Race in the United States
Encyclopedia
The United States is a racially diverse country. Modern issues of "race", as well as its impact in the political
and economic
development of the nation, have been examined by numerous historians and researchers across a variety of academic disciplines.
There are issues and controversies about the self-identification and classification of "race" within the country, and several trends have emerged in the demographic movements of ethnic groups as discovered by self-reports and genetic testing
.
came largely from widely separated regions of the Old World
. In the Americas, the immigrant populations began to mix
among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent
. In the United States, for example, most people who self-identify as African American
have some European ancestors—in one analysis of genetic markers that have differing frequencies between continents, European ancestry ranged from an estimated 7% for a sample of Jamaicans to ~23% for a sample of African Americans from New Orleans (Parra et al. 1998).
Similarly, many people who identify as European American have some African or Native American ancestors, either through openly interracial marriages or through the gradual inclusion of people with mixed ancestry into the majority population. In a survey of college students who self-identified as white
in a northeastern U.S. university, ~30% were estimated to have less than 90% European ancestry.
In the United States
since its early history, Native Americans
, African American
s, and European American
s were classified as belonging to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person’s appearance, his fraction of known non-European ancestry, and his social circle. The criteria for membership in these races diverged in the late 19th century. During and after Reconstruction, after the emancipation
of slaves after the Civil War, in the effort to restore white supremacy in the South, conservative whites began to classify anyone with "one drop" of "black blood", or known African ancestry, to be black. Such a legal definition was not put into law until the 20th century in most southern states, but many established racial segregation of facilities during the Jim Crow era, after white Democrats
regained control of state legislatures in the South.
In the early 20th century, this notion of "invisible" blackness was made statutory in southern states and many beyond the former Confederacy. Amerindians continued to be defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood" (called blood quantum
) due in large part to efforts at land allotments under the Dawes Act in the late 19th century. Given the financial implications, standards had to be developed to define a person's membership in a tribe or qualification as Native American. For the past century or so, to be white, one had to have "pure" European ancestry.
In the 20th century, efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete categories generated many difficulties (Spickard 1992). By the standards used in past censuses, many millions of mixed-race children born in the United States have been classified as of a different race than one of their biological parents. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories (such as "mulatto
" and "octoroon") and "blood quantum" distinctions, which became increasingly untethered from self-reported ancestry. In addition, a person's racial identity can change over time, and self-ascribed race can differ from assigned race (Kressin et al. 2003).
Until the 2000 census, Latinos were required to identify with a single race, despite the long history of mixing in Latin America
. Partly as a result of the confusion generated by the distinction, 32.9% (U.S. census records) of Latino respondents in the 2000 census ignored the specified racial categories and checked "some other race". (Mays et al. 2003 claim a figure of 42%)
is a diverse
country racially. In 2006, the United States became the third nation in world history to reach 300 million people, behind China
and India
, each of which has over a billion people.
The growth of the Hispanic population through immigration
and high birth rates is noted as a partial factor for the US’ population gains in the last quarter-century. The 2000 census
also found Native Americans
at their highest population, 4.5 million, since the U.S was founded in 1776.
In a survey of college students who self-identified as 'white' in a northeastern U.S. university, around 30% were estimated to have less than 90% European ancestry. Through DNA analysis, the study found an average of 0.7% African genetic admixture with a standard error
of 0.9% and 3.2% Native American admixture with a standard error
of 1.6%, in a sample of white Americans in State College
, Pennsylvania
. Most of the non-white admixture was concentrated in 30% of the sample, with African admixture ranging from 2-20% with an average of 2.3%.
In 1958 Robert Stuckert produced a statistical analysis using historical census data and immigration statistics. He concluded that the growth in the White population could not be attributed to births in the White population and immigration from Europe alone, but also from a significant contribution from the American Black population as well. He concluded that at the time, 21 percent of white Americans had some recent African (or African-American) ancestors. He also concluded that the majority of Americans of African descent were partly white and not entirely black.
More recently, many different DNA studies have shown that many African Americans have European admixture in their ancestry. Proportions of European admixture in African-American DNA have been found in studies to be 17% and between 10.6% and 22.5%. Another recent study found the average to be 21.2%, with a standard error
of 1.2%.
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."
The differences between how Native American and Black identities are defined today (blood quantum versus one-drop) have been based on different historical circumstances. According to the anthropologist Gerald Sider, such racial designations were a means to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of Whites in a society of White hegemony and privilege (Sider 1996; see also Fields 1990). The differences had little to do with biology and more to do with the history of racism
and specific forms of White supremacy
(the social, geopolitical and economic agendas of dominant Whites vis-à-vis subordinate Blacks and Native Americans). They related especially to the different social places which Blacks and Amerindians occupied in White-dominated 19th-century America. Sider suggests that the blood quantum definition of Native American identity enabled mixed-race Whites to acquire Amerindian lands during the allotment process, while the one-drop rule of Black identity enabled Whites to preserve their agricultural labor force in the South. The contrast emerged because, as peoples transported far from their land and kinship ties on another continent, Black labor was relatively easy to control, and they became reduced to valuable commodities
as agricultural laborers. In contrast, Amerindian labor was more difficult to control; moreover, Amerindians occupied large territories that became valuable as agricultural lands, especially with the invention of new technologies such as railroads; thus, the blood quantum definition enhanced White acquisition of Amerindian lands in a doctrine of Manifest Destiny
that subjected them to marginalization and multiple episodic localized campaigns of extermination.
The political economy of race had different consequences for the descendants of aboriginal Americans and African slaves. The 19th-century blood quantum rule meant that it was relatively easier for a person of mixed Euro-Amerindian ancestry to be accepted as White. The offspring of only a few generations of intermarriage between Amerindians and Whites likely would not have been considered Amerindian at all (at least not in a legal sense). Amerindians could have treaty rights to land, but because an individual with only one Amerindian great-grandparent no longer was classified as Amerindian, they lost any legal claim to Amerindian land. According to Sider's theory, Whites were more easily able to acquire Amerindian lands. Socially, 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 Amerindian ancestry to be considered as a "half-breed
" or breed, and stigmatized.
On the other hand, the 20th-century one-drop rule made it relatively difficult for anyone of known Black ancestry to be accepted as White. The child of an African-American sharecropper and a White person was considered Black by the local community. Significantly in terms of the economics of sharecropping, such a person also would likely become a sharecropper as well, thus adding to the landholder or employer's labor force.
In short, this theory suggests that in a 20th-century economy that benefited from sharecropping, it was useful to have as many Blacks as possible. Conversely, in a 19th-century nation bent on westward expansion, it was advantageous to diminish the numbers of those who could claim title to Amerindian lands by defining them out of existence.
Although some scholars of the Jim Crow period
agree that the 20th-century notion of invisible Blackness shifted the color line in the direction of paleness, and "expanded" the labor force in response to Southern Blacks' Great Migration
to the North, others (such as the historians Joel Williamson, C. Vann Woodward, George M. Fredrickson, and Stetson Kennedy) considered the one-drop rule a consequence of the need to define Whiteness as being pure, and justifying White-on-Black oppression. Over the centuries when Whites wielded power over both Blacks and Amerindians and believed in their inherent superiority over people of color, they created a social order of hypodescent, in which mixed-race children were assigned to the lower status groups. This also related to the 18th and 19th-century conditions of slavery. Generally, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of black women slaves, rather than for white women to have relationships with ethnic African men, slave or free.
In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time that forced individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial categories (Gossett 1997). An example is the "one-drop rule
" implemented in some state laws that treated anyone with a single known African-American ancestor as black (Davis 2001). The decennial censuses conducted since 1790, after slavery was well established in the United States, created an incentive to define racial categories and fit people into those categories (Nobles 2000). In other countries in the Americas where mixing among groups was overtly more extensive, social categories have tended to be more numerous and fluid, with people moving into or out of categories on the basis of a combination of socioeconomic status, social class, ancestry, and appearance (Mörner 1967).
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; it includes people who may have been considered racially distinct (Black, White, Amerindian or other mixed groups) in their home countries. Today, the word "Latino" is often used as a synonym for "Hispanic". Even if such categories were earlier understood as racial categories, currently they have begun to represent ethno-linguistic categories (regardless of perceived race). Similarly, "Anglo
" is now used to refer to non-Hispanic
White American
s or non-Hispanic
European American
s, most of whom speak the English language but are not necessarily of English
descent.
government has provided definitions regarding race (see the main articles). Racial classification in the U.S. 2000 census
and in employment reports for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
was based solely on self-identification by people according to the race or races with which they most closely identify and did not pre-suppose disjointedness. The category "Hispanic" is considered an ethnicity, rather than a race, by the U.S. Census
.
These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. They change from one census to another, and the racial categories include both racial and national-origin groups.
In 2007 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
of the US Department of Labor finalized its update of the EEO-1 report format and guidelines to come into an effect on September 30, 2007. In particular, this update concerns the definitions of racial/ethnic categories, see Race (EEO).
of religiously and ethnically diverse Europeans
who defined themselves against the Amerindians, who used land in a different way, and Africans, whom they imported as laborers and enslaved.
Backgrounds:
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and economic
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
development of the nation, have been examined by numerous historians and researchers across a variety of academic disciplines.
There are issues and controversies about the self-identification and classification of "race" within the country, and several trends have emerged in the demographic movements of ethnic groups as discovered by self-reports and genetic testing
Genetic testing
Genetic testing is among the newest and most sophisticated of techniques used to test for genetic disorders which involves direct examination of the DNA molecule itself. Other genetic tests include biochemical tests for such gene products as enzymes and other proteins and for microscopic...
.
History
The immigrants to the New WorldNew World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
came largely from widely separated regions of the Old World
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
. In the Americas, the immigrant populations began to mix
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
. In the United States, for example, most people who self-identify as African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
have some European ancestors—in one analysis of genetic markers that have differing frequencies between continents, European ancestry ranged from an estimated 7% for a sample of Jamaicans to ~23% for a sample of African Americans from New Orleans (Parra et al. 1998).
Similarly, many people who identify as European American have some African or Native American ancestors, either through openly interracial marriages or through the gradual inclusion of people with mixed ancestry into the majority population. In a survey of college students who self-identified as white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
in a northeastern U.S. university, ~30% were estimated to have less than 90% European ancestry.
In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
since its early history, Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s, and European American
European American
A European American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe...
s were classified as belonging to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person’s appearance, his fraction of known non-European ancestry, and his social circle. The criteria for membership in these races diverged in the late 19th century. During and after Reconstruction, after the emancipation
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
of slaves after the Civil War, in the effort to restore white supremacy in the South, conservative whites began to classify anyone with "one drop" of "black blood", or known African ancestry, to be black. Such a legal definition was not put into law until the 20th century in most southern states, but many established racial segregation of facilities during the Jim Crow era, after white Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
regained control of state legislatures in the South.
In the early 20th century, this notion of "invisible" blackness was made statutory in southern states and many beyond the former Confederacy. Amerindians continued to be defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood" (called blood quantum
Blood quantum laws
Blood Quantum Laws or Indian Blood Laws is an umbrella term that describes legislation enacted in the United States to define membership in Native American tribes or nations...
) due in large part to efforts at land allotments under the Dawes Act in the late 19th century. Given the financial implications, standards had to be developed to define a person's membership in a tribe or qualification as Native American. For the past century or so, to be white, one had to have "pure" European ancestry.
In the 20th century, efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete categories generated many difficulties (Spickard 1992). By the standards used in past censuses, many millions of mixed-race children born in the United States have been classified as of a different race than one of their biological parents. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories (such as "mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
" and "octoroon") and "blood quantum" distinctions, which became increasingly untethered from self-reported ancestry. In addition, a person's racial identity can change over time, and self-ascribed race can differ from assigned race (Kressin et al. 2003).
Until the 2000 census, Latinos were required to identify with a single race, despite the long history of mixing in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. Partly as a result of the confusion generated by the distinction, 32.9% (U.S. census records) of Latino respondents in the 2000 census ignored the specified racial categories and checked "some other race". (Mays et al. 2003 claim a figure of 42%)
Racial demographics
The United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
is a diverse
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
country racially. In 2006, the United States became the third nation in world history to reach 300 million people, behind China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, each of which has over a billion people.
The growth of the Hispanic population through immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
and high birth rates is noted as a partial factor for the US’ population gains in the last quarter-century. The 2000 census
United States Census, 2000
The Twenty-second United States Census, known as Census 2000 and conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2% over the 248,709,873 persons enumerated during the 1990 Census...
also found Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
at their highest population, 4.5 million, since the U.S was founded in 1776.
Multiracial Americans and admixture
| % European Admixture | Frequency |
|---|---|
| 90-100 | 68% |
| 80-89.9 | 22% |
| 70-79.9 | 8% |
| 60-69.9 | < 1% |
| 50-59.9 | < 1% |
| 40-49.9 | < 1% |
| 0-39.9 | 0 |
In a survey of college students who self-identified as 'white' in a northeastern U.S. university, around 30% were estimated to have less than 90% European ancestry. Through DNA analysis, the study found an average of 0.7% African genetic admixture with a standard error
Standard error
Standard error can refer to:* Standard error , the estimated standard deviation or error of a series of measurements* Standard error stream, one of the standard streams in Unix-like operating systems...
of 0.9% and 3.2% Native American admixture with a standard error
Standard error
Standard error can refer to:* Standard error , the estimated standard deviation or error of a series of measurements* Standard error stream, one of the standard streams in Unix-like operating systems...
of 1.6%, in a sample of white Americans in State College
State College, Pennsylvania
State College is the largest borough in Centre County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Centre County. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034, and roughly double...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. Most of the non-white admixture was concentrated in 30% of the sample, with African admixture ranging from 2-20% with an average of 2.3%.
In 1958 Robert Stuckert produced a statistical analysis using historical census data and immigration statistics. He concluded that the growth in the White population could not be attributed to births in the White population and immigration from Europe alone, but also from a significant contribution from the American Black population as well. He concluded that at the time, 21 percent of white Americans had some recent African (or African-American) ancestors. He also concluded that the majority of Americans of African descent were partly white and not entirely black.
More recently, many different DNA studies have shown that many African Americans have European admixture in their ancestry. Proportions of European admixture in African-American DNA have been found in studies to be 17% and between 10.6% and 22.5%. Another recent study found the average to be 21.2%, with a standard error
Standard error
Standard error can refer to:* Standard error , the estimated standard deviation or error of a series of measurements* Standard error stream, one of the standard streams in Unix-like operating systems...
of 1.2%.
The Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute
National Human Genome Research Institute
The National Human Genome Research Institute is a division of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland.NHGRI began as the National Center for Human Genome Research , which was established in 1989 to carry out the role of the NIH in the International Human Genome Project...
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."
Social definitions of race
In the United States since its early history, Native Americans, African-Americans and European-Americans were considered to belong to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person’s appearance, his social circle (how he lived) and his fraction of known non-White ancestry.The differences between how Native American and Black identities are defined today (blood quantum versus one-drop) have been based on different historical circumstances. According to the anthropologist Gerald Sider, such racial designations were a means to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of Whites in a society of White hegemony and privilege (Sider 1996; see also Fields 1990). The differences had little to do with biology and more to do with the history of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and specific forms of White supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
(the social, geopolitical and economic agendas of dominant Whites vis-à-vis subordinate Blacks and Native Americans). They related especially to the different social places which Blacks and Amerindians occupied in White-dominated 19th-century America. Sider suggests that the blood quantum definition of Native American identity enabled mixed-race Whites to acquire Amerindian lands during the allotment process, while the one-drop rule of Black identity enabled Whites to preserve their agricultural labor force in the South. The contrast emerged because, as peoples transported far from their land and kinship ties on another continent, Black labor was relatively easy to control, and they became reduced to valuable commodities
Commodity
In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....
as agricultural laborers. In contrast, Amerindian labor was more difficult to control; moreover, Amerindians occupied large territories that became valuable as agricultural lands, especially with the invention of new technologies such as railroads; thus, the blood quantum definition enhanced White acquisition of Amerindian lands in a doctrine of Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
that subjected them to marginalization and multiple episodic localized campaigns of extermination.
The political economy of race had different consequences for the descendants of aboriginal Americans and African slaves. The 19th-century blood quantum rule meant that it was relatively easier for a person of mixed Euro-Amerindian ancestry to be accepted as White. The offspring of only a few generations of intermarriage between Amerindians and Whites likely would not have been considered Amerindian at all (at least not in a legal sense). Amerindians could have treaty rights to land, but because an individual with only one Amerindian great-grandparent no longer was classified as Amerindian, they lost any legal claim to Amerindian land. According to Sider's theory, Whites were more easily able to acquire Amerindian lands. Socially, 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 Amerindian ancestry to be considered as a "half-breed
Half-breed
Half-breed is an historic term used to describe anyone who is mixed Native American and white European parentage...
" or breed, and stigmatized.
On the other hand, the 20th-century one-drop rule made it relatively difficult for anyone of known Black ancestry to be accepted as White. The child of an African-American sharecropper and a White person was considered Black by the local community. Significantly in terms of the economics of sharecropping, such a person also would likely become a sharecropper as well, thus adding to the landholder or employer's labor force.
In short, this theory suggests that in a 20th-century economy that benefited from sharecropping, it was useful to have as many Blacks as possible. Conversely, in a 19th-century nation bent on westward expansion, it was advantageous to diminish the numbers of those who could claim title to Amerindian lands by defining them out of existence.
Although some scholars of the Jim Crow period
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
agree that the 20th-century notion of invisible Blackness shifted the color line in the direction of paleness, and "expanded" the labor force in response to Southern Blacks' Great Migration
Great Migration
Great Migration, Great Migrations, or The Great Migration may refer:In history:* Great Migration of Puritans from England to New England * Great Serb Migrations from the Ottoman Empire to the Habsburg Monarchy...
to the North, others (such as the historians Joel Williamson, C. Vann Woodward, George M. Fredrickson, and Stetson Kennedy) considered the one-drop rule a consequence of the need to define Whiteness as being pure, and justifying White-on-Black oppression. Over the centuries when Whites wielded power over both Blacks and Amerindians and believed in their inherent superiority over people of color, they created a social order of hypodescent, in which mixed-race children were assigned to the lower status groups. This also related to the 18th and 19th-century conditions of slavery. Generally, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of black women slaves, rather than for white women to have relationships with ethnic African men, slave or free.
In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time that forced individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial categories (Gossett 1997). An example is the "one-drop rule
One-drop rule
The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with "one drop of black blood" was considered black...
" implemented in some state laws that treated anyone with a single known African-American ancestor as black (Davis 2001). The decennial censuses conducted since 1790, after slavery was well established in the United States, created an incentive to define racial categories and fit people into those categories (Nobles 2000). In other countries in the Americas where mixing among groups was overtly more extensive, social categories have tended to be more numerous and fluid, with people moving into or out of categories on the basis of a combination of socioeconomic status, social class, ancestry, and appearance (Mörner 1967).
The term "Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
" as an ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
emerged in the 20th century with the rise of migration of laborers from Spanish-speaking countries of the western hemisphere to the United States; it includes people who may have been considered racially distinct (Black, White, Amerindian or other mixed groups) in their home countries. Today, the word "Latino" is often used as a synonym for "Hispanic". Even if such categories were earlier understood as racial categories, currently they have begun to represent ethno-linguistic categories (regardless of perceived race). Similarly, "Anglo
Anglo
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to the Angles, England or the English people, as in the terms Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-American, Anglo-Celtic, Anglo-African and Anglo-Indian. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British Isles descent in The Americas, Australia and...
" is now used to refer to non-Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
White American
White American
White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...
s or non-Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
European American
European American
A European American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe...
s, most of whom speak the English language but are not necessarily of English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
descent.
Official race definitions in the United States
The United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government has provided definitions regarding race (see the main articles). Racial classification in the U.S. 2000 census
United States Census, 2000
The Twenty-second United States Census, known as Census 2000 and conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2% over the 248,709,873 persons enumerated during the 1990 Census...
and in employment reports for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an independent federal law enforcement agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, perceived intelligence,...
was based solely on self-identification by people according to the race or races with which they most closely identify and did not pre-suppose disjointedness. The category "Hispanic" is considered an ethnicity, rather than a race, by the U.S. Census
United States Census
The United States Census is a decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. The population is enumerated every 10 years and the results are used to allocate Congressional seats , electoral votes, and government program funding. The United States Census Bureau The United States Census...
.
These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. They change from one census to another, and the racial categories include both racial and national-origin groups.
In 2007 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an independent federal law enforcement agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, perceived intelligence,...
of the US Department of Labor finalized its update of the EEO-1 report format and guidelines to come into an effect on September 30, 2007. In particular, this update concerns the definitions of racial/ethnic categories, see Race (EEO).
Racism
Racism in the United States developed from the circumstances of its colonial past and the widespread use of slave labor, especially in the South. The country was dominated politically and economically by a colonial societySettler
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land and cultivate it, as opposed to nomads...
of religiously and ethnically diverse Europeans
European American
A European American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe...
who defined themselves against the Amerindians, who used land in a different way, and Africans, whom they imported as laborers and enslaved.
See also
- Race and crime in the United StatesRace and crime in the United StatesThe relationship between race and crime in the United States has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century...
- Race and ethnicity in the United States Census
- Race and genetics: Admixture in the United States
- Refusal of interracial marriage in Louisiana
Backgrounds:
- African AmericanAfrican AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
- Asian AmericanAsian AmericanAsian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
- European AmericanEuropean AmericanA European American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe...
- Hispanic and Latino AmericansHispanic and Latino AmericansHispanic or Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain, and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.1990 Census of Population and Housing: A self-designated classification for people whose origins...
- Native AmericanNative Americans in the United StatesNative Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
- White AmericanWhite AmericanWhite Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...