Demographics
Almost half of all the Dominican Americans today have arrived since the 1990s, especially in the early part of the decade. There has been another surge of immigration in recent years as immigration from Mexico has declined, allowing more backlogged Dominican applicants to obtain legal residence. Dominican Americans are the fifth-largest Hispanic or Latino American group, after Mexican Americans, Stateside Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Salvadoran Americans.
As of 2010, the five largest concentrations of Dominican Americans are in New York (674,787), New Jersey (197,922), Florida (172,451), Massachusetts (103,292), and Pennsylvania (62,348). Rhode Island is the only state where Dominicans are the largest Hispanic group. New York County (locally known as the Borough of Manhattan) is the only county in the country where Dominicans are the largest ancestral group and it's Washington Heights neighborhood has long been considered the center of the Dominican American community. The 2010 Census estimated the nationwide Dominican American population at 1,414,703.
Since 1980, the Census Bureau has asked U.S. residents to classify their race separately from their Hispanic or Latino origin, if any.
In 2010, 29.6% of Dominican Americans responded that they were white, while 12.9% considered themselves black. A plurality of 57.5% chose the category 'Other race'.
The prevalence of the 'other race' category probably reflects the large number of people who identify as mixed African and European ancestry in the Dominican Republic, where 73% of the population identified as being of mixed African and European descent, commonly known as Mulatto. Genetically, most are multiracial, however, having also Taíno Native American ancestry.
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