Asian Establishment in Top American Cities
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Census data reveals that Asian Americans are the emerging next establishment in our biggest cities.

From New York to Los Angeles, Seattle to Houston, a transformation is taking place in American cities. An aging population of mostly whites and blacks is being replaced by an influx of young people who are mostly Asian and Latino.

Now zoom into the financial districts, medical centers, executive suites, professional buildings and commercial districts where the skilled professional and entrepreneurs work in our top metro areas. You will see that the new faces are overwhelmingly Asian.

As recently as 1980 Asians were barely visible in New York City, at about 4.5% of the population. Today NYC’s Asians are 13.5% of the population. More significantly, Asians are 29% of the under-40 professionals, managers and entrepreneurs, based on 2009 projections from U.S. Census Bureau data. In Los Angeles, the nation’s No. 2 city, under-40 professional Asians already outnumber White colleagues 38% to 37%. In the San Francisco Bay area it’s 45% versus 34%. In the tech-focused San Jose area, it’s 55% Asian versus only 34% White.

What’s powering this incredible transformation? America’s top universities. For the past decade UC Berkeley — the world’s most prestigious public university — has had an undergrad student body averaging 48% Asian and 41% White when you pierce the veil of the “foreign”, “undeclared ethnicity” and “mixed-race” categories and ascribe ethnicity proportionately (assuming no Martians and other non-earthlings are being admitted). The stats are equally impressive for UCLA at 47% Asian and 40% White. UC San Diego — generally seen as the No. 3 UC — is about 44% Asian and 41% White. UC Irvine is 61% Asian and only 29% White!

The numbers are only a little less dramatic at elite private universities. MIT is 38% Asian, 46% White, when obscuring categories are properly parsed. Stanford is 32% Asian and 50% White. Harvard is 32% Asian, 53% White, Duke: 33% Asian, 56% White, Columbia: 30% Asian, 58% White.

You get the idea. The ambitious young urban professionals fueling the cultural transformation of our trend-setting top metro areas are Asian Americans! It doesn’t take a crystal ball to project this demographic trend out another decade to a day when everyone will see us Asian Americans as the youthful energy reshaping the American establishment.

You see why when I am strolling Wilshire Boulevard, Madison Avenue, Union Street, Michigan Ave or any of the other major U.S. cities I rarely feel like a “minority” so much as a member of the next establishment.

10/18/2009, 12:15 PM LOS ANGELES