New Hampshire, 94 Percent White, Asks: How Do You Diversify a Whole State?

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New Hampshire, like its neighbors Vermont and Maine, is nearly all white. This has posed an array of problems for new arrivals, who often find themselves isolated and alone, without the comfort and support of a built-in community.

It has also posed problems for employers in these states, who find that their homogeneity can be a barrier to recruiting and retaining workers of different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

The issue prompted about 100 business leaders, government officials and members of nonprofit organizations to meet Thursday to search for ways that New Hampshire — which is 94 percent white — might lure other racial and ethnic groups, as well as younger people.

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With nonwhites poised to make up a majority of the American population in the next three decades, he said, diversity has become a bottom-line imperative for companies competing for talent, especially for workers who can speak other languages. As it stands, New Hampshire is 3 percent Latino, 2 percent African-American and 3 percent Asian, according to the census, with some people identifying as more than one race. The nation as a whole is 17 percent Latino, 14 percent African-American and 6 percent Asian.

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For Jerri Anne Boggis, executive director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, in Portsmouth, N.H., the participation of major companies is a sign of the urgency of the mission.

“It’s not just the social justice groups that are doing this, it’s the businesses,” she said. “We’re talking about the economic engine of our state, and we can’t move forward without them.”

New Hampshire’s neighbors, Vermont and Maine, are 95 percent white, making northern New England collectively the whitest region in a nation where white residents make up just over 60 percent of the population, according to the census.

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Mostly, though, Northern New England is nearly all white. The reasons stem from a variety of factors, including a lack of big urban areas, where jobs are more plentiful, a wider range of housing is available and cultural differences are a little more accepted than in smaller places.

“Northern New England is a huge collection of very, very small towns,” said Peter Francese, a demographic analyst based in Exeter, N.H.

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And, he said, much of any newer housing is only for people 55 or older. If developers built housing for younger people, he said, they would likely have children, which means a need for schools, which means higher property taxes — anathema in a place like New Hampshire, which has no income tax.

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The irony is that with their own populations stagnant, these states must look to outsiders if they want to grow.

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In workshops and panel discussions, people wrestled with ways New Hampshire could draw people of different backgrounds. Their suggestions included: a better understanding of licensing and skills that refugees bring with them so they could more easily work here; a system of rewarding businesses that hire a more diverse array of workers; a central location with a database, speakers’ bureau and training opportunities that could help companies understand what “diversity and inclusion” means and how it could benefit them, and a focus on keeping workers as much as hiring them in the first place, since many leave after finding the state inhospitable.

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She said in an interview later that the lack of certain basic services also made settling in places like New Hampshire difficult for minorities. These include hair salons that cater to African-American women, she said, as well as restaurants and supermarkets that offer ethnic foods and stores that sell traditional clothing.

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