Methodology

To determine America’s most diverse small cities, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on race and ethnicity from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey.  Cities with between 50,000 and 150,000 residents were ranked based on the probability that two residents picked at random will be of different race or ethnicity. The racial and ethnic categories include white, Black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, some other race alone, and two or more races. The probability that any two residents picked at random will belong to a different racial or ethnic category is equivalent to the sum of the squares of each group’s share of the population, subtracted from 1. The same method is used in the USA Today Diversity Index.