Information about European American

European American
John F. Kennedy •Marilyn Monroe •Marlon Brando George Washington •Fred Astaire •Rita Hayworth
Total population
European 171,801,940 Americans 60.7% of the total US population
Regions with significant populations
All regions
Languages
Predominately English •German •Spanish •French, Italian •Polish others
Religions
Predominantly Christianity •minorities practice Judaism or other faiths; sizeable secular population

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], though "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.^[10] 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 largely descended from two big waves of immigration from Europe. ^[11] From 1800 to 1850, Northern and Western Europeans arrived in the US.^[11] These included Germans, Irish, English, Scots, Welsh, French, Danes, Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes.^[11] They arrived with high levels of education and for the most part were Roman Catholic, or Protestant.^[11] The second wave of European Americans arrived from 1880 to 1920s from Southern and Eastern Europe.^[11] This wave included Italians, Poles, Albanians, Russians, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukranians, Croats and Bulgarians.^[11] This group had lower levels of education and were mostly Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish in religion. ^[11]

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.^[11] In the 1960s, Mexican Americans and African Americans started exploring their cultural traditions as the ideal of cultural pluralism took hold.^[11] European Americans followed suit by exploring their individual cultural origins and having less shame of expressing their unique cultural heritage.^[11]

Demographics

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 Maps of American ancestries>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%
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

See also

• White American
• White male
• Anglo
• Melting pot
• White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
• Immigration to the United States

---

•  • [ e] Demographics of the United States

Demography of the United States Demographic history Economic Social Affluence Educational attainment Household income Homeownership Immigration Income inequality Language Middle classes Personal income Poverty Religion Social class Unemployment by state Wealth Race Ethnicity Ancestry Race Ethnicity on the US Census Maps of American ancestries 2000 Census Race on the US Census Race/ethnicity by EEOC Racism Alaska Natives Asian Americans African Americans Africans in the United States Hispanics in the United States Middle Eastern Americans (also classified as White Americans) Native Americans Pacific Islander Americans White Americans European Americans

•  • [ e] European Americans
North European	British (English • Scots-Irish • Scottish • Welsh) Danish Estonian Faroese Finnish Icelandic Irish Latvian Lithuanian Norwegian Swedish
West European	Austrian Belgian Dutch French (Acadian • Cajun) German Luxembourg Swiss
East European	Armenian Azerbaijani Belarusian Bulgarian Czech Georgian Hungarian Romanian Russian Rusyn Polish Slovak Ukrainian
South European	Albanian Basque Bosnian Croatian Cypriot Greek Italian (Sicilian) Macedonian Maltese Montenegrin Portuguese Serbian Slovenian Spanish Turkish
Other	Jewish American Romani