Monique Couvson (formerly Monique W. Morris), president / CEO of the philanthropic intermediary organization G4GC— Investing in the Ecosystems that Support Our Youth and founder/board chair of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, is the author of several books, including Pushout ; Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues; Charisma’s Turn; and Girls, Unlimited (all from The New Press). Her work has been featured by Time, NPR, The New York Times, MSNBC, Essence, The Atlantic, TED, The Washington Post , Education Week, and others.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be made through our website: https://thenewpress .org /contact-us/
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2026
Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution
ISBN 978-1- 62097-962-4 (pb)
ISBN 979-8- 89385-030-7 (ebook)
CIP data is available
The New Press publishes books that promote and enrich public discussion and understanding of the issues vital to our democracy and to a more equitable world. These books are made possible by the enthusiasm of our readers; the support of a committed group of donors, large and small; the collaboration of our many partners in the independent media and the not-for-profit sector; booksellers, who often hand-sell New Press books; librarians; and above all by our authors.
www.thenewpress .org
Book design and composition by Bookbright Media Printed in the United States of America
BLACK STATS
“Statistics are only an artifact of the power to shape questions we think are worth asking. They are meaningful only in relation to how we interpret them in light of the public policies we seek to enact . . . Data are always a reflection of a set of economic, social, political, and yes, racial choices. The fact of their existence, collection, compilation, and dissemination is a consequence of resource allocation, of choices made by individuals and institutions on what to measure and why.”
—Khalil Gibran Muhammad1
The United States is home to more than 40 million people of African descent—a diverse community whose primary ancestry derives from the Black racial groups of Africa. They came to the United States not only from the “mother continent” but also from Caribbean islands, Europe, Asia, and South and Central America. Scholars often interpret race as a socially constructed phenomenon, its divisions shaped by common social norms, understandings, and perceptions. As legal scholar Ian Haney López wrote, “Human fate still rides upon ancestry and appearance. The characteristics of our hair. Complexion and facial features still influence whether we are free or enslaved . . . Human interaction rather than natural differentiation must be seen as the source and continued basis for racial categorization.”2 Race, as a social construct, continues to play an important role in shaping the life outcomes of individuals in the United States. The complexity, versatility, and diversity of life among Black Americans have been documented and widely discussed for more than four centuries.
This book is designed to provide a statistical snapshot of the lives of Black Americans, juxtaposing where possible their conditions with those of other racial and ethnic groups. The use of data is a powerful tool for understanding how those conditions may have changed or where they have remained the same. Data track specific points along the “color line” that W.E.B. Du Bois famously declared would dominate the modern public discourse—and consciousness—about human relations in the United States.3 Because data are able to highlight both equality and disparity, they remain an essential component in evaluating progress on racial equity, building a more inclusive democracy, illustrating our narratives, and deciding where to intensify our advocacy for racial justice.
The data in this book were collected from a variety of secondary sources, including but not limited to federal agencies, foundations, journals, nonprofit organizations, and corporate surveys. Where appropriate, figures presented have been rounded to the nearest whole number or nearest tenth. Where political or research concepts are introduced, I have offered additional information on the context or framework that informs the statistics included in that section. In 2025, efforts to implement Project 2025, a sweeping, ultra-conservative policy agenda designed to dismantle decades of progress regarding efforts to remedy discrimination, were accelerated by President Donald Trump. Under his leadership, there were rapid changes, primarily through the issuance of executive orders and the creation of federal initiatives aimed to gut the public infrastructure that provided foundations for equity in Black American communities. These measures have created a vastly new landscape for the collection of disaggregated data—particularly that which is disaggregated by race, gender, and other demographic identifiers. The collection of descriptive data has been abandoned and/or obscured by efforts to destabilize equity and undermine remedies that were in place for decades to
x I NTRODUCTION
counter discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice. These constraints are not coincidental; rather, they stem from a concerted legal and political agenda aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives by recharacterizing them as discriminatory.
The collection of research on interventions that center Black American populations (e.g., research on Black maternal health, research on gender-based violence, and so forth) has been eliminated or dramatically reduced. Research across a spectrum of policy areas—from public health and education to criminal justice and the environment, and beyond—that sought to better understand potential impacts on and involvement of Black Americans is no longer available. This has created a vacuum of information where policies may be developed based on speculation and nefarious agendas rather than science.
Beginning with Executive Order 14151, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing on January 20, 2025, which mandated the termination of inclusive offices and activities aimed to promote equity within federal departments, efforts were launched to rescind “justice” efforts and remove languages from federal websites, museums, and grant announcements. Despite the existence of legitimate legislation to protect classes of individuals (including African Americans) from discrimination, this executive order launched a deluge of orders designed to intimidate public agencies into purging positions that served to ensure equity in the workplace and beyond.
To make this agenda more explicit, Executive Order 14173, or Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, revoked long-standing civil rights mandates and reinforced President Trump’s efforts to remove DEI considerations from agencies that had previously led racial integration efforts in the public sector. For example, the restrictions he placed on the U.S. Foreign Service and the State Department to eliminate criteria to include measures for inclusive recruitment, hiring, promotions,
and tenure were explicitly couched as “restoring meritocracy,” thus equating diversity with underperformance. These and other executive actions, though many were met with legal challenges, have triggered a prohibition on collecting or using demographic data in ways that inform public policy or measure impact.
The implications of these executive actions and the sweeping preemptive adherence to the elimination (or dramatic reduction) of various measures in the public domain have had a profound impact on research. While the philanthropic sector has responded somewhat to the assaults on public health, genderbased violence, and other research efforts, the impact on public access to information has been dramatically altered for the foreseeable future. This is especially true for populations, such as Black Americans, that have disproportionately been historically harmed by these politics of erasure.
These efforts to restrict our capacity to collect and report information by race, in combination with other factors, obscures where there is progress and where there is harm. It renders whole communities powerless to advocate for their well-being, be it through the continuation of efforts that have had a positive impact or the elimination of those that have been harmful. Without granular insights into who is underrepresented—or by how much—we lose the empirical foundation necessary for diagnosing inequities and tracking progress. In essence, this is not merely a technical hurdle; it is an erosion of our collective capacity to monitor and advance accountability, fairness, and justice. Information that is available to the public should not be delivered through a filter of loyalty or any political agenda. It should be a tool for us to measure outcomes such that we manifest our best, not our worst.
In this book, “Black” and “African American” are used interchangeably to refer to people of African descent. “African American” always refers to people of African descent who are nationally identified with the United States. “Black” is a larger umbrella
term that describes individuals throughout the African diaspora, including Caribbean and Latine Americans.
Throughout his life work, social scientist Manning Marable reminded us that history is not only about the times long past— understanding contemporary Black history is crucial to understanding our collective experiences and our interactions with public policies. Each of us has the ability to record a unique story that adds to this rich and inclusive tradition. Every day, Black Americans are subject to memes that do little more than caricature their life experiences for public consumption. While social media has increased exposure to the teachings and thought leadership of prominent and affluent Black Americans, the more prominent images of Black Americans remain those that obscure the more general narratives that can be constructed through data.
Information is power.
Those who control the collection, analysis, and consumption of data to some degree control our collective understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. As Khalil Gibran Muhammad offered, the meaning and relevance of data rely on our collective ability to monitor or interrogate complex social issues using the tools available to us in the creation—and consumption—of information. Those who control access to information have the ability to, among other things, regulate how public institutions set priorities. Data, both quantitative and qualitative, is important. Examining the information in these pages can inform and develop our thinking about the historical and contemporary conditions and contributions of Black people in America.
Monique Couvson September 29, 2025
THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF BLACK AMERICA
The 1790 U.S. Census recorded 757, 208 Black people in the United States—including 59,527 free Black people and 697,681 enslaved Black people.
By 1860, just three years before the Emancipation Proclamation legally ended the institution of slavery, the recorded number of Black Americans had reached more than 4.4 million, including more than 390,000 free people and more than 3.9 million enslaved Black people.1 From these humble beginnings, the Black population in America has grown to be richly diverse.
This collection of statistics presents a set of basic facts, figures, and trends with respect to the Black population in the United States.
How many Black people live in the United States?
Black Americans are the third-largest racial/ethnic group in the United States, behind White people and Latine people.2
The number of Black people (alone or in combination with another racial or ethnic identity) living in the United States is between 49.2 million and 51.6 million, an increase of 36 percent from 2000. This is a record number that constitutes between 14 percent and 15 percent of the U.S. population.3
Most of the Black U.S. population—82 percent, which constitutes 39.6 million people—identify as single-race, non-Hispanic.4
Among Black Americans, 12 percent, which is 5.6 million people, identify as multiracial non-Hispanic. Three million people, or 6 percent, identify as Black Hispanic.5
How has the Black population grown and shifted?
The Black population in the United States grew by 33 percent, or more than 12 million, between 2000 and 2023.6
11 percent of the Black U.S. population, or 5 million Black Americans, are foreign-born.7
The percentage of single-race, non-Hispanic Black people in the United States grew by 17 percent between 2000 and 2023.8
The percentage of multiracial, non-Hispanic Black people in the United States grew by 269 percent between 2000 and 2023—from 1.5 million to 5.6 million people.9
The percentage of Black Hispanic people in the United States grew by 210 percent between 2000 and 2023— from 950,000 to 3 million people.10
What is the age breakdown of the Black population?
The median age of Black people is 32.6 years, approximately six years younger than the median age for the U.S. population.11
The subpopulation of single-race, non-Hispanic Black Americans has a median age of 35.4 years old, with 26 percent of this subpopulation being below the age of 20 years old and only 14 percent being age 65 or older.12
The subpopulation of Black Americans who identify as multiracial, non-Hispanic is the youngest subgroup of the Black population, with a median age of 19.5 years old. 49 percent of the multiracial, non-Hispanic population is below the age of 20.13
The subpopulation of Black Americans who identify as Black Hispanic is the second youngest, with a median age of 21.7 years old. 45 percent of the Black Hispanic group is below the age of 20 years old.14
44 percent of all Black Americans are under the age of
30, with 43 percent between ages 30 and 64 years old.15
12 percent of all Black Americans are age 65 or older.16
22 percent of all Black Americans are ages 45 to 64.17
21 percent of Black Americans are ages 30 to 44.18
17 percent of Black Americans are ages 18 to 29.19
27 percent of Black Americans are under the age of 18.20
What languages do Black Americans speak?
Most Black Americans, 88 percent, speak only English at home. An additional 8 percent of Black Americans who speak another language at home report speaking English “very well.”21
Other languages reported to be spoken at home include the following:
Spanish (4 percent)
French or Haitian Creole (3 percent)
Niger- Congo languages (1 percent) and Amharic and other Ethiopian languages (1 percent)
Where do Black people live in the United States?
56 percent of the Black population in the United States lives in the South.22
17 percent of Black Americans live in the Northeast.23
17 percent of Black Americans live in the Midwest.24
10 percent of Black Americans live in the West.25
