African Americans in Baltimore and Asian Americans in Cupertino
When President Donald Trump called Baltimore "a disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess" on July 27, 2019, many Baltimore residents and natives were outraged.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who represents a congressional district in the Bay Area, described the remark as "racist" since approximately
62% of Baltimore residents are African American. (Pelosi was born in Baltimore.)
Baltimore is not the only large or mid-sized city with an African-American majority population. Out of the
780 cities in the United States with a population
over 50,000 people (as of 2019), twenty-three of them have an African-American
majority population. Only seven large or mid-sized cities in this county have a higher percentage of African American residents than Baltimore.
As an Asian American, I was curious as to how many of the 780 cities have an Asian-American majority population. After some searching, I found that
that the answer is nine cities.
One of those nine cities is Cupertino, where I grew up. According to this website,
Cupertino is the city with the highest percentage of Asian Americans. 69.26% of Cupertino residents
are Asian American.
A tiny 2.48% of Baltimore residents are Asian American and a miniscule 1.11% of Cupertino residents are African American. Interestingly, the percentage of Caucasian residents
in both cities are approximately the same: 29.72% of Baltimore residents are Caucasian and 24.98% of Cupertino residents are Caucasian.
In 1980, 91% of Cupertino residents were white. What happened in the last 40 years? The answer is partly explained
in a 2005 Wall Street Journal article.