Challenges and Opportunities Found in Nevada's 'Diversity Explosion'

According to an article by Alan Greenblatt, "it’s Nevada that, perhaps more than any other state, offers a glimpse into the future. The change that has occurred so rapidly there -- from having a population that was overwhelmingly white to one that will soon be mostly people of color -- is under way in most of the nation, or will be in the coming decades. The Census Bureau has predicted the country as a whole will be majority nonwhite by the year 2043."

The demographic trends underway in Nevada are emblematic of what William Frey has described as the diversity explosion. But part of what makes Nevada a worthy case study on this subject is how it has so far failed to provide its new Latino populations from achieving the same kinds of success as the state's Caucasian population. According to Greenblatt, "[b]y nearly any measure you can think of -- unemployment, high school graduation rates, use of food stamps -- Hispanics aren’t faring as well as Caucasians in Nevada. They also lag behind Hispanics in other Mountain West states, according to a study published last year by the Guinn Center for Policy Priorities."

It's not just Latinos struggling to gain a foothold in Las Vegas; the fastest growing population, Asians and Pacific-Islanders, are also struggling. The article assigns blame to Nevada's poor service infrastructure, which is "starting at the bottom," among other political realities. On education, for instance, the state's policies are described as "just starting to react, 20 years too late" with regard to demographic changes.

Greensplatt connects the state's sluggish policy responses with the incredible rate of growth experienced in the state's metropolitan areas over the past several decades. Greensplatt quotes Betsy Fretwell, Las Vegas city manager, to describe the effect of growth on government policy: "When you’re tripling the number of park acres and going from eight firehouses to 18…a lot of attention gets focused on growth and the development needs of the community."

All of these challenges set aside, Las Vegas still has the rare opportunity to build on the human capital provided by these new immigrant populations—like New York or Chicago of previous centuries.