Newly released U.S. Census data that offers a more detailed look at Americans’ specific racial and ethnic differences shows that of the shrinking white population, a third identify as English and only half of the black population identify as African American.
The new data was released Thursday more than three years after the 2020 census, which was severely delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as new government information collection methods designed to protect participant confidentiality.
While the direct count of Americans who fall into different racial categories was released in a previous round of census data disclosure, the new information breaks down the different racial populations by ethnic category.
The country’s black population, which has grown by five and a half percent since 2010, according to previously released data, identifies primarily as African American. However, of the country’s 46.9 million black respondents, only 24.5 million said they were African American.
The other half or so of the black population had backgrounds that included Jamaicans, Haitians, Nigerians and Ethiopians.
About half of the country’s black population does not identify as African American, according to U.S. Census Bureau data
Of the 130 million white Americans, 46.5 million identify fully or partially as English, a similar number to those who identify themselves as German
Groups with even fewer respondents included those who identified as Congolese, Somali, Liberian and Haitian.
Among the white population in the United States, the detailed group most frequently selected on the additional background information request form was English. About 46.5 million Americans said they were fully or partly English.
The German subcategory followed in second place. 45 million white Americans identify wholly or partially as German. Almost 39 million identify as Irish.
Among the rapidly growing U.S. Hispanic population, Venezuelans were by far the group with the largest numerical increase.
Between 2010 and 2020, the number of Venezuelans increased from 215,000 residents in the United States to over 605,000. This change is largely due to the economic and humanitarian crisis during the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuelans have had their temporary protected status extended in the US, which will last for many of them at least until March next year.
As has been the case in several censuses in a row, Mexicans were the largest Hispanic group in the country, with a population of nearly 36 million. However, their percentage of the Hispanic and Latino population actually fell from 63 percent in 2010 to 57 percent in 2020.
The U.S. Asian population, numbering about 20 million people, identified almost equally with a number of subgroups in this category.
More than 5.2 million Americans identified themselves as Chinese. They were followed by 4.7 million Indians. There are 4.4 million Filipinos and 2.2 million people who identify as Vietnamese in the United States.
As has been the case in several censuses in a row, Mexicans were the largest Hispanic group in the country, with a population of nearly 36 million
According to previous census data, the number of Americans who identify as white alone has fallen by eight point six percent
Data released earlier this summer showed that for the first time in U.S. history, the number of white people in the country was declining.
“If you told people 20 years ago that this would be the case, they wouldn’t have believed you,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The country is changing dramatically.”
For five years now, U.S. Census Bureau updates have projected that the white population has been shrinking and that all of the population growth in recent years has come from minorities.
White people made up about 60 percent of the population in 2019, but Frey said the opioid epidemic and lower-than-expected birth rates among Millennials after the Great Recession accelerated the white population’s decline.
The largest and most consistent increases have been recorded by Hispanics, who have doubled their share of the population to almost 20 percent in the last 30 years.