Rockville Senior Center’s Carnation Room was at capacity Thursday night for a town hall discussion on diversity, and how to make Rockville a more inclusive place that actively welcomes and engages its broad, multicultural community.
More than 150 participants divided themselves among six “conversation circles,” each set up to address a different set of questions on topics that included hate crime, enhancing community policing, barriers to government, communicating to young people and promoting inclusion.
Rockville is one of the most diverse communities in America. Thirty-four percent of the 61,000 city residents were born outside of the U.S., according to the 2010 Census. Of this foreign-born population, 14.5 percent were citizens and 19.4 percent were non-citizens.
- Residents of Asian descent were the largest racial minority in the city as of 2010, making up about 21 percent of Rockville’s population, up from about 15 percent in 2000.
- Rockville’s Hispanic residents comprised the second-largest racial minority, at about 14 percent of the total population in 2010.
- Rockville’s black or African-American population was about 10 percent of the population.
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