white elite. Critical race theorists see racism as embedded in public attitudes and institutions, and highlight institutional racism and unconscious biases. Legal scholar Derrick Bell advanced the interest convergence principle, which suggests that whites support minority rights only when doing so is also in their self-interest. As Whites, especially White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs, are the dominant racial and cultural group, according to sociologist Steven Seidman, writing from a critical theory perspective, "White culture constitutes the general cultural mainstream, causing non-White culture to be seen as deviant, in either a positive or negative manner. Moreover, Whites tend to be disproportionately represented in powerful positions, controlling almost all political, economic, and cultural institutions." Yet, according to Seidman, Whites are most commonly unaware of their privilege and the manner in which their culture has always been dominant in the US, as they do not identify as members of a specific racial group but rather incorrectly perceive their views and culture as "raceless", when in fact it is ethno-national (ethnic/cultural) specific, with a racial base component. Demographic information The fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico as of the 2020 United States Census White Americans constitute the majority of the 332 million people living in the United States, with 61.6% of the population in the 2020 United States Census. This represented a national white demographic decline from a 72.4% share of the US's self-identified 'white alone' population in 2010. The largest ethnic groups (by ancestry) among White Americans were Germans, followed by Irish and English. In the 1980 census 49,598,035 Americans cited that they were of English ancestry, making them 26% of the country and the largest group at the time, and in fact larger than the population of England itself. Slightly more than half of these people would cite that they were of "American" ancestry on subsequent censuses and virtually everywhere that "American" ancestry predominates on the 2000 census corresponds to places where "English" predominated on the 1980 census. Geographic distribution White Americans are the majority racial group in almost all of the United States. They are not the majority in Hawaii, many American Indian reservations, parts of the South, the District of Columbia, all US territories, and in many urban areas throughout the country. Overall the highest concentration of those referred to as "non-Hispanic whites" by the Census Bureau are found in the Midwest, New England, the northern Rocky