Talk:European Americans

The terms white and European American are not the same thing; 73% of the population are not European Americans.

The opening paragraph states "White and European Americans constitute the largest racial and ethnic group in the United States, composing 73.1% of the total U.S. population"; uh, what? According to the 2010 Census Bureau , 72.4% of the population is identified as white with another 2% identifying as white mixed with something; not as European Americans. The percentage of Americans that identify as having primarily European ancestry is not sourced and it should not be confused as being the same as being identified as white. People from north Africa, the Middle East, and over 50% of Hispanics are included in the "white race" but most are not European. And, while I'm on the topic, although I do not believe the third paragraph is wholly accurate, it states "In the United States, the term European American is sometimes used interchangeably and synonymously with the broader terms white and Caucasian" acknowledging that the terms "white and Caucasian" are broader than the term "European Americans" meaning they do not refer to the same groups of people.

Also, under Terminology the second paragraph states "The term is used interchangeably with Caucasian American, White American, and Anglo American in many places around the United States." with the reference being a paper on Genomics where the authors referenced another publication when they made the referenced statement. In the original source, Peter J. Aspinall stated "The terms “white” and “Caucasian” are frequently and increasingly employed in the scientific literature in spite of widespread concern about the medicalization of race." while describing the inherent problems of incorrectly grouping whites together in Great Britain. This does not support the statement, but instead describes how Great Britain could benefit by following the example of the U.S. by correctly identifying white minorities rather than grouping them all together. I wish we would all take a page from his book and stop referring to anyone as "white", or "black" for the same reason. White and black are not races according to the actual definition of the word "race" (but society won't let that get in the way of labeling people). Most of us understand we shouldn't call people of Asian descent "yellow" or Native American descent "red"; why are we still perpetuating this false dichotomy by calling people "black" and "white"?

Manfrozeninaglacier (talk) 03:18, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

U.S. Census Bureau,.--Moxy (talk) 12:09, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

References

Manfrozeninaglacier: My interpretation of the sentence you quoted from the opening paragraph is that it is saying "white AND European American" are 73.1%. That means people who are white and/or European American. Like if something said "white and black are x%" you wouldn't take that as saying that "white" and "black" are synonymous, no?

As far as how certain terms are used, for better or worse, Wikipedia is here to document the reality of how those terms are used, not how certain people think they should be used. That's fine that you don't like calling people "black" or "white", and there are probably places on Wikipedia to explain that viewpoint, assuming you can find citations about that viewpoint, but given that the fact is that "black" and "white" are currently very commonly used terms, those terms will and should be used in articles in most/many contexts. There are plenty of places on Wikipedia where I see certain terms used in the context of being common speech that I find offensive and even harmful, but I know that unfortunately there is little I can do about it, so although I personally see no problem with the terms "black" and "white", I feel your pain. Vontheri (talk) 22:54, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Spain

Hello, I just wanted to point out that Spain is not mentioned at all. As I understand this is because there is already an article on Hispanic Americans due to their weight in American demographics, but I think the article should at least clarify why Spain is not considered in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sucrecat (talk • contribs) 07:23, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Misinformation on this page.

There are 87 ethnic groups of Europe. My government declared ethnicity is Russian/Udmurt. European isn’t an ethnicity.

Assimilated English speaking European-Americans may be grouped as such in western society. But even Francophone European Americans are considered separate so image what a literally Asian-raced Nenet would be called. Just like how Hispanic/Latino is considered an ethnicity due to shared culture.

But in reality it isn’t. As there are actual native groups in Latin America who are literal Native American.

Repeated edits implying otherwise actually contradict what is said on other parts of the page and political nonsense is not tolerated. This is an unbiased site.

Hate to break it to you but some Europeans especially of European Russia, are closer genetically and culturally to non-Europeans than they are other Europeans. Sorry, not sorry. That’s scientific fact. EurasianCultures (talk) 01:17, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah this is a mess. I think this article would also deserve a mention of the pushback from Europeans regarding the way European Americans self-identity. Mention of European heritage and related epithets is often met with skepticism or misunderstanding, since the demonyms tend to be almost exclusively understood as representing citizenship. I wonder if there are any serious studies about that. 213.64.93.211 (talk) 19:09, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

"Latino Americans" and "Spanish Americans"

RicardoMontano2323, your changes in the paragraph dealing with Spanish/Latino Americans make no sense. The stable version of it is this one:

However, the English Americans and other British Americans demography is considered to be significantly under-counted, as the people in that demographic tend to identify themselves simply as Americans (20,151,829 or 7.2%). The same applies to Spanish Americans demography, as the people in that demographic tend to identify themselves simply as Hispanic and Latino Americans (58,846,134 or 16.6%), even though they carry a mean of 65.1% European ancestry, mainly from Spain. In the 2000 census over 56 million or 19.9% of the United States population ignored the ancestry question completely and are classified as "unspecified" and "not reported".

But you insist on changing it into this one:

However, the English Americans and other British Americans demography is considered to be significantly under-counted, as the people in that demographic tend to identify themselves simply as Americans (20,151,829 or 7.2%). The same applies to Latino Americans demography, as the people in that demographic tend to identify themselves simply as Latino (58,846,134 or 16.6%), even though they carry a mean of 65.1% European ancestry, mainly from Spain. In the 2000 census over 56 million or 19.9% of the United States population ignored the ancestry question completely and are classified as "unspecified" and "not reported".

First of all, the comparison being made is with English Americans demography being under-counted. If you use logic, you'll understand that the sames applies to Spanish Americans demography (since milions of people with Spanish ancestry are not being included), but not to Hispanic and Latino Americans demography, which is definitely not under-counted.

Secondly, it makes absolutely no sense to claim that Latino Americans prefer to identify themselves as Latino. It's like saying that cows prefer to identify themselves as cows. One can argue that there's a difference between Spanish-Americans and Latino-Americans, but Latino and Latino-Americans, in this context, mean exactly the same.

Thirdly, the source says that Hispanic and Latino Americans carry a mean of 65.1% European ancestry, and that this is mainly from Spain. To me, that sounds like a huge connection with Spanish Americans, but you insist on eliminating any connection between Latino Americans and Spanish Americans without any explanation whatsoever. Let alone the fact that, unlike Polish Americans, German Americans or Italian Americans, most Latino or Hispanic Americans still speak the language of the ancestral European nation they got it from, Spain.

Fourthly, you changed Hispanic and Latino Americans for Latino Americans, which is a redirect page into Hispanic and Latino Americans. It makes me wonder if you're doing all this simply because you hate the term Hispanic. Please consider having a look at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Please don't keep on reverting to your version before discussing it here. Thank you.--Raderich (talk) 02:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

"Dubious Sources"

This article cites dubious and arcane sources for hard-to-believe propositions. Gayle Clifford, for example, is a guy with a Masters in Sociology who taught at a community college. A presentation of his that has not been published in any recognised journal is cited for the claim that European Americans had a degree of shame in exploring their cultural heritage until the 1960s, or that German-Americans have maintained high levels of ethnic identification. And it is strange to claim that roasted turkey is distinctively European-American when turkeys are not found in Europe. The article needs through pruning and revision. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.72.233.147 (talk) 18:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The article truly is inferior, but not for the reasons you think. Many of the sources they use are dated (age matters on here), and assumptions are made that are not backed up by the sources. They also conflate "European Americans" with "white Americans" in the lead as if no African-Americans report European ancestry. We know for a fact that this isn't the case. Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:41, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

The "undercount" of "British" (English?) Americans

Here and in related articles, I keep coming across this claim that "demographers" consider "British-Americans" (and sometimes "English-Americans") to be "significantly under-counted". This is plausible and may well be true, but the concern is that the sources cited don't seem to say this. Here, for example, is Reynolds Farley's whole paper and not just the abstract cited in the lead [1]. Maybe I'm missing something (and by all means let me know), but Farley doesn't make this point at all. He does say that "white males from the South who had dropped out of high school" are most likely to identify as "American" (something like 19% of this demographic selected American ancestry). But he also writes that 15% of black Americans selected this ancestry, and at one point he speculates that the higher "English-American" count may be an overcount (respondents were asked what language they speak before being asked about ancestry, which may have confused them).

But what is perhaps most crucial is this:

"At the turn of this century [20th Century], many whites or their parents had been born in Europe. Languages other than English were commonly spoken; ethnic residential segregation was moderately high; and the ethnic groups differed greatly in economic status. Immigration came to an end in 1924, and ethnic intermarriage increased so rapidly after World War 2 that by the 1970s only one marriage of whites in four involved a bride and groom of the same ancestry. Suburbanization emptied ethnic neighborhoods and the census of 1980 found that ethnic white residential segregation was minimal compared to racial or Hispanic residential segregation." (Farley, p. 426)

This is consistent with what other demographers/sociologists have written about white interethnic marriage in the postwar years[2] -there was a massive surge in this phenomenon which diluted earlier ethnic and religious divisions among Euro-Americans. All of these major ancestries -German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish, French etc -were spread out to a population that is now so genealogically hybridized that it's impossible to tease this stuff out. Demographers know this and don't spend any energy trying to rank order these groups -they're not even discrete categories.

In addition to 15% of black Americans reporting "American" ancestry, Farley also notes that some blacks report "English" ancestry. So you cannot combine "Americans" with "English" or "British" Americans as if they form a coherent ancestry grouping -you're combining people who don't have the same ancestries or even the same race. Jonathan f1 (talk) 18:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)