Humanities scholars not very diverse

The Splintered Mind- Tina Fernandes Botts and colleagues have recently posted a fascinating analysis of the shockingly low numbers of black- or African-American- identified philosophers in the United States. According to their data, 1.3% of U.S. philosophers self-identify as black (compared to 13% in the general U.S. population).

 ... I went to the Survey of Earned Doctorates to look up some of the raw data. There, I found that the overwhelming whiteness of philosophy is not so unusual among the humanities, if one digs down into the subfield data.

I thought I'd aggregate the three most recent years' data by humanities subfield (U.S. citizens and permanent residents only).....

Starting with philosophy we see:

84.5% white

6.8% Hispanic 

3.0% Asian

2.0% black or African-American

0.0% American Indian

3.6% multi-racial, other, or unknown

Looking only at "white" and "black", here are all the other coded humanities, bolded if either the white percentage exceeds or the black percentage falls below that in philosophy:

Foreign Languages:

French & Italian literature: 87% white, 3.4% black

German literature: 91% white, 1.2% black

Spanish literature: 51% white, 0.9% black (45% Hispanic)

History:

American history (U.S. and Canada): 82% white, 7.3% black

Asian history: 53% white, 0.8% black (38% Asian)

European history: 90% white, 1.6% black

History, science, technology, and society: 85% white, 2.7% black

Latin American history: 50% white, 6.6% black (41% Hispanic)

Middle/Near-East studies: 84% white, 0.0% black

Letters:

American literature (U.S. and Canada): 78% white, 6.6% black

Classics: 91% white, 0.4% black

Comparative literature: 73% white, 4.0% black

English language: 79% white, 7.1% black

English literature (British and Commonwealth): 86% white, 1.7% black

Other humanities:

American/U.S. studies: 60% white, 14.6% black

Archaeology: 85% white, 1.6% black

Art: 81% white, 1.5% black

Drama/theater arts: 78% white, 5.8% black

Music: 77% white, 2.7% black

Musicology/ethnomusicology: 78% white, 2.6% black

Music performance: 79% white, 2.2% black

Music theory and composition: 87% white, 0.5% black

Religion/religious studies: 81% white, 4.3% black

These data thus stand in sharp contrast to the gender data, where philosophy is unusual among the humanities in remaining overwhelmingly male. Philosophy is joined by French, German, and Italian literature, English literature, classics, European history, archaeology, and music theory in being mostly non-Hispanic white folks.