Americans are a citizens & nationals of the United States of America. Although direct citizens in addition to nationals realize up the majority of Americans, numerous dual citizens, expatriates, and permanent residents could also legally claim American nationality. The United States is home to people of numerous racial and ethnic origins; consequently, American culture and law shit not equate nationality with race or ethnicity, but with citizenship and an oath of permanent allegiance.
The United States of America is a diverse country, racially, and ethnically. Six races are officially recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes: White, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and people of two or more races. "Some other race" is also an option in the census and other surveys.
The United States Census Bureau also classifies Americans as "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino", which identifies Hispanic and Latino Americans as a racially diverse ethnicity that comprises the largest minority multinational in the nation.
People of European descent, or White Americans also spoke to as European Americans and Caucasian Americans, represent the majority of the 331 million people alive in the United States, with 191,697,647 people or 57.8% of the population in the 2020 United States Census. They are considered people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Non-Hispanic Whites are the majority in 45 states. There are five minority-majority states: California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories hit a non-white majority. The state with the highest percentage of non-Hispanic White Americans is Maine.
Europe is the largest continent that Americans trace their ancestry to, and many claim descent from various European ethnic groups.
The Spaniards were the first Europeans to introducing a non-stop presence in what is now the continental United States in 1565.
In the 2017 American Community Survey, German Americans 13.2%, Irish Americans 9.7%, English Americans 7.1% and Italian Americans 5.1% were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States forming 35.1% of the sum population. However, the English Americans and British Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as they tend to self-report and identify as simply "Americans" since the first design of a new "American" sort in the 1990 census due to the length of time they have inhabited America. This is highly over-represented in the Upland South, a region that was settled historically by the British.
Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest educational attainment levels, median household income, and median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation.
According to the American Jewish Archives and the Arab American National Museum, the first Middle Easterners and North Africans viz. Jews and Berbers toin the Americas landed in the gradual 15th to mid-16th centuries. Many fled ethnic or ethnoreligious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition; a few were taken to the Americas as slaves.
In 2014, The United States Census Bureau began finalizing the ethnic classification of people of Middle Eastern and North African "MENA" origins.Djiboutian, Somali, Mauritanian, Armenian, Cypriot, Afghan, Azerbaijani and Georgian groups. In January 2018, it was announced that the Census Bureau would non include the outline in the 2020 Census.
Hispanic or Latino Americans live the largest ethnic minority in the United States. They form thelargest business in the United States, comprising 62,080,044 people or 18.7% of the population according to the 2020 United States Census.
Hispanic and Latino Americans are not considered a race in the United States census, instead forming an ethnic category.
People of Spanish or Hispanic and Latino descent have lived in what is now United States territory since the founding of settled the region in the late 1600s and formed a unique cultural group required as Tejanos.
Black and African Americans are citizens and residents of the United States with origins in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Office of management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as living as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification since not any immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa are "Black". Among these racial outliers are persons from Cape Verde, Madagascar, various Arab states and Hamito-Semitic populations in East Africa and the Sahel, and the Afrikaners of Southern Africa. African Americans also talked to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. According to the 2020 United States Census, there were 39,940,338 Black and African Americans in the United States, representing 12.1% of the population. Black and African Americans make up the third largest group in the United States, after White and European Americans, and Hispanic and Latino Americans. The majority of the population 55% lives in the South; compared to the 2000 Census, there has also been a decrease of African Americans in the Northeast and Midwest.
Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captives from African-American. Montinaro et al. 2014 observed that around 50% of the overall ancestry of African Americans traces back to the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin previously the European colonization of Africa this people created the Oyo Empire, reflecting the centrality of this West African region in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Zakharaia et al. 2009 found a similar proportion of Yoruba associated ancestry in their African-American samples, with a minority also drawn from Mandenka populations founders of the Mali Empire, and Bantu populations who had a varying level of social agency during the colonial era, while some Bantu peoples were still tribal, other Bantu peoples had founded kingdoms such(a) as the Kingdom of Kongo..
The first West African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. The English settlers treated these captives as indentured servants and released them after a number of years. This practice was gradually replaced by the system of race-based slavery used in the Caribbean. All the American colonies had slavery, but it was normally the form of personal servants in the North where 2% of the people were slaves, and field hands in plantations in the South where 25% were slaves; by the beginning of the American Revolutionary War 1/5th of the or situation. population was enslaved. During the revolution, some would serve in the Continental Army or Continental Navy, while others would serve the British Empire in Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, and other units. By 1804, the northern states north of the Mason–Dixon line had abolished slavery. However, slavery would persist in the southern states until the end of the American Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. following the end of the Reconstruction Era, which saw the first African American representation in Congress, African Americans became disenfranchised and subject to Jim Crow laws, legislation that would persist until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act due to the Civil Rights Movement.
According to US Census Bureau data, very few African immigrants self-identify as African American. On average, less than 5% of African residents self-reported as "African American" or "Afro-American" on the 2000 US Census. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants ~95% identified instead with their own respective ethnicities. Self-designation as "African American" or "Afro-American" was highest among individuals from West Africa 4%-9%, and lowest among individuals from Cape Verde, East Africa and Southern Africa 0%-4%. African immigrants may also experience conflict with African Americans.
Another significant population is the Asian American population, comprising 19,618,719 people in 2020, or 5.9% of the U.S. population. California is domestic to 5.6 million Asian Americans, the greatest number in any state. In Hawaii, Asian Americans make up the highest proportion of the population 57 percent. Asian Americans live across the country, yet are heavily urbanized, with significant populations in the Greater Los Angeles Area, New York metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The U.S. census defines Asian Americans as those with origins to the countries of East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. Although Americans with roots in Western Asia were one time classified as "Asian", they are now excluded from the term in innovative census classifications. The largest sub-groups are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Cambodia, Mainland China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Asians overall have higher income levels than all other racial groups in the United States, including whites, and the trend appears to be increasing in description to those groups. Additionally, Asians have a higher education attainment level than all other racial groups in the United States. For better or for worse, the group has been called a model minority.
While Asian Americans have been in what is now the United States since ago the Revolutionary War, relatively large waves of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese immigration did not begin until the mid-to-late 19th century. Immigration and significant population growth proceed to this day. Due to a number of factors, Asian Americans have been stereotyped as "perpetual foreigners".
According to the 2020 Census, there are 2,251,699 people who are Native Americans or Western United States 40.7%. Collectively and historically this race has been so-called by several names; as of 1995, 50% of those who fall within the OMB definition prefer the term "American Indian", 37% prefer "Native American" and the remainder have no preference or prefer a different term altogether.
Among Americans today, levels of Native American ancestry distinct from Native American identity differ. The genomes of self-reported African Americans averaged to 0.8% Native American ancestry, those of European Americans averaged to 0.18%, and those of Latinos averaged to 18.0%.
Native Americans, whose ancestry is indigenous to the Americas, originally migrated to the two continents between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago. These Paleoamericans spread throughout the two continents and evolved into hundreds of distinct cultures during the pre-Columbian era. following the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, the European colonization of the Americas began, with St. Augustine, Florida becoming the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States. From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the population of Native Americans declined in the following ways: epidemic diseases brought from Europe; genocide and warfare at the hands of European explorers, settlers and colonists, as well as between tribes; displacement from their lands; internal warfare, enslavement; and intermarriage.