The United States is a very diverse country racially. According to the 2000 census, the United States has 31 ethnic groups with at least one million members each, with numerous others represented in smaller amounts.
Racial groups
Americans, in part due to categories outlined by the U.S. government, generally are described as belonging to one of five racial groups:
- White, also called Caucasian (those having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa);
- Black, or African American (those having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa);
- Native Americans/Alaskan Natives, also called American Indians (those having origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central and South America, and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment);
- Asian, also called Asian American and frequently specified as Chinese American, Indian American, etc. (those having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent);
- Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander (those having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands).
The government and Census Bureau considers race to be separate from ethnicity.
Although "Asian American" includes those whose ancestry originates from the countries of the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), the category is more popularly identified with East Asia. The term African-American is popularly associated with centuries-long black residents, but the Census does not make distinctions between them and, say, recent Afro-Caribbean immigrants from Jamaica or refugees from Somalia. Furthermore, the categories disregard the multi-ethnic heritage of many Americans.
Evolution
Majority group
Top ancestry in each U.S. county in 2000.
The majority of the 298 million people currently living in the United States descend from European immigrants who have arrived since the establishment of the first colonies (most, however, arrived after Reconstruction). This majority, 69.1% in 2000, tends to decrease every year, and whites are expected to become a plurality within a few decades. In the 2000 Census, Americans were able to state their ancestry. The most frequently stated European ancestries were German (19.2%), Irish (10.8%), English (7.7%), Italian (5.6%) and Scandinavian (3.7%). The largest Central European ancestry was Polish (both Catholic Poles and Ashkenazi Jews), and the largest Eastern European was Russian (includes a recent influx of Ashkenazi Jews). There were other significant ancestries from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as from French Canada. Most registering as French American are descended from colonists of Catholic New France. Exiled Huguenots quickly assimilated into the relevant British population of the Thirteen Colonies, immediately seen and self-regarded as subjects of the Crown under the old Plantagenet claim. Many citizens listed themselves as simply "American" on the census (7.2%). Some ancestries are likely to have been understated more than others, with English ancestry perhaps particularly prone to be overlooked as it is least distinct from "American". A county by county map of plurality ethnic groups reveals that the areas with the largest "American" ancestry populations were mostly settled by English, French, Welsh, Scottish and Irish. This suggests that percentages listed for those groups should consequently be larger, also applying for the converse. Dutch and Hanoverians, whose countries were (at different times) in personal union with the British monarchy, settled in the British colonies, but more often retroactively seek identity in respective countries today (Netherlands and Germany). This helps colonial diasporas fit in more with current nations. See British American. These numbers, however, are less precise than they appear. Even though a high proportion of the population has two or more ancestries, only slightly more than one ancestry was stated per person, suggesting that many were omitted, either because they were not known or not considered important enough by the individuals.
Minority groups
Hispanics (a non-racial minority)
While there were few immigrants directly from Spain, there were millions from Mexico and South and Central America. They and their descendants are known as Hispanics and are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 13.4% of the population in 2002. This has brought increasing use of the Spanish language in the United States. People of Mexican descent made up 7.3% of the population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. The Hispanic category is based more on language than race and is defined by the Census as anybody from or with ancestry from Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America (i.e., from Hispanic America), so Hispanics may be of any race. About 45% identify by their national background only ("Mexican", "Salvadoran"); they are mostly mestizo, though some of these may actually be unmixed Amerindians. About 40% identify as white of European ancestry; on average, they tend to have a slightly greater admixture of Amerindian or African blood than non-Hispanic whites. White Hispanics are a diverse group consisting of most Cuban Americans, many Puerto Ricans, and a large proportion of the New Mexican Hispanos, Tejanos, and recent South American immigrants, as well as children of mixed marriages between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. Another 5% identify as black or mulatto; they typically are descended from Spanish-speaking Caribbean immigrants such as Dominicans. The remainder includes mostly self-identified Indians (Maya, Mixtec, etc.) and people of mixed background. With the exception of a tiny minority of families with specific Spanish or Mexican ancestry, Filipinos are not classified as Hispanic, but Asian.
African Americans
About 12.9% (2000 census) of the American people are African Americans of non-Hispanic origin, many of whom are descendants of the enslaved Africans brought to the U.S. between the 1620s and 1807 and emancipated during the American Civil War. Starting in the 1970s, the black population has been bolstered by immigration from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Haiti; more recently, starting in the 1990s, there has been an influx of African immigrants to the United States due to the instability in political and economic opportunities in various nations in Africa.
Asian Americans
A third significant minority is the Asian American population (4.2%), most of whom are concentrated on the West Coast and Hawaii. It is by no means a monolithic group; the largest groups are immigrants or descendants of emigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. While the Asian-American population is generally a fairly recent addition to the nation's ethnic mix, large waves of Chinese, Filipino and Japanese immigration happened in the mid to late 1800s.
Native Americans
The indigenous peoples in the United States, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up about 1.5% of the population.
See also
