American ancestry

[16][17][18][19][20] Professor Eric Kaufmann has suggested that American nativism has been explained primarily in psychological and economic terms to the neglect of a crucial cultural and ethnic dimension.

[29] The New York City anti-Irish, anti-German, and anti-Catholic secret society the Order of the Star Spangled Banner was formed in 1848.

[31] During the antebellum period (pre-Civil War), between 1830 and 1860, Americanism acquired a restrictive political meaning due to nativist moral panics.

[32] Nativism would eventually influence Congress;[33] in 1924, legislation limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern European countries was ratified, also quantifying previous formal and informal anti-Asian previsions, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907.

"[36] According to 2000 U.S. census data, an increasing number of United States citizens identify simply as "American" on the question of ancestry.

[2] The state with the largest increase over the past two census was Texas, where in 2000, over 1.5 million residents reported having "American ancestry.

"[41] In the 1980 census, 26% of United States residents cited that they were of English ancestry, making them the largest group at the time.

"[2] The four states in which a plurality of the population reported American ancestry were Arkansas (15.7%), Kentucky (20.7%), Tennessee (17.3%), and West Virginia (18.7%).

"[37] Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters write "As whites become increasingly distant in generations and time from their immigrant ancestors, the tendency to distort, or remember selectively, one's ethnic origins increases.... [E]thnic categories are social phenomena that over the long run are constantly being redefined and reformulated.

However, a significant share of whites respond that they are simply "American" or leave the ancestry question blank on their census forms.

These states are similarly highlighted in the map of the self-reported "American" ethnicity in the US Census survey, which might reflect regions with lower subsequent migration from other parts of Europe.