So how diverse is the Chippewa Valley, anyway? We’ve periodically asked ourselves this question, then delved into the data that might help answer it.

Statistics tell some of the story – at least when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity – and the U.S. Census Bureau has loads of numbers describing the demographics of communities nationwide, including ours. Based upon a five-year average (2018-23) compiled from the bureau’s annual American Community Survey, roughly 86% of the City of Eau Claire’s nearly 70,000 residents are non-Hispanic white. If you’re familiar with the Chippewa Valley, it’s no surprise that most of us descend from European immigrants (the top three countries of origin being Germany, Norway, and Ireland – also not much of a surprise). And if you’re familiar with the rest of the United States, it’s clear that we’re whiter than the country as a whole, which is 58% non-Hispanic white, the Census Bureau says.

Nonetheless, slowly but surely, the Eau Claire area is growing more diverse. To flip that 86% stat on its head, it can also be said that about 1 in 7 Eau Claire residents is a person of color, describing themselves as Black, Asian-American, Hispanic, Native American, or something else. A little over 20 years ago – in the 2000 census – the figure was just 1 in 14.

Just as immigration in the 19th and early 20th century brought all those northern Europeans to the Chippewa Valley, the decades-long influx of Hmong refugees to the region may explain the fact that Asian-Americans are the second-largest racial group in town. Just over 4,000 of Eau Claire’s nearly 70,000 residents – or about 6% – identified themselves as Asian-American to the census takers.

The changing racial and ethnic makeup of the region is most clearly visible in public schools. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, more than one-quarter of kids in the Eau Claire Area School District were students of color in the 2023-24 school year. (The figure was 26.7%, to be exact.) Nearly 10% of the district’s students were Asian-American, while 7% were Hispanic.

Again, such figures are amplified nationwide: According to the 2020 census, no racial or ethnic group holds a majority among the U.S. population under 18. Among that group, 47.3% were non-Hispanic white, compared with 53.5% a decade earlier. 

The future, it seems, will be more diverse than ever.