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European Americans

Largest white alone or in any combination group by county in the 2020 United States census.
Total population
133 million European-diaspora Americans 41% of total U.S. population (2017)[1][a] (as opposed to 235.4 million Americans identifying as White in combination with other races and 204.3 million self-identifying as white)[2] 61.6% of the total U.S. population (2020)
Regions with significant populations
Contiguous United States and Alaska smaller populations in Hawaii and the territories
Languages
Predominantly English, but also other languages of Europe
Religion
Predominantly Christianity (Mainly Protestantism and Roman Catholicism); Minority religions: Judaism, Mormonism, Islam, Neo-Paganism, Scientology, Irreligion, Atheism

European Americans are Americans of native European ancestry.^[3][4] This term includes both people who descend from the first European settlers in the area of the present-day United States and people who descend from more recent European arrivals. Since the 17th century, European Americans have been the largest panethnic group in what are now the United States.

The Spaniards are thought to have been the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the contiguous United States, with Martín de Argüelles (b. 1566) in St. Augustine, then a part of Spanish Florida,^[5][6] and the Russians were the first Europeans to settle in Alaska, establishing Russian America. The first English child born in the Americas was Virginia Dare, born August 18, 1587. She was born in Roanoke Colony, located in present-day North Carolina, which was the first attempt, made during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to establish a permanent English settlement in North America.

In the 2020 United States census, English Americans (46.5 million), German Americans (45 million), Irish Americans (38.6 million), Italian Americans (16.8 million) and Polish Americans (8.6 million) were the five largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States.^[7] However, the number of people with British ancestry is considered to be significantly under-counted, as many people in that demographic tend to identify themselves simply as Americans (20,151,829 or 7.2%).^{[8][9][10][11]} The same applies to Americans of Spanish ancestry, as many people in that demographic tend to identify themselves as Hispanic and Latino Americans (58,846,134 or 16.6%), even though they carry a mean of 65.1% European genetic ancestry, mainly from Spain.^[12]

An increasing number of people ignored the ancestry question or chose no specific ancestral group such as "American or United States". In the 2000 census this represented over 56.1 million or 19.9% of the United States population, an increase from 26.2 million (10.5%) in 1990 and 38.2 million (16.9%) in 1980 and are specified as "unclassified" and "not reported".^[13][14]

Terminology

Use

In 1995, as part of a review of the Office of Management and Budget's Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting), a survey was conducted of census recipients to determine their preferred terminology for the racial/ethnic groups defined in the Directive. For the White group, European American came a distant third, preferred by only 2.35% of panel interviewees, as opposed to White, which was preferred by 61.66%.^[15]

The term is sometimes used interchangeably with Caucasian American, White American, and Anglo American in many places around the United States.^[16] However, the terms Caucasian and White are racial terms, not geographic, and include some populations whose origin is outside of Europe; and Anglo-American also has another definition, meaning Americans with English ancestry.^{[citation needed]}

Origin

The term is used by some to emphasize this demographic's European cultural and geographical as well as ancestral origins, parallelling terms such as African Americans and Asian Americans.^{[citation needed]}

In contexts such as medical research, terms such as "white" and "European" have been criticized for vagueness and blurring important distinctions between different groups that happen to fit within the label.^[17] Margo Adair suggests that viewing Americans of European descent as a single group contributes to the "Wonder breading" of the United States, eradicating the cultural heritage of individual European ethnicities.^[18]

Subgroups

There are a number of subgroupings of European Americans.^[19] While these categories may be approximately defined, often due to the imprecise or cultural regionalization of Europe, the subgroups are nevertheless used widely in cultural or ethnic identification.^[20] This is particularly the case in diasporic populations, as with European people in the United States generally.^[21] In alphabetical order, some of the subgroups are:

• Northwestern European Americans, including Austrian Americans, Belgian Americans, British Americans (Cornish Americans, English Americans, Manx Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans), Dutch Americans, French Americans (Breton Americans), German Americans, Irish Americans, Luxembourger Americans, Nordic and Scandinavian Americans (Danish Americans, Finnish Americans, Icelandic Americans, Norwegian Americans, Swedish Americans), and Swiss Americans, or "Old Immigrants" (the first waves of which arrived pre-1881)
• Eastern European Americans, including Belarusian Americans, Czech Americans, Estonian Americans, Hungarian Americans, Latvian Americans, Lithuanian Americans, Polish Americans, Russian Americans, Slovak Americans, and Ukrainian Americans, or "New Immigrants" (the first large waves of which arrived 1881–1965)
• Southern European Americans, including Albanian Americans, Bosnian Americans, Bulgarian Americans, Croatian Americans, Cypriot Americans, Greek Americans, Italian Americans, Maltese Americans, Macedonian Americans, Moldovan Americans, Montenegrin Americans, Portuguese Americans, Romanian Americans, Serbian Americans, Slovenian Americans, and Spanish Americans (Basque Americans, Catalan Americans, Galician Americans), also "New Immigrants" (the first large waves of which arrived 1881–1965)

History

Historical immigration estimates[22][23]
Country	Immigration before 1790	Ancestry 1790
England*	230,000	1,900,000
Ulster Scotch-Irish*	135,000	320,000
Germany[b]	103,000	280,000
Scotland*	48,500	160,000
Ireland	8,000	200,000
Netherlands	6,000	100,000
Wales*	4,000	120,000
France	3,000	80,000
Sweden and Other[c]	500	20,000
*Totals, British	417,500	2,500,000+
United States[d]	950,000	3,929,214

Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans predominantly inhabited the United States. The earliest Europeans to invade North America were the Spaniards. The first Spanish invasion was in 1565 at St. Augustine, Florida.^[24] One of the most significant Spanish explorers was Hernando De Soto, a conquistador who accompanied Francisco Pizzaro during his conquest of the Inca Empire.

Leaving Havana, Cuba in 1539, De Soto's expedition landed in the state of Florida and explored the southeastern area of the United States. They reached as far as the Mississippi River in search of riches and fortune. Another Spaniard who explored the United States, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, set out from New Spain in 1540 in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Gold. Coronado's expedition traveled to Kansas and the Grand Canyon, but failed to discover gold or treasure. However, Coronado left a gift of horses to the Plains Indians. Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano and Frenchman Jacques Cartier are other Europeans who explored the United States. The Spaniards viewed the French as a threat to their trade route along the Gulf Stream.^[25]

Since 1607, some 57 million immigrants have come to the United States from other lands. Approximately 10 million passed through on their way to some other place or returned to their original homelands, leaving a net gain of some 47 million people.^[26]

Shifts in European migration

Before 1881, the vast majority of immigrants, almost 86% of the total, arrived from Northwestern Europe, principally Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia, known as "Old Immigration". The years between 1881 and 1893 the pattern shifted, in the sources of U.S. "New Immigration". Between 1894 and 1914, immigrants from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe accounted for 69% of the total.^[27][28][29] Prior to 1960, the overwhelming majority came from Europe or of European descent from Canada. Immigration from Europe as a proportion of new arrivals has been in decline since the mid-20th century, with 75.0% of the total foreign-born population born in Europe compared to 12.1% recorded in the 2010 census.^[30]

Immigration since 1820

European-born population

The figures below show that of the total population of specified birthplace in the United States. A total of 11.1% were born-overseas of the total population.

Demographics

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The data below give numbers of European Americans as measured by the U.S. Census in 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2020. The numbers are measured according to declarations in census responses. This leads to uncertainty over the real meaning of the figures: For instance, as can be seen, according to these figures, the European American population dropped 40 million in ten years, but in fact, is a reflection of changing census responses. In particular, it reflects the increased popularity of the "American" option following its inclusion as an example in the 1990 and 2000 census forms.^{[citation needed]}

Breakdowns of the European American population into sub-components is a difficult and rather arbitrary exercise. Farley (1991) argues that "because of ethnic intermarriage, the numerous generations that separate respondents from their forebears and the apparent unimportance to many whites of European origin, responses appear quite inconsistent".^[44]

In particular, a large majority of European Americans have ancestry from a number of different countries and the response to a single "ancestry" gives little indication of the backgrounds of Americans today. When only prompted for a single response, the examples given on the census forms and a pride in identifying the more distinctive parts of one's heritage are important factors; these will likely adversely affect the numbers reporting ancestries from the British Isles. Multiple response ancestry data often greatly increase the numbers reporting for the main ancestry groups, although Farley goes as far to conclude that "no simple question will distinguish those who identify strongly with a specific European group from those who report symbolic or imagined ethnicity." He highlights responses in the Current Population Survey (1973) where for the main "old" ancestry groups (e.g., German, Irish, English, and French), over 40% change their reported ancestry over the six-month period between survey waves (page 422).^{[citation needed]}

The largest self-reported ancestries in 2000, reporting over 5 million members, were in order: German, Irish, English, American, Italian, French, and Polish. They have different distributions within the United States; in general, the northern half of the United States from Pennsylvania westward is dominated by German ancestry, and the southern-half by English and American. Irish may be found throughout the entire country. Italian ancestry is most common in the Northeast, Polish in the Great Lakes Region and the Northeast, and French in New England and Louisiana. U.S. Census Bureau statisticians estimate that approximately 62 percent of European Americans today are either wholly or partly of English, Welsh, Irish, or Scottish ancestry. Approximately 86% of European Americans today are of Central and Northwestern European ancestry, and 14% are of Eastern European, Southern European, Southeastern European, and Euro-Latino descent.^{[citation needed]}

Ancestral origins