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European Americans

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European American
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A European American (Euro-American) is a person who resides in the United States and is either the descendant of European immigrants or from Europe him/herself.[1]

Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate [2] and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income [3] and median personal income [4] of any racial demographic in the nation.

Terminology

US Census

In 1977, it was proposed that the term "European American" replace "white" as a racial label in the US Census. [5] Although not currently used by most government bodies, the term is appearing more frequently and might eventually replace "White" just as "Native American" has replaced "Indian", "African American" has replaced "Black", and "Asian American" has replaced "Oriental" in many writings.

Use

The term European American is more narrow than White American in that these terms in their official usage. The term is different from Caucasian American, White American, and Anglo American.[6] It should, however also be mentioned that the term "European Americans" is sometimes used as a synonym for White Americans. According to the Texas Association of Museums, "European American," White American, Caucasian American or Anglo are terms that vary in their preference depending on the individual and their descent.,[7] Anglo is a term commonly used in the southwestern United States, because of that term combines a number of distinct ethnicities under a single rubric with origins in England. The term also has a more specific reference than either White American or Caucasian American since both of these terms include a larger group of people than is acknowledged in Europe. Also, whereas White American and Caucasian American carry somewhat ambiguous definitions, depending on the speaker, European American has a more specific definition and scope. According to sociologist Rosanne Skirble, the term European American has increased somewhat in use but White American, Caucasian American and Anglo continue to be equally preferred depending on the descent of the given individual(s) or group to which the term refers.[8]

Origin

The term was coined by some to emphasize the European cultural and geographical ancestral origins of Americans in the same way that is done for African Americans and Asian Americans rather than not emphasize ancestry. A European American identity is still notable because 90% of the respondents classified as white on the US Census knew their European ancestry.[9] Historically, the concept of an American was conceived in the US as a person of mixed European ancestries to the exclusion of African Americans and Native Americans.[10] As a linguistic concern, the term is often meant to discourage a dichotomous view of the racial landscape between the normative white category and everyone else.[5] Margo Adair suggests that the recognition of specific European American ancestries allows certain Americans to become aware that they come from a variety of different cultures.[11]

Origins

European Americans are descended from two big waves of immigration from Europe. [9] From 1800 to 1850, Northern and Western Europeans arrived in the US.[9] These included Germans, Irish, English, Scots, Welsh, French, Danes, Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes.[9] They arrived with high levels of education and for the most part were Roman Catholic, or Protestant.[9] The second wave of European Americans arrived from 1880 to 1920s from Southern and Eastern Europe.[9] This wave included Italians, Poles, Albanians, Russians, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukranians, Croats and Bulgarians.[9] This group had lower levels of education and were mostly Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish in religion. [9]

Culture

American culture is essentially European culture and primarily of British, German, and French in origin.[12] European American cultural lineage can be traced back to Europe and is institutionalized in the form of its government and civic education.[12] The Solutrean hypothesis based on new evidence suggests that Europeans may have been the first in the Americas.[13][14][15] Since European Americans have mostly assimilated into American culture, European Americans now mostly express their individual ethnic ties sporadically and symbolically and do not consider their specific ethnic origins to be essential to their identity; however, European American ethnic expression has been revived since the 1960s.[9] In the 1960s, Mexican Americans and African Americans started exploring their cultural traditions as the ideal of cultural pluralism took hold.[9] European Americans followed suit by exploring their individual cultural origins and having less shame of expressing their unique cultural heritage.[9]

Demographics

The Carlson Twins.

The numbers below give numbers of European Americans as measured by the US Census in 1990 and 2000. 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 this 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 2000 census forms.

It is important to note that 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 forbears and the apparent unimportance to many whites of European origin, responses appear quite inconsistence".[16] 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 unique 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 6 month period between survey waves (page 422).

An important example to note is that in 1980 23.75 million Americans claimed English Ancestry and 25.85 claimed English ancestry together with one or more other. This represents 49.6 million people. The table below shows that in 1990 when only single and primary responses were allowed this fell to 32 million and in 2000 to 24 million. [17]


Further information: Racial demographics of the United States
European American Ancestries in the 2000 US Census[18]
Ancestry 1990 % of US
1990		 2000 % of US
2000		 Change
North European 108,762,804 39.9% 74,700,988 30.1% -31.3%
West European 74,874,596 30.5% 57,988,801 18.6% -22.6%
East European 16,545,509 6.7% 14,071,153 4.9% -15.0%
South European 17,953,611 7.1% 20,242,412 7.1% +12.7%
Armenian 308,096 .1% 385,488 .1% +25.1%
Austrian 864,783 .3% 730,336 .3% -15.5%
Basque 47,956 .02% 57,793 .02% +20.5%
Belgian 380,403 .2% 384,531 .1% +01.1%
British 1,119,140 .4% 1,085,718 .4% -03.0%
Croatian 544,270 .2% 374,241 .1% -31.2%
Czech 1,296,369 .5% 1,258,452 .4% -02.9%
Danish 1,634,648 .7% 1,430,897 .5% -12.5%
Dutch 6,226,339 2.5% 4,541,770 1.6% -27.1%
English 32,651,788 13.1% 24,509,692 8.7% -24.9%
Estonian 26,762 .01% 25,034 .01% -06.5%
Finnish 658,854 .3% 623,559 .2% -05.4%
French 10,320,656 4.1% 8,309,666 3% -19.5%
German 57,947,171 23.3% 42,841,569 15.2% -26.1%
Greek 1,110,292 .4% 1,152,956 .4% +03.8%
Irish 38,735,539 15.6% 30,524,799 10.8% -21.2%
Italian 14,664,189 5.9% 15,638,348 5.6% +06.6%
Lithuanian 811,865 .3% 659,892 .2% -18.7%
Norwegian 3,869,395 1.6% 4,477,725 1.6% +15.7%
Polish 9,366,051 3.8% 8,977,235 3.2% -04.2%
Portuguese 1,148,857 .5% 1,173,691 .4% +02.2%
Romanian 365,310 0.1% 1,008,729 0.4% +176.1%
Russian 2,951,373 1.2% 2,652,214 .9% -10.1%
Scandinavian 678,880 .3% 425,099 .2% -37.4%
Flag of Ulster Scots-Irish 5,617,773 2.3% 4,319,232 1.5% -23.1%
Scottish 5,393,581 2.2% 4,890,581 1.7% -09.3%
Serbian 116,795 negligible 140,337 0.1% +20.2%
Slovak 1,882,897 .8% 797,764 .3% -57.6%
Slovenian 124,437 .1% 176,691 .1% +42%
Spanish 2,384,862 .9% 2,487,092 .9% +04.3%
Swedish 4,680,863 1.9% 3,998,310 1.4% -14.6%
Swiss 1,045,482 .4% 911,502 .3% -12.8%
Ukrainian 740,723 .3% 892,922 .3% +20.5%
Welsh 2,033,893 .8% 1,753,794 .6% -13.8%
Total 210,181,975 84.2% 171,801,940 60.7% -18.3%

References

  1. ^ Ohio State University. Diversity Dictionary. 2006. September 4, 2006. [1]
  2. ^ "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004" (PDF).
  3. ^ "Median household income newsbrief, US Census Bureau 2005". Retrieved 2006-09-24.
  4. ^ "US Census Bureau, Personal income for Asian Americans, age 25+, 2006". Retrieved 2006-12-17.
  5. ^ a b Bhopal, Raj. Pub Med. "White, European, Western, Caucasian or What? Innappropriate Labeling in Research on Race, Ethnicity and Health." 1998. August 9, 2007. [2]
  6. ^ Lee, Sandra S. Mountain, Joanna. Barbara, Koening A. The Meanings of Race in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research. Yale University. 2001. October 26, 2006. [3]
  7. ^ Texas Association of Museums. 2003. September 4, 2006. [4]
  8. ^ Skirble, Rosanne. New Voice of America. 2001. September 4, 2006. [5]
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Randolph, Gayle. Iowa State University. "Why Study European Immigrants." 2007. June 14, 2007. [6]
  10. ^ Crevecoeur, Hector St. John. Letters from an American Farmer. "What is an American." 1782.
  11. ^ Adair, Margo. Challenging White Supremacy Workshop. 1990 November 5, 2006.[7]
  12. ^ a b Kirk, Russell. The Heritage Lecture Series. "America Should Strengthen its European Cultural Roots." Washington D.C:1949
  13. ^ Carey, Bjorn (19 February 2006).First Americans may have been European.Life Science. Retrieved on August 10, 2007.
  14. ^ Conner, Steve, Science Editor, (03 December 2002).Does skull prove that the first Americans came from Europe?. Published in the UK Independent. Retrieved on August 14, 2007.
  15. ^ Earliest humans in the Americas: new evidence from Mexico, Journal of Human Evolution 44, 379-387.
  16. ^ Farley, Reyonlds (1991) Demography: "The new census question on ancestry: what did it tell us?" [8]
  17. ^ World Culture Encyclopedia [9]
  18. ^ Brittingham, Angela. Ancestry 2000:Census Brief. 2004. October 30, 2006. [10]

See also

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