American ancestry

Not to be confused with Native American ancestry.
For the article on the population of the United States, see Americans.
American ancestry
Total population
19,364,103 (5.93%)
2021 estimates, self-reported[1]
Regions with significant populations
Southern United States and Midwestern United States, especially Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia
Languages
English (American English dialects)
Religion
Predominantly Christianity (mainly Protestantism)
Related ethnic groups
White Southerners and other American ancestries

In the demography of the United States, some people self-identify their ancestral origin or descent as "American", rather than the more common officially recognized racial and ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the American people.[2][3][4] The majority of these respondents are visibly white and do not identify with their ancestral European ethnic origins.[5][6] The latter response is attributed to a multitude of generational distance from ancestral lineages,[3][7][8] and these tend be Anglo-Americans[7] of English, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, Scottish or other British ancestries, as demographers have observed that those ancestries tend to be recently undercounted in U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey ancestry self-reporting estimates.[9][10]

Although U.S. census data indicates "American ancestry" is most commonly self-reported in the Deep South, the Upland South, and Appalachia,[11][12] a far greater number of Americans and expatriates equate their national identity not with ancestry, race, or ethnicity, but rather with citizenship and allegiance.[13][8]

  1. ^ "IPUMS USA". University of Minnesota. Retrieved October 12, 2022.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Ancestry2000p3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Jack Citrin; David O. Sears (2014). American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism. Cambridge University Press. pp. 153–159. ISBN 978-0-521-82883-3.
  4. ^ Garrick Bailey; James Peoples (2013). Essentials of Cultural Anthropology. Cengage Learning. p. 215. ISBN 978-1-285-41555-0.
  5. ^ Kazimierz J. Zaniewski; Carol J. Rosen (1998). The Atlas of Ethnic Diversity in Wisconsin. Univ. of Wisconsin Press. pp. 65–69. ISBN 978-0-299-16070-8.
  6. ^ Liz O'Connor, Gus Lubin and Dina Specto (2013). "The Largest Ancestry Groups in the United States - Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved April 10, 2017.
  7. ^ a b Jan Harold Brunvand (2006). American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-135-57878-7.
  8. ^ a b Perez AD, Hirschman C. "The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities". Population and Development Review. 2009;35(1):1-51. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2009.00260.x.
  9. ^ Dominic Pulera (2004). Sharing the Dream: White Males in Multicultural America. A&C Black. pp. 57–60. ISBN 978-0-8264-1643-8.
  10. ^ Elliott Robert Barkan (2013). Immigrants in American History: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration. ABC-CLIO. pp. 791–. ISBN 978-1-59884-219-7.
  11. ^ Ancestry: 2000 2004, p. 6
  12. ^ Celeste Ray (February 1, 2014). The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 6: Ethnicity. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 19–. ISBN 978-1-4696-1658-2.
  13. ^ Petersen, William; Novak, Michael; Gleason, Philip (1982). Concepts of Ethnicity. Harvard University Press. p. 62. ISBN 9780674157262. To be or to become an American, a person did not have to be of any particular national, linguistic, religious, or ethnic background. All he had to do was to commit himself to the political ideology centered on the abstract ideals of liberty, equality, and republicanism. Thus the universalist ideological character of American nationality meant that it was open to anyone who willed to become an American.