Race and ethnicity in the United States
diverse American populations
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%.
The public source identifies “Race and ethnicity in the United States” as diverse American populations. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Race, ethnicity and United.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3021105. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Race and ethnicity in the United States” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.