The Flags in The World: American

Americans are citizens of the United States of America.^[47] The country is home to people of many different national origins. As a result, many Americans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance.^[47] Although citizens make up the majority of Americans, non-citizen residents, dual citizens, and expatriates may also claim an American identity.^[48]

English-speakers, and even speakers of many other languages, typically use the term "American" to exclusively mean people of the United States; this developed from its original use to differentiate English people of the American colonies from English people of England.^[49] The word "American" can also refer to people from the Americas in general^[50] (see Names for United States citizens).

The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated to America or are descended from people who were brought as slaves within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century,^[51] and American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.^[52]

Despite its multi-ethnic composition,^[53]^[54] the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can also be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists, settlers, and immigrants.^[53] It also includes influences of African-American culture.^[55] Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics.^[53]

In addition to the United States, Americans and people of American descent can be found internationally. As many as seven million Americans are estimated to be living abroad, and make up the American diaspora.

Racial and ethnic groups

The United States of America is a diverse country, racially, and ethnically.^[61] 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.^[62]^[63]^[64]

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 group in the nation.

White and European Americans

People of European descent, or White Americans (also referred to as Caucasian Americans), constitute the majority of the 308 million people living in the United States, with 72.4% of the population in the 2010 United States Census.^[a]^[59]^[67] They are considered people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.^[59] Of those reporting to be White American, 7,487,133 reported to be Multiracial; with largest combination being white and black.^[67] Additionally, there are 29,184,290 White Hispanics or Latinos.^[67] Non-Hispanic Whites are the majority in 46 states. There are four minority-majority states: California, Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii.^[59] In addition, the District of Columbia has a non-white majority.^[59] The state with the highest percentage of non-Hispanic White Americans is Maine.^[68]

The largest continental ancestral group of Americans are that of Europeans who have origins in any of the original peoples of Europe. This includes people via African, North American, Caribbean, Central American or South American and Oceanian nations that have a large European diaspora.^[69]

The Spanish were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States.^[70] Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the United States.^[71] Twenty-one years later, Virginia Dare born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the Thirteen Colonies to English parents.

In the 2014 American Community Survey, German Americans (14.4%), Irish Americans (10.4%), English Americans (7.6%) and Italian Americans (5.4%) were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States forming 37.8% of the total population.^[72] However, the English-Americans and British-Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as the stock tend to self-report and identify as simply 'Americans' due to the length of time they have inhabited America.^[73]^[74]^[75]^[76]

Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate^[77] and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income,^[78] and median personal income^[79] of any racial demographic in the nation.

Hispanic and Latino Americans

Hispanic or Latino Americans (of any race) constitute the largest ethnic minority in the United States. They form the second largest group after non-Hispanic Whites in the United States, comprising 16.3% of the population according to the 2010 United States Census.^[b]^[83]^[84]

Hispanic/Latino Americans are very racially diverse, and as a result form an ethnic category, rather than a race.^[85]^[86]^[87]^[88]

People of Spanish or Hispanic descent have lived in what is now the United States since the founding of St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. In the State of Texas, Spaniards first settled the region in the late 1600s and formed a unique cultural group known as Tejanos (Texanos).

Black and African Americans

Black and African Americans are citizens and residents of the United States with origins in Sub-Saharan Africa.^[91] According to the Office of Management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as well as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa.^[92] The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification since not all 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.^[91]

African Americans (also referred 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.^[93] According to the 2009 American Community Survey, there were 38,093,725 Black and African Americans in the United States, representing 12.4% of the population. In addition, there were 37,144,530 non-Hispanic blacks, which comprised 12.1% of the population.^[94] This number increased to 42 million according to the 2010 United States Census, when including Multiracial African Americans,^[92] making up 14% of the total U.S. population.^[c]^[95] Black and African Americans make up the second largest group in the United States, but the third largest group after White Americans and Hispanic or Latino Americans (of any race).^[83] 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.^[95]

Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captives from West Africa, who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States.^[96] As an adjective, the term is usually spelled African-American.^[97] 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.^[98] All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually 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);^[99] by the beginning of the American Revolutionary War 1/5th of the total population was enslaved.^[100] During the revolution, some would serve in the Continental Army or Continental Navy,^[101]^[102] while others would serve the British Empire in Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, and other units.^[103] By 1804, the northern states (north of the Mason–Dixon line) had abolished slavery.^[104] However, slavery would persist in the southern states until the end of the American Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.^[105] Following the end of the Reconstruction Era, which saw the first African American representation in Congress,^[106] African Americans became disenfranchised and subject to Jim Crow laws,^[107] legislation that would persist until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act due to the Civil Rights Movement.^[108]

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%).^[109] African immigrants may also experience conflict with African Americans.

Asian Americans

Another significant population is the Asian American population, comprising 17.3 million in 2010, or 5.6% of the U.S. population.^[d]^[111]^[112] California is home to 5.6 million Asian Americans, the greatest number in any state.^[113] In Hawaii, Asian Americans make up the highest proportion of the population (57 percent).^[113] 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.^[114]

They are by no means a monolithic group. 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 relation to those groups.^[115] Additionally, Asians have a higher education attainment level than all other racial groups in the United States.^[116]^[117] For better or worse, the group has been called a model minority.^[118]^[119]^[120]

While Asian Americans have been in what is now the United States since before the Revolutionary War,^[121]^[122]^[123] relatively large waves of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese immigration did not begin until the mid-to-late 19th century.^[123] Immigration and significant population growth continue to this day.^[124] Due to a number of factors, Asian Americans have been stereotyped as "perpetual foreigners".

Middle Easterners and North Africans

According to the American Jewish Archives and the Arab American National Museum, some of the first Middle Easterners and North Africans (viz. Jews and Berbers) arrived in the Americas between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries.^[127]^[128]^[129]^[130] Many were fleeing ethnic or ethnoreligious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition,^[131]^[132] and a few were also taken to the Americas as slaves. In 1909, the Superior Court and the Department of Justice in Washington D.C. ruled on a case that redefined Middle Eastern Americans and their racial distinction. According to the Arab American Historical Foundation and the Los Angeles Herald, a case in which George Shishim, a Lebanese policeman, arrested a "white" man, who claimed that because Shishim was Lebanese, he must not be racially "white", but rather "Chinese-Mongolian".^[133] Shishim, his attorneys, and the Syrian-Lebanese and Arab American communities rallied to prove that Lebanese, Syrians, and all Arabs and Middle Easterners were in fact "white" to both gain official citizenship in the United States, as well as avoid other exclusive and restrictive penalties of being labeled as Asian.^[134] One of Shishim's arguments appealed to the white justices' desire to connect to their revered religious figure, Jesus. Shishim said: "If I am a Mongolian, then so was Jesus, because we came from the same land."^[133] As noted in the 1909 publication of the "Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League", the presiding Judge Hutton concluded that Syrians had descended from Hebrews, who descended from "the Semitic family of the 'Indo-Aryan race'", but because the Mongol conquerors had killed the Syrian men, and interbred with the Syrian women, "western nations have been unable to restore [the Syrians'] original characteristics" (6).^[135]^{[unreliable source]} Shishim won and was granted citizenship, and Middle Easterners were thereafter legally considered "white" in the United States.

However, in 1910, Congress passed a bill that defined "Armenians, Assyrians, and Jews" as "Asiatics", while still approving their claims to citizenship.^[136]^{[unreliable source]} This declaration, while not taking away their citizenship, affirmed the ethnic origins and identities of Armenians, Assyrians, and Jews as "non-white".

Over the decades of the 20th century, as more Arab Americans, Jewish Americans and other Middle Eastern ethnic groups settled in the United States, the racial discrimination they faced also increased.^[137]^[138] Due to the ruling in Shishim's case and the interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, United States citizens could not sue one another for discrimination if they belonged to "the same race".^[139] However, in 1987, after an Iraqi-American associate professor was refused tenure due to his Arab origins and a synagogue was spray-painted with anti-Semitic insignia, the Supreme Court ruled "unanimously today that Arabs, Jews and members of other ethnic groups may sue under a post-Civil War law's broad prohibition against discrimination."^[140]

According to the Pew Research Center's Portrait of Jewish Americans, more than 90% of Jews who responded to their survey described themselves as non-Hispanic whites, 2% as black, 3% as Hispanic, and 2% of other racial or ethnic backgrounds.

Additionally, as modern scientific data improved, more information on the true origins and ethnic distinctions emerged. For example, studies have shown that Jews share more genetic relativity to other Jews around the world than to the surrounding non-Jewish ethnic groups.^[142] Some studies have also suggested that other Middle Eastern (non-Jewish) ethnic groups remain one of the closest relations to Jews.

The United States Census Bureau is presently finalizing the ethnic classification of MENA populations. In 2012, prompted in part by post-9/11 discrimination, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee petitioned the Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency to designate the MENA populations as a minority/disadvantaged community.^[134] Following consultations with MENA organizations, the Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would establish a new MENA ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab world, separate from the "white" classification that these populations had previously sought in 1909. The expert groups, felt that the earlier "white" designation no longer accurately represents MENA identity, so they successfully lobbied for a distinct categorization.^[144] This process does not currently include Sikhs, as the Bureau only tabulates them as followers of a religion rather than members of ethnic groups.^[145]

As of December 2015, the sampling strata for the new MENA category includes the Census Bureau's working classification of 19 MENA groups, as well as Turkish, Sudanese, Djiboutian, Somali, Mauritanian, Armenian, Cypriot, Afghan, Azerbaijani and Georgian groups.

Although tabulated, "religious responses" were reported as a single total and not differentiated, despite totaling 1,089,597 in 2000.^[147]

Independent organizations provide improved estimates of the total populations of races and ethnicities in the US using the raw data from the US Census and other surveys.

For example, although any respondents who self-identified as Jewish were included under the religious responses in the census, as Jews are an ethnoreligious group with culture and ethnicity intertwined, estimates from the Mandell L. Berman Institute and the North American Jewish Data Bank put the total population of Jews between 5.34 and 6.16 million in 2000 and around 6.54 million in 2010.^[149] Similarly, the Arab-American Institute estimated the population of Arab Americans at 3.7 million in 2012.