Asians are now largest group in these two Bay Area counties, new data shows
Leonardo Castañeda
PUBLISHED: June 20, 2019 at 5:00 am | UPDATED
The skyline of Oakland, Calif. gleams in the late afternoon sunlight, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011. Alameda County became the second county with a plurality of Asian residents in 2018, according to new census numbers. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)
Asians, the fastest growing racial group in the United States, now make up the largest share of Alameda County’s population, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The latest census numbers on race and ethnicity, released Thursday, highlight the Bay Area’s increasingly diverse population. In Santa Clara County, one of the first minority-majority counties in the nation, Asians have been the largest racial group since 2014.
The change in Alameda County has been unfolding slowly for years. The county’s Asian population increased almost 32 percent since 2010. Last year, it reached 518,400, according to the census, just slightly ahead of the white population at 518,000.
In San Mateo, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties, white residents make up the largest share of the population. Asians make up the second largest share in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, while Hispanics rank second in Contra Costa, the data showed.
Samir Gambhir, a program manager with the Haas Institute who co-authored a 2018 report on segregation in the Bay Area, said in an email that the Asian population in the nine-county region has been growing rapidly for decades...