The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories (White Americans, Black Americans, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander), as well as who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. While previous censuses inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, the current form asks people to enter their "origins".
White Americans are the majority in every census-defined region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and 44 out of 50 states, except Hawaii, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Maryland. Those identifying as white alone or in combination (including multiracial white Americans) are the majority in every state except for Hawaii and California. The region with the highest proportion of White Americans is the Midwest, at 74.6% per the American Community Survey (ACS), followed by the Northeast, at 64%. Non-Hispanic whites make up 73% of the Midwest's population, the highest proportion of any region, and they make up 62% of the population in the Northeast. At the same time, the regions with the smallest share of White Americans are the West, where they comprise 51.9%, and the South, where they comprise 57.7%. Non-Hispanic whites are a minority in the West, where they make up 47.1% of the population. In the South, they make up 54% of the population.
Currently, 55% of the African American population lives in the South. 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 Native Americans 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".
Each of the five inhabited US 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 (racially composed of whites, blacks, and mixed-race people mostly), and the US Virgin Islands are mostly African American.
Racial and ethnic categories
Racial categories The first United States census in 1790 classed residents as free white people (divided by age and sex), all other free persons (reported by sex and color), and enslaved people. The 2000 census officially recognized six racial categories including people of two or more races; a category called "some other race" was also used in the census and other surveys, but is not official. In the 2000 census and subsequent Census Bureau surveys, Americans self-described as belonging to these racial groups: White American (European American and Middle Eastern American or North African American): those having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. Black or African American: those having origins in any of the native peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. American Indian or Alaska Native: those having origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America. Asian American (Central Asian American, East Asian American, South Asian American, and Southeast Asian American): those having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: those having origins in any of the original peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia, or Micronesia. Other: respondents wrote how they identified themselves if different from the preceding categories. Two or more races, widely known as multiracial: those who check off and/or write in more than one race.
In the census, people are asked about their racial identity, including their origins, and whether or not they are of Hispanic ethnicity. These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. They have been changed from one census to another, and the racial categories include both "racial" and national origin groups.
In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the US Department of Labor finalized the update of its EEO-1 report format and guidelines concerning the definitions of racial or ethnic categories.
In March 2024, the Office of Management and Budget published revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity that address: (1) combined question for race and ethnicity; (2) adding a "Middle Eastern or North African (MENA)" category; and (3) collecting additional detail to enable data disaggregation.
In April 2024, the US Census Bureau released the following revised definitions for combined race and ethnicity reporting:
Here is the converted content in Wikitable format: Race/Ethnicity Reporting Category Definition American Indian or Alaska Native Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America, including, for example, Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, Nome Eskimo Community, Aztec, and Maya. Asian Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Central or East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia, including, for example, Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese. Black or African American Individuals with origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa, including, for example, African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ghanaian, South African, Ethiopian, and Somali. Hispanic or Latino Includes individuals of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, and other Central or South American or Spanish culture or origin. Middle Eastern or North African Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of the Middle East or North Africa, including, for example, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli. Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands, including, for example, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, Tongan, Fijian, and Marshallese. White or European American Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, including, for example, English, Spanish, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Scottish.
Census-designated ethnicities: Hispanic or Latino origin
The question on Hispanic or Latino origin is separate from the question on race. Hispanic and Latino Americans have ethnic origins in a Spanish-speaking country or Brazil. Latin American countries are, like the United States, racially diverse. Consequently, no separate racial category exists for Hispanic and Latino Americans, as they do not constitute a race, nor a national group. When responding to the race question on the census form, each person is asked to choose from among the same racial categories as all Americans, and is included in the numbers reported for those races.
Each racial category may contain Hispanic or Latino and Non-Hispanic or Latino Americans. For example: the White or European American race category contains Non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanic Whites (see White Hispanic and Latino Americans); the Black or African American category contains Non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanic Blacks (see Black Hispanic and Latino Americans); the Asian American category contains Non-Hispanic Asians and Hispanic Asians (see Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans), and likewise for all the other categories.
Self-identifying as both Hispanic or Latino and not Hispanic or Latino is neither explicitly allowed nor explicitly prohibited.
Social definitions of race
Since the concept of race became widespread in the early United States, people of Native American heritage, African heritage, and European heritage were considered to belong to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar; a person's appearance, their social circle (how they lived), and ancestry were all considered by society when determining someone's race.
The motivations behind historical definitions of racial identity, especially Native American and black identities, have been the topic of much discussion in modern years. According to many anthropologists, these racial designations were a means to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of white people in a society of white hegemony and privilege. Racial distinctions generally had little to do with biology and more to do with the history of slavery, the systemic racism it produced, and specific forms of white supremacy that benefited from specific definitions of racial identity. For example, it has been suggested that the blood quantum laws defining Native American identity enabled whites to acquire indigenous lands during the allotment process, and the one-drop rule of black identity, enforced legally in the early 20th century, enabled them to preserve their agricultural labor force in the South.
The descendants of Native and Black Americans not only had to contend with laws defining their racial identity for the benefit of the majority, but also with a variety of social consequences depending on how they were perceived in society. Compared to other mixed Americans, the blood quantum laws made it easier for a person of mixed European and Native American ancestry to be accepted as white; after a few generations of intermarriage, the offspring of Native and White Americans would no longer legally be considered Native American. They could have treaty rights to land, but because an individual with only one native great-grandparent no longer was classified as Native American, they lost legal claim to their land under historical allotment rules, making it easier for White Americans to acquire the land for their own development. On the other hand, the same individual who could be denied legal standing in a tribe because he was "too White" to claim property rights might still have enough visually identifiable native ancestry to be considered socially as a "half-breed" and stigmatized by both communities.
The 20th-century one-drop rule made it relatively difficult for anyone of known black ancestry to be accepted as white. The child of a black sharecropper and a white person was considered black by the local communities, and would likely become a sharecropper as well, thus adding to the landholder or employer's labor force. Because the agricultural economy of the time benefited from using Black Americans as a labor force, it was advantageous for as many people as possible to be defined as black. Many experts on the Jim Crow period agree that the 20th century notion of invisible blackness shifted the color line in the direction of paleness, and "expanded" the labor force in response to Southern blacks' Great Migration to the North, although others (such as the historians C. Vann Woodward, George M. Fredrickson, and Stetson Kennedy) considered the one-drop rule a consequence of the need to justify the oppression of Black Americans and define whiteness as pure.