New Race Data Shows a Stable Seattle and a Shifting Portland

Seattle continued to grow more racially diverse last year, but there was a change in how it happened, according to annual census data released last week. The same data also shows Portland is no longer the nation’s “whitest” big city.

Seattle remained a majority-white city, but the share of the population that is white declined from 59.4% in 2022 to 58.7% in 2023. This is a continuation of a trend toward a more racially diverse population in recent years.

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Like Seattle, Portland is also becoming more racially diverse, and last year, it lost its long-held position as the major U.S. city with the highest percentage of white people.

The new census data shows around 64% of Portland’s population was white in 2023. That ranked the Rose City second among the nation’s 50 largest cities, with Colorado Springs moving into the top spot, at 65%.

Among the nation’s 50 biggest cities, 29 did not have a single racial or ethnic majority group last year. Seattle and Portland were among the 21 that did have a majority group, and were among the 13 major cities with a white majority. Five cities had a Hispanic majority, and three had a Black majority. No city had an Asian majority {snip}

In Bellevue, which has racially diversified more quickly than Seattle has in recent years, the Asian population was estimated at 69,000, or around 46%, and the white population was around 62,000, or 41%. {snip}

Most of the other King County cities included in the census data were, like Bellevue, highly diverse, without a single racial or ethnicity majority group. {snip}