Black Americans purportedly exhibit higher rates of obesity than White Americans. Bodyweight is influenced principally by energy intake, voluntary energy expenditure (i.e. exercise) and basal metabolic rate (i.e. resting energy expenditure). Resting energy expenditure is, in turn, influenced by physiological factors that are largely (though not entirely) innate and therefore less amenable to alteration. We herein hypothesized that Blacks exhibit lower resting energy expenditure than Whites. While existing observational evidence provided some support for this supposition, we sought to explore this hypothesis for the first time (to our knowledge) using nationally representative data. We further hypothesized that other ethnicities and multiracial persons would, as a consequence of exhibiting an amalgam of Africoid and Europoid metabolic traits, exhibit an average resting energy expenditure intermediate between Blacks and Whites. Consistent with our first hypothesis we found that Blacks expended approximately 150 to 300 fewer kilocalories per day at rest than did Whites. This finding was significant in each permutation of our analysis—from the simple association of race and resting energy expenditure to our final regression model adjusted for common confounders (i.e. age, gender, income, and education), fat content, diabetes, thyroid dysfunction, and weight loss in previous year. Further, we found that energy intake did not differ significantly between Blacks and Whites whereas Blacks were found to expend significantly more energy voluntarily than Whites. Blacks and Whites did not differ significantly in bodyweight, though Blacks were found to be leaner than Whites as evidenced by significantly lower body fat content in the former. Our findings suggest that if rates of obesity are to be reduced in Black Americans, recommendations would need to encourage lower levels of average energy intake than extant in the general populace and higher levels of activity energy expenditure than extant in the general populace. In short, Blacks would need to adopt more austere lifestyle regimens relative to the general populace in order to reduce their rate of obesity below present levels. Our finding that adiposity (as assessed by X-ray absorptiometry) is slightly, though significantly, lower in Blacks than Whites suggests that conventional classifications of adiposity based on such indirect measures as body mass index may be less applicable in Black Americans presumably due to racial/ethnic differences in body composition. Lastly, our findings accord with theories of human evolution which posit that metabolic adaptations to environmental alteration entailing increased energy efficiency were essential to the survival of the human species.