.
Building diverse neighborhoods will require Northwest Arkansas to get a grip on its rising housing costs, Elliott said -- already identified by the council as the region's most urgent problem. Segregation by housing cost tends to turn into segregation by ethnic and racial lines because socially dominant groups tend to be more affluent, Elliott said.
Black Arkansans are twice as likely to be turned down for a home mortgage loan than whites, the study says: 26% to 13%, according to real estate industry figures.
The study also gave particulars for each of the region's larger towns and school districts.
"Bentonville's Asian Indian population grew by 239% from 2011-2018," the study says. "Seventeen percent of Bentonville's population is foreign born and 14.6% of families speak a language other than English at home."
In the Bentonville School District, "Asian students account for nearly 8% of total enrollment -- the largest Asian population in any one school district in the region."
"Fayetteville has a 6.8% Black/African American population, which is the largest concentration of that group's population in Northwest Arkansas," the study says. "The city continues to see the largest growth in diversity in the Black/African American population as well as those identifying as two or more races."
Student bodies in the region's school districts are growing more diverse at a faster rate than the population in general, the study shows. Fayetteville, for instance, has 36% minorities to the city's 24%.
"The children of University of Arkansas faculty and students contribute significantly to the diversity of the school district's population," the study says.
"Hispanic/Latino residents account for over 33% of the Rogers' population and the figure should surpass 35% by 2026." Rogers School District's minority students account for 57% of enrollment, the study found. Hispanic students are 47.8% of enrollment.
Springdale also has the largest population of Pacific Islanders in Northwest Arkansas, which includes a large population of people from the Marshall Islands. Pacific Islanders accounted for more than 8% of the population in 2021 and are expected to approach 10% in 2026, according to the study.
The Springdale School District is "the most diverse school district in the region with students from diverse populations accounting for 68% of enrollment. Hispanic/Latino students account for 48% of enrollment with 35% of students classified as English learners."
"These numbers demonstrate that school districts in Northwest Arkansas, like those across the nation, are often on the front line of demographic change."
SEE THE FULL REPORT HERE: nwaonline.com/727report/