Race and ethnicity in the United States
The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population.[1] At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories (White, Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander), as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories.[2][3][4] The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. The 2000 census and 2010 American Community Survey inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, while the 2020 census allowed people to enter their "origins".[5] The Census Bureau also classified respondents as either Hispanic or Latino, identifying as an ethnicity, which comprises the minority group in the nation.[2][3][4]
White Americans are the majority in every census-defined region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and in every state except Hawaii,[6] but contribute the highest proportion of the population in the Midwest, at 85% per the Population Estimates Program (PEP)[4] or 83% per the American Community Survey (ACS).[7] Non-Hispanic whites make up 79% of the Midwest's population, the highest proportion of any region.[4] At the same time, the region with the smallest share of white Americans is the South, which comprise 53%.[4]
Currently, 55% of the African American population lives in the South.[4] A plurality or majority of the other official groups reside in the West. The latter region is home to 42% of Hispanic and Latino Americans, 46% of Asian Americans, 48% of American Indians and Alaska Natives, 68% of Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, 37% of the "two or more races" population (Multiracial Americans), and 46% of those self-designated as "some other race".[4][8]
Each of the five inhabited U.S. territories is fairly homogeneous, though each comprises a different primary ethnic group. American Samoa has a high percentage of Pacific Islanders, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are mostly Asian and Pacific Islander, Puerto Rico is mostly Hispanic/Latino, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are mostly African American.[9][10][11][12]
The growth of the Hispanic population through immigration and high birth rates is noted as a partial factor for U.S. population gains in the last quarter-century. The 2000 census revealed that Native Americans had reached their highest documented population, 4.5 million, since the U.S. was founded in 1776.[3] In some cases, immigrants and migrants have formed ethnic enclaves; in others, this mixture of races has created ethnically diverse communities. Earlier immigrants to the Americas came from widely separated regions of Afro-Eurasia, and American immigrant populations frequently mixed among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continents, creating a complex multiracial population.
Throughout American history, efforts to classify the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete categories have generated many difficulties. Early efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of historical categories (such as "mulatto" and "octaroon" among persons with partial African descent) and "blood quantum" distinctions, which became increasingly detached from self-reported ancestry. By the standards used in early censuses, many mixed-race children born in the U.S. were classified as of a different race than one of their biological parents, and even when these standards were no longer commonly accepted, the combination of social perceptions of race and self-identification with a racial identity frequently complicated legal standards of racial identity. Even people who did not identify as mixed faced the issue of unclear legal terminology; until the 2000 census, Hispanic Americans were required to identify as one race on censuses, and without the option to select Latino or Hispanic, confusion flourished.
Historical trends influencing the ethnic demographics of the United States include:
