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White Americans

White Americans
White Americans (alone/one race only) in 2020
Total population
235 million (71%)
White, in combination with other races
204 million (61.6%)
White, one race only [1]
Regions with significant populations
All areas of the United States
Languages
Predominantly English
Religion
[2]

White Americans (also referred to as European Americans) are Americans who identify as white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. According to the 2020 census, 71%, or 235,411,507 people, were White alone or in combination, and 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were White alone. This represented a national white demographic decline from a 72.4% white alone share of the U.S. population in 2010.

As of July 1, 2022, United States Census Bureau estimates that 75.8% of the US population were white alone, while Non-Hispanic whites were 59.3% of the population.[3] For these population estimates, the 15.1% who identified as "Some Other Race" in 2020[4] were redistributed into other racial categories, with most of them reclassified as white alone.[5] European Americans are the largest panethnic group of white Americans and have constituted the majority population of the United States since the nation's founding.

The U.S. Census Bureau uses a particular definition of "white" that differs from some colloquial uses of the term.[6][7] The Bureau defines "White" people to be those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa".[8] Within official census definitions, people of all racial categories may be further divided into those who identify as "not Hispanic or Latino" and those who do identify as "Hispanic or Latino".[9][6] The term "non-Hispanic white", rather than just "white", may be the census group corresponding most closely to those persons who identify as and are perceived to be white in common usage; similarly not all Hispanic/Latino people identify as "white", "black", or any other listed racial category.[7][6] In 2015, the Census Bureau announced their intention to make Hispanic/Latino and Middle Eastern/North African racial categories similar to "white" or "black", with respondents able to choose one, two, or more racial categories; this change was canceled during the Trump administration.[7][10] Other persons who are classified as "white" by the U.S. census but may or may not identify as or be perceived as white include Arab Americans and Jewish Americans of European or MENA descent.[11][12][13][14] In the United States, the term White people generally denotes a person of European ancestry, but has been legally extended to people of West Asian and North African (Middle Eastern, West Asian, and North African) ancestry.[15][16][17]

The most commonly reported ancestries of non-Hispanic White Americans include German (13%), Irish (10%), English (9%), Italian (6%), French (4%), Polish (3%), Scottish (3%), Scotch-Irish (2%), and Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian (each 1%), respectively.[18][19][20][21] It is difficult to track ancestry from Spain in Whites alone since people of Spanish descent are Hispanic and though the census does track Hispanics' national origin, it does not classify it by race. In 2021, 995,583 people of any race claimed ancestry from Spain, 0.3% of the total population.[22] The British Americans' demography is considered a serious under-count as the stock tend to self-report and identify as simply "Americans" (7%), due to the length of time they have inhabited the United States, particularly if their family arrived prior to the American Revolution.[23][14] The vast majority of white Americans also have ancestry from multiple countries.

  1. ^ "2020 Census Redistricting: Supplementary Tables". United States Census Bureau. August 12, 2021. Archived from the original on September 18, 2021. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  2. ^ "Religious tradition by race/ethnicity (2014)". The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
  3. ^ "QuickFacts: United States". www.census.gov.
  4. ^ "2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country". Census.gov. Retrieved April 15, 2023.
  5. ^ "Methodology for the United States Population Estimates: Vintage 2022" (PDF). US Census Bureau. December 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2023.
  6. ^ a b c "Analysis | There's a big problem with how the census measures race". The Washington Post. February 6, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
  7. ^ a b c Demby, Gene (June 16, 2014). "On The Census, Who Checks 'Hispanic,' Who Checks 'White,' And Why". NPR.org. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
  8. ^ Karen R. Humes; Nicholas A. Jones; Roberto R. Ramirez, eds. (March 2011). "Definition of Race Categories Used in the 2010 Census" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. p. 3. Retrieved September 8, 2013.
  9. ^ "The White Population: 2000" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. August 2001. Retrieved March 10, 2011.
  10. ^ "Public Comments Received on Federal Register notice 79 FR 71377: Proposed Information Collection; Comment Request; 2015 National Content Test" (PDF). Census.gov. December 2, 2014 – February 2, 2015. Retrieved October 29, 2019.
  11. ^ "Census Bureau explores new Middle East/North Africa ethnic category". Pewresearch.org. March 24, 2014. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  12. ^ Sources:
    • Korelitz, Seth (March 1997). "The Menorah Idea: From Religion to Culture, from Race to Ethnicity". American Jewish History. 85 (1). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 75–100. ISSN 0164-0178. JSTOR 23885597.
    • Novick, Peter (September 20, 2000). The Holocaust in American Life. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 127–32. ISBN 978-0-547-34961-9.
    • Siporin, Steve (November 1990). "Immigrant and Ethnic Family Folklore, Western States Jewish History". Western Historical Quarterly. 21 (4). Oxford University Press: 230–42. JSTOR 969273.
    • Lerner, Michael (May 18, 1993). "Jews Are Not White". The Village Voice. In America, to be 'white' means to be the beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world
  13. ^ Sources:
    • Thompson, Derek (August 19, 2008). "Do white people really come from the Caucasus?". Slate. Retrieved March 10, 2011. Caucasians included most Europeans, Northern Africans, and Asians as far east as the Ganges Delta in modern India.
    • Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin; Mountain, Joanna; Koenig, Barbara A. (2001). "The meanings of "race" in the new genomics: Implications for health disparities research" (PDF). Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. 1: 33–75. PMID 12669320. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 3, 2016.
    • Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.
    • Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44–46.
  14. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference LiebersonWaters86 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ "Race".
  16. ^ Bhopal, R.; Donaldson, L. (1998). "White, European, Western, Caucasian, or what? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity, and health". American Journal of Public Health. 88 (9): 1303–1307. doi:10.2105/ajph.88.9.1303. PMC 1509085. PMID 9736867.
  17. ^ Baum 2006, p. 3,18.
  18. ^ Bureau, U.S. Census. "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved August 29, 2017.
  19. ^ Bureau, U.S. Census. "American FactFinder – Search". Archived from the original on February 11, 2020. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  20. ^ Sharon R. Ennis; Ríos-Vargas, Merarys; Nora G. Albert (May 2011). "U.S. Census Bureau" (PDF). p. 14. Retrieved July 11, 2011.
  21. ^ "Selected Social Characteristics in the United States: 2007". U.S. Census American Community Survey. 2007. Archived from the original on February 11, 2020. Retrieved October 5, 2020.
  22. ^ 2021 Community Survey, Table B03001: Hispanic or Latino Origin by Specific Origin
  23. ^ Sources:
    • Pulera, Dominic (October 20, 2004). Sharing the Dream: White Males in Multicultural America. A&C Black. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-8264-1643-8. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
    • Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.
    • Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44–46.

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