Minority-majority state

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

Minority-majority 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 of non-Hispanic whites. These data are usually derived from self-identification questions on United States Census questionnaire and extrapolated data (see race (United States Census).

Four states are majority-minority states: Hawaii (which has long been such a state, and is the only state that has never had a white majority) and New Mexico, California, and Texas^[1] (which more recently have entered the category). In August 2006 the United States Census reported that the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents had fallen below 60 percent in Maryland, Georgia and Nevada.^[2] The District of Columbia reached a high majority of African-American population during the later stages of the Great Migration. The proportion has declined somewhat as some African Americans have moved to suburbs and others have migrated to states of the New South in a reverse journey.^[3] All major United States territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa) are majority-minority areas.

Throughout much of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, a number of Southern states had populations that were majority African American. They were Louisiana (until the 1890s^[4]), South Carolina (until the 1920s^[5]) and Mississippi (until the 1930s^[6]). In the same period, Georgia, Alabama and Florida had African-American populations close to but just below the 50% level.^[7]

These states changed markedly from 1910-1970, as two waves of the Great Migration led more than 6.5 million African Americans to abandon the segregated South in search of better job opportunities and living conditions, first in northern and midwestern industrial cities, and then in California. Forty thousand people, one-fifth of Florida's black population, left the state by 1940, for instance.^[8] During the last 30 years of the 20th century into the 21st century, scholars have documented a reverse New Great Migration of African Americans back to southern states, but typically those of the New South, which have the best jobs and developing economies.^[9]

The first data for New Mexico was a 5% sample in 1940 which estimated non-Hispanic whites at 50.9%. ^[10] It is important to note that Hispanics do not constitute a race but rather an ethnicity. Of respondents who listed Hispanic ethnicity, some listed White race, roughly half gave responses tabulated under "Some other race" (e.g. giving a national origin such as "Mexican" as race), and much smaller numbers listed Black, Native American, or Asian race.

In recent Censuses, self-identification has been the primary way to identify race. Presumption of race based on countries or regions given in the Ancestry question is used only when a respondent has answered the Ancestry question but not the Race question. The U.S. Census currently defines "white people" as "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.^[11]

Although the Census attempts to enumerate both citizens and non-citizens, the illegal immigrant population of the United States has proven hard to quantify. It is not reflected in the table below. Current estimates based on national surveys, administrative data and other sources of information provide inaccurate measures of the illegal immigrant population, but indicate that the current population may range from 7 million to 20 million. An often used number (in 2006-2007) is 12 million illegal immigrants, but this is only an estimate.^[12]

Area	White (all)	Non-Hispanic White	Asian	African American	Hispanic or Latino	Native American	Native Hawaiian	Two or more races
California	60.0%	43.8%	12.2%	6.7%	35.2%	1.2%	0.4%	2.4%
Hawaii	26.8%	23.5%	41.5%	2.3%	8.0%	0.3%	9.0%	20.1%
New Mexico	59.5%	43.1%	1.3%	2.4%	43.4%	10.2%	0.1%	1.5%
Texas	58.4%	49.2%	3.3%	11.7%	35.1%	0.7%	0.1%	1.1%
District of Columbia	38.0%	31.1%	3.1%	57.0%	6.8%	0.3%	0.1%	1.6%
United States	70.0%	66.9%	4.3%	12.8%	14.4%	1.0%	0.2%	1.5%

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, 2005

The term majority-minority state almost always refers to ethnic/racial minorities but may also refer to another criteria, such as religion, disability, or age. For example, the majority of Utah residents are Mormons, a Christian denomination that is a religious minority throughout the rest of the United States. Utah and Rhode Island, which has a Roman Catholic majority, are the only states in the U.S. where a single denomination constitutes a majority of the population. However, no U.S. state has a majority composed of any non-Christian group, except for Hawaii, where 61.1 percent of the population follow non-mainstream religions. ^[13]