Racial demographics of the United States
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The United States is a diverse country racially. It has a majority of persons of White/European ancestry spread throughout the country. Racial and ethnic minorities are concentrated in coastal and metropolitan areas. The black or African American population is concentrated in the South with 60 percent of blacks living there, making up 20 percent of the population of the region. Some 70 percent of Hispanics are concentrated in the Southwest, making up 25 percent of the region's population. Asian Americans are concentrated mainly in the Western coastal areas.
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 numbers. As of 2005, four states (California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas) have "minority-majorities," where non-Hispanic whites are not a majority of their state's population. Ten other states have minority groups at over a quarter of their states' population, and 15 states where non-Hispanic whites are over 70 percent of their state populations.
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[edit] Racial makeup of U.S. population
In 2006, the United States became the third nation in world history to reach 300 million people, behind China and India, each of which has over a billion people.
The spectacular growth of the Hispanic population through immigration and higher birth rates are noted as a partial factor for the US’ population gains in the last quarter-century. The 2000 census also found Native Americans at their highest population ever, 4.5 million, since the U.S was founded in 1776.
[edit] Racial groups
Americans, in part due to categories outlined by the U.S. government, generally are described as belonging to these 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 Sub-Saharan Africa);
- Native Americans/Alaska 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, Filipino 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).
- Some other race (those who, whatever their racial origins or heritage, don't feel comfortable choosing any of the foregoing categories. Respondents must write in their "race", but they usually just enter their ancestral nationality: Mexican, Puerto Rico, Sri Lankan, etc. This category has been especially popular with Hispanics and people who are bi-racial and multi-racial, mostly due to the absence of the Mestizo, and Mulatto categories from the Census form);
- Two or more races, also known as the multiracial category (those who check off and/or write in more than one race. Any number, up to all six, of the racial categories can be reported by any respondent).
Pie Chart of the most common American ancesteries
The government and the Census Bureau consider race to be separate from ethnicity. They count two ethnicities: Hispanic and non-Hispanic. Although multiple racial categories can be chosen, respondents must choose only one of these two ethnic categories. Hispanics do not constitute a separate race; rather, they belong to the same racial categories as the rest of the US population, with Hispanic heritage viewed as the differentiating factor.
There has been interest by the U.S. government, including president George W. Bush, in the elimination of racial and ethnic categories and new constitutional laws to prohibit the sampling of race in government practices. This radical concept was practiced in California by Proposition 209, passed in 1996 to prohibit the state's use of race in decisions on employment and college admissions. Proposition 54 in 2003 failed to pass; it would have made California the first state to officially abandon racial designation but allow the US census to collect racial data.
[edit] Racial identity and categorization: Pros and Cons
It should be pointed out that most statistics from government agencies other than the Census Bureau (for example: the Center for Disease Control's data on vital statistics, or the FBI's crime statistics) omit "Some other race" and include the people in this group in the white population. In such cases, the statistics will also include the vast majority of Hispanics in the white population. For one example of this, see the CIA Factbook. [1]
Although "Asian American" also includes those whose ancestry originates in the countries of the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh), the category is more popularly identified with East Asia. The term Black 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, before the decision to allow multiple racial choices, the categories disregarded the multi-ethnic heritage of many Americans. For these and other reasons, the broad categories which have traditionally been used to define race in America have come under much criticism.
Many Americans believe the subject of race is very sensitive to potentially offend or single out people by their color not by character, and to declare one a member of a "race" is divisive. And with the social trends of political correctness in America ruled out the practice is wrong or unnecessary, there are obvious reasons why race is used by state and federal governments to decide on matters to assure equality in jobs, income and schooling in each racial group since the 1960s.
African Americans, Native Americans, whites and multi-racial persons had protested census methods of racial classification, because in the past, to have non-white "blood" had a social stigma until racial discrimination was outlawed in the 1960s. Today, critics assume for one to openly admit they are black, Amerindian, Asian or Latino has more preferential treatment than whites without any minority descent, to receive employment programs, student loans in college admissions and other awards by affirmative action policy, is reverse racism and some states lifted or changed the policies in the 1990s as the debate for racial preferences by ones' identity, continues today.
Even a few critics compared the practices of racial designation to historic uses in other countries, most notably in Apartheid South Africa until the tough racial exclusion laws were repealed in 1990. And the Nuremberg Laws of 1930s Nazi Germany classified Jewish-Germans a "race" but by religion or if they had one Jewish parent. This practice made German Jews suffered discrimination, and to ultimately end as victims in the holocaust. This is inflammable criticism on the potential dangers of using race to decide who gets more or less, or who's free or not. The U.S. constitution and civil rights laws prohibit racial oppression, but Americans worry on continuous racism and discrimination remains to have socioeconomic effects on millions of their citizens such as women, people of color and lower-income persons.
[edit] Evolution
[edit] Majority group
The majority of the 300 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 by 2050. (Properly speaking, the official white ratio was 75.1% in 2000, since it includes the 6% of the total population that self-identified as white Hispanic. 69.1% is just the "non-Hispanic White" portion of the US population and includes European Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and North African Americans.)
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". Other ethnic European origins included are Dutch/Belgian, Lithuanian, Latvian, former Yugoslavs, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese, Czech, Slovak,Australian, New Zealander and Spanish. A comparatively small fraction of recent immigrants are non-Hispanic whites, but the largest numbers come from Canada, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
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 their 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.
[edit] Minority groups
[edit] Hispanics (a non-racial minority)
While there have been few immigrants directly from Spain, millions have come from Latin America. They and their descendants are known as Latinos or Hispanics and are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 12.5% of the population in 2000. This has brought increasing use of the Spanish language in the United States. People of Mexican descent made up 6.5% of the US population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. The Hispanic category is based on national origin, language and culture, not race, and is defined by the Census as anybody from or with ancestry from Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America, so a Hispanic may be of any race.
In Census 2000, Hispanics identified as follows: 47.9% White; 42.2% "Some other race"; 6.3% Two or more races; 2% Black or African American; 1.2% American Indian and Alaska Native; 0.3% Asian; and 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander[2]. The "Some other race" respondents usually identify by their national origin only ("Mexican", "Salvadoran", etc.); most are Mestizo, though some of these may actually be unmixed Amerindians, and there are also many Mulattoes.
In fact, more than half of Hispanics are multiracial (Mestizo and Mulatto, especially), therefore the "Two or more races" category should be the largest one for them. This category is formed by checking off two or more of the others — i.e., there is no box that reads "Two or more races" or "Multiracial" — thus, Mestizo Hispanics are supposed to check off White and American Indian/Alaska Native, while Mulatto Hispanics are supposed to check off White and Black or African American. However, it appears that many Mulatto and Mestizo Hispanics are unaware of this or reluctant to do it, likely because they assume that "White" refers strictly to non-Hispanic White; that "Black" refers to non-Hispanic Black; and similarly that Native American refers only to non-Hispanic Native American. Indeed, the OMB definition of the latter group, which specifically requires "tribal affiliation or community attachment," seems designed to exclude the several millions of Native American Hispanics. The overuse of the "Some other race" category could be avoided by putting "Mestizo" and "Mulatto" directly on the census form. Respondents in these two categories could even be assigned/imputed to the "Two or more races" category. It is mostly due to the absence of these options that a very large number of Hispanics report "Some other race" instead.
[edit] Black Americans
About 12.3% (2000 census) of the American people are Black, mainly African American, most of whom are descendants of the enslaved Africans brought to the U.S. between the 1620s and 1860s 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. Historically, most African Americans lived in the southeast and south-central states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. Since World War I there occurred the Great Migration of rural black Americans to the industrial Northeast, urban Midwest and, in a smaller wave, to the west coast that lasted until 1960. Today, most African Americans (over 60%) live outside the southern US and in urban areas, but are increasingly moving to the suburbs. In US history, any person with black or African American ancestry, even if they were mostly white, were designated and classified as "black", according to the now-defunct "one drop rule," by which any black/African blood made the person "black" in legal sense. Today, the US census in law and practice does not declare a person to belong in any race/ethnicity without the prior consent of the respondent.
[edit] Asian Americans
A third significant minority is the Asian American population (3.7% in 2000), most of whom are concentrated on the West Coast, with California home to 4.5 million Asian Americans, and Hawaii where they compose the majority at 70% of the islands' people. Asian Americans live across the country as well as in New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston, and other urban centers. 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 (may included Korean) immigration happened in the mid to late 1800s. The term "Asian" does not constitute a single "race", but designated a person with ancestry from the geographical continent of Asia and included the geopolitical regions of the Middle East, South Asia and formerly the Pacific Islands before a new category was created for them in 2000.
[edit] Two or more races
Multiracial Americans numbered 6.8 million in 2000, or 2.4% of the population. They can be any combination of races (white, black, Asian, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, "Some other race") and ethnicities, and the growing multiracial identity movement wants the US to recognize that there are millions of Americans who don't focus on racial identification, if they happen to be biracial or intensely mixed through family history. Miscegenation or inter-racial marriage, most notably between whites and African Americans, was deemed immoral and illegal in most states in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. California and the western US had similar laws to prohibit white-Asian American marriages until the 1950s. As society and laws change to accept inter-racial marriage, the rates of spouses of another race and their mixed-race children are possibly changing the demographic fabric of America. However, demographers stated the American people are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various immigrant nationalities once treated as separate "races" or culturally distinct until assimilation and integration took place in the mid 20th century. The "Americanization" of foreign ethnic groups and the inter-racial diversity of millions of Americans isn't a new phenomenon, but has more awareness.
[edit] Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up about .9% of the population. The legal and official designation of who is Native American by descent aroused controversy by demographers, tribal nations and government officials for many decades. 2.8 million or 1 percent of Americans have legal Native American recognition, but 1.6 million with part-Native American or "American Indian" ancestry was included among the 4.5 million reported as "Native American" in the 2000 census report. The blood quanta issue is complex and contradictory in admittance of new tribal members, or for census takers to accept any respondents' claims without official documents from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. Genetic scientists estimated over 15 million other Americans may have at a quarter or less of American Indian descent, and possibly every white and black American can have at least one ancestor from Native American tribes. Once thought to face extinction in race or culture, there has been a remarkable revival of Native American identity and tribal sovereignity in the 20th century. The largest tribal group are the Navajo, but they call themselves "Na'Dene" live on a 16-million square acre Indian reservation covering northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico and southeast Utah, but home to half of 450,000 Navajo Nation members. In ethnological terms, the Cherokee are twice the size at 800,000 in full or part-blood degrees, but 70,000 live in Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation, and 15,000 in North Carolina on remnants of their ancestral homelands.
[edit] Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders numbered 398,835 in 2000, or 0.1% of the population. Alike that of other racial minorities and compared to Native Americans' racial identity, most Native Hawaiians on the island chain of Hawaii are highly mixed with Asian, European and other ancestry. Only 1 out of 50 Native Hawaiians can be legally defined as "full blood" and some demographers believe by the year 2025, the last full-blooded Native Hawaiians will die off, leaving a culturally distinct, but racially-mixed population. However, there is more individual self-designation of what is Native Hawaiian than before the US annexed the islands in 1898. Throughout Hawaii, the preservation and universal adaptation of Native Hawaiian customs, Hawaiian language/cultural schools solely for legally Native Hawaiian students, and historical awareness has gained momentum of Native Hawaiians are a people here to stay, grow, and are receiving ancestral land reparations.
[edit] Some other race
In the 2000 census, 5.5% of the population, 97% of whom were Hispanic, checked off this category. This is not a standard OMB race category, as it includes people from diverse racial, geographic and ethnic origins. The US census has about 165 ethnic group designations alone. Some census respondents label themselves in various ways, but don't constitute an ethnicity or actual country in legal terms and not the official terminology adapted by the census, i.e. "Jewish" if by descent (the census does not have data on religious membership), "Palestinian American", "Basque" (an ethnic group from France and Spain), "Confederate Southern" from the Southeast US, "Chicano", "Boricua", "Nisei" or Japanese American, "Desi" or Indian-American, "Quebecois" or French Canadian, or "Cherokee American".
[edit] See also
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Demographics of the United States · Demographic history Economic · Social Race · Ethnicity · Ancestry Asian Americans · African Americans · Africans in the United States · Hispanics in the United States · Native Americans · Pacific Islander American · White Americans · European Americans |
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