Race and ethnicity in the United States

[2][3][4] White Americans are the majority in every census-defined region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and 44 out of 50 states, except Hawaii,[6] California,[7] Texas,[8] New Mexico,[9] Nevada,[10] and Maryland.

[31][32] In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the US Department of Labor finalized the update of its EEO-1 report[33] format and guidelines concerning the definitions of racial or ethnic categories.

For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar; a person's appearance, their social circle (how they lived), and ancestry were all considered by society when determining someone's race.

The descendants of Native and Black Americans not only had to contend with laws defining their racial identity for the benefit of the majority, but also with a variety of social consequences depending on how they were perceived in society.

On the other hand, the same individual who could be denied legal standing in a tribe because he was "too White" to claim property rights might still have enough visually identifiable native ancestry to be considered socially as a "half-breed" and stigmatized by both communities.

Virginia incorporated the Roman principle of partus sequitur ventrem into slave law, saying that children of enslaved mothers were born into slavery as well.

[42] In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time by Whites classified individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial categories, but these were always flawed.

The decennial censuses conducted since 1790, after slavery was well established in the United States, included a classification of persons by race, with the categories of "White", "Black", "Mulatto", and "Indian".

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, people of mixed race often migrated to frontiers where societies were more open, and they might be accepted as white if they satisfied obligations of citizenship.

Passage of these laws was often encouraged by white supremacists and people promoting "racial purity", who disregarded the long history of multi-racial unions in the South.

The term Hispanic as an ethnonym emerged in the 20th century, with the rise of migration of laborers from Spanish-speaking countries of the western hemisphere to the United States.

Throughout American history, efforts to classify the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete categories have generated many difficulties.

Early efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of historical categories (such as "mulatto" and "octaroon" among persons with partial African descent) and "blood quantum" distinctions, which became increasingly detached from self-reported ancestry.

[50][51][48][52][49][53] The non-Hispanic White percentage of the 50 states and District of Columbia (60.1% in 2019)[54] has been decreasing since the mid-20th century as a result of changes made in immigration policy, most notably the Hart–Celler Act of 1965.

Most French Americans are believed to be descended from colonists of Catholic New France; exiled Huguenots, much fewer in number and settling in the eastern English colonies in the late 1600s and early 1700s, needed to assimilate into the majority culture and have intermarried over generations.

They typically have origins in the Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America, although a few also come from other places (0.2% of Hispanic and Latino Americans were born in Asia, for example).

The United States also has large Dominican, Guatemalan, Colombian, Honduran, Spanish, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan, Argentine, and Panamanian populations.

[25] 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.

[89] Recent African immigrants in the United States come from countries such as Jamaica, Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Guyana, and Somalia.

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.

The expert groups felt that the earlier "White" designation no longer accurately represents MENA identity, so they successfully lobbied for a distinct categorization.

[106] The new question on the US census will identify the MENA category to include:[107] Indigenous peoples of the Americas, particularly Native Americans, made up 2.9% of the population in 2020, numbering 3.7 million.

[111] The second largest tribal group is the Navajo, who call themselves Diné and live on a 16‑million-acre[f] Indian reservation covering northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southeast Utah.

[citation needed] The third largest group are the Lakota (Sioux) Nation, with distinct federally recognized tribes located in the states of Minnesota, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming; and North and South Dakota.

[citation needed] Some demographers believe that by 2025, the last full-blooded Native Hawaiian will die off, leaving a culturally distinct but racially mixed population.

[120] More recently, many different DNA studies have shown that many African Americans have European admixture, reflecting the long history in this country of the various populations.

[119] The Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute notes that "although genetic analyses of large numbers of loci can produce estimates of the percentage of a person's ancestors coming from various continental populations, these estimates may assume a false distinctiveness of the parental populations, since human groups have exchanged mates from local to continental scales throughout history.

"[123] In the 2000 census, the non-standard category of "Other"[3] was especially intended to capture responses such as mestizo and mulatto,[29] two large multiracial groups in most of the countries of origin of Hispanic and Latino Americans.

In addition to its variation, the ancestry of people in the United States is also marked by varying amounts of intermarriage between ethnic and racial groups.

Generally, the degree of mixed heritage increases the longer people's ancestors have lived in the United States (see melting pot).