White Americans

 ( Ethnic Groups In The United States ) 

• Dominic Pulera (2004). 9780826416438, A&C Black. . ISBN 9780826416438

The following table lists all self-reported European and Middle Eastern ancestries with over 50,000 members, according to 2022 estimates from the American Community Survey:

The Census question on race lists the categories White or European American, Black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Asian Americans, plus "Some other race", with the respondent having the ability to mark more than one racial or ethnic category. The Census Bureau defines White people as follows:

"White" refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as "White" or reported entries such as German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian.

In US census documents, the designation White overlaps, as do all other official racial categories, with the term Hispanic or Latino, which was introduced in the 1980 census as a category of Ethnic group, separate and independent of race, despite treating as ethnic groups nationalities from the Americas as ethnically and racially diverse as the United States. Hispanic and Latino Americans as a whole make up a racially diverse group and are the largest minority in the country.

Beginning in 1930, Mexican was added as a distinct race on the US census with the explanation that "practically all Mexican laborers are of a racial mixture difficult to classify". The Mexican racial category was removed in 1940, with new direction that "Mexicans are to be regarded as white unless definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race"; this was continued in 1950. 1970 saw the creation of the Spanish Origin category, which superseded previous classifications for Mexicans, Central and South Americans and is now represented by the Hispanic or Latino "ethnic" category, although technically it cannot be treated as an ethnic or racial group due to the great cultural, ethnic and racial variety existing within the group in question. Hispanic or Latino was again to be raised to racial status for the 2020 census (along with Middle Eastern and North African), but this was canceled by President Donald J. Trump.

The characterization of Middle Eastern and North African Americans as white has been a matter of controversy. In the early 20th century, there were a number of cases where people of Arabs descent were denied entry into the United States or deported, because they were characterized as nonwhite, even though the views of the time do not apply to the way racial issues are viewed today. In the early 21st century, MENA (Middle Eastern, North African) Americans began lobbying for the creation of their own racial group and were successful; in 2015, the US Census Bureau announced that it had responded to their requests and would add a "Middle Eastern and North African" racial category to the 2020 census. The Trump administration nullified this change after coming to power in 2016.

However, in 2024, the Office of Management and Budget under the Biden administration reinstated the proposed changes, announcing that the race categories used by the federal government would be updated, and that Middle Eastern and North African Americans will no longer be classified as white in the upcoming 2030 Census, and Hispanic and Latino will also be treated similar to a racial, rather than ethnic, category, even though they cannot technically be seen as one or the other due to the great diversity within the group. The Census Bureau defines the planned definition of White people as follows:

"Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, including, for example, English, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Scottish."

In cases where individuals do not self-identify, the US census parameters for race give each national origin a racial value.

On some government documents, such as the 2007 SEER program's Coding and Staging Manual, people who reported Muslim (or a sect of Islam such as Shia Islam or Sunni Islam), Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Caucasian race, Middle Eastern, North African, Mexican, Central American or South American ethnicity as their race in the "Some other race" section, without noting a country of origin or Native American tribal affiliation, were automatically tallied as White. The 1990 US census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) listed " Caucasian race" or " Aryan race" among other terms as subgroups of "white" in their ancestry code listing, but 2005 and proceeding years of PUMS codes do not.

Social perceptions of whiteness have evolved over the course of American history. For example, Benjamin Franklin commented that the Saxons of Germany and the English "make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth", indicating how the great scientific discoveries made by the British and Germans were seen as vital for the development of the white race at the time (18th century). Historically, many individuals of European descent were not readily integrated into mainstream American society, being thrown to the margins of society during the mass immigration movements that occurred between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century due to linguistic issues (groups who did not speak English or other Germanic languages) and religious issues (non-Christian groups or non-Protestants, such as Catholics and Orthodox), including Irish, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Russians, Poles, Spaniards, Czechs and others. HeinOnline link. In Minnesota, prejudice against Finnish immigrants led to a debate surrounding Finnish whiteness and whether Finns should be classified as a Mongoloid people for speaking a non-Indo-European language, being discarded by the local mainstream society.

David Roediger argues that the construction of the white race in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves.Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 186; Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York, 1998). The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship, which made the social integration of other racial groups, such as African-Americans, difficult for decades (Jim Crow laws).Sweet, Frank W. Legal History of the Color Line: The Notion of Invisible Blackness. Backintyme Publishers (2005), .

The fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico as of the 2020 United States census

White Americans constitute the majority of the 332 million people living in the United States, with 71% of the population in the 2020 United States census, including 61.6% who identified as "white alone". This represented a 10.6 percentage point national white demographic decline, from a 72.4% share of the US's self-identified white alone population in 2010. The white birth rate is below the replacement level.

The largest ethnic groups (by ancestry) among White Americans were English or British, followed by Germans and Irish. In the 1980 census 49,598,035 Americans cited that they were of English ancestry, making them 26% of the country and the largest group at the time, and in fact larger than the population of England itself. Slightly more than half of these people would cite that they were of "American" ancestry on subsequent censuses and virtually everywhere that "American" ancestry predominates on the 2000 census corresponds to places where "English" predominated on the 1980 census.