Majority-minority state

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US states and districts in which non-Hispanic whites are a plurality/minority.

Majority-minority state is a term used to describe a U.S. state in which a majority of the state's population differs from the national majority population, in this case defined as whites excluding citizens who self-identify as of Hispanic ethnicity and white race, but not excluding other groups sometimes termed as minority groups, such as religious groups, the disabled, or the elderly. Hawaii has long been such a state, and is the only state that has never had a white majority. More recently, New Mexico, California, and Texas^[1] have entered the category. The District of Columbia has long had a majority African-American population. Also, all of America's major territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas Islands, and American Samoa) are minority-majority areas.

Throughout most of the 19th century and into the 20th century a number of Southern states had populations that were majority African-American. They were Louisiana (until about 1900^[2]), South Carolina (until some time after 1920^[3]) and Mississippi (until some time after 1940^[4]). In the same period, Georgia, Alabama and Florida had African American populations close to but just below the 50% level.^[5] In reference to contemporary "majority-minority" states, it is important to note that Hispanics do not constitute a race but rather an ethnicity. Individuals who market white and Hispanic were therefore not counted as being multi-racial but rather only as White. Thus 84.5% of New Mexico's population can be white even though only 43% of were non-Hispanic whites and only 1.5% identified as being multi-racial. These states are, however, still seen as majority-minority states as Hispanics are considered a minority with their population being recorded separately alongside racial-demographics by the Census Bureau, despite many Hispanics being considered racially White.

State	White (all)	Non-Hispanic White	Asian	African American	Hispanic or Latino	Native American	Native Hawaiian	Two or more races
California^[6]	77.0%	43.8%	12.2%	6.7%	35.2%	1.2%	0.4%	2.4%
Hawaii^[7]	26.8%	26.8%	41.5%	2.3%	8.0%	0.3%	9.0%	20.1%
New Mexico^[8]	84.5%	43.1%	1.3%	2.4%	43.4%	10.2%	0.1%	1.5%
Texas^[9]	83.2%	49.2%	3.3%	11.7%	35.1%	0.7%	0.1%	1.1%
District of Columbia^[10]	38.0%	31.1%	3.1%	57.0%	6.8%	0.3%	0.1%	1.6%
United States^[11]	80.2%	66.9%	4.3%	12.8%	14.4%	1.0%	0.2%	1.5%

SOURCE: US Census Bureau, 2005

In August of 2006, news reports said the United States Census reported that the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents had fallen below 60% in Maryland, Georgia and Nevada.^[12]