Understanding Ancestry, Ethnicity, and the Global Impact of U.S. Racial Categories
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/05/14
Ancestries have been defined in a number of ways: Descent, heritage, nationality, pan-ethnic identity, tribal affiliation, or region. The United States uses five major categories for civil rights tracking. Those five are Asian, Black, Native American, Pacific Islander, and White. This categorization for civil rights demographics does not equate to the prior ancestries.
Ethnicities can come from a variety of definitions. While ideologically opposed but in agreement on the concept of Whites, while a abstract sociological invention, right sociopolitical affirmation of pride, ‘White Power,’ and the left sociopolitical critical language, ‘Whiteness.’ Each caters to relevant constituencies for financial, moral, or social points. They are distinct orientations. No necessary equivalence extant between them.
The intrigue comes from the imposed frame from within the United States on the world. U.S. racial and ethnic discourse is sometimes projected into international contexts. Some of the world buys into it, thus imposing American grievances onto their environs–without much apparent regard for a sufficiently symmetric relation or not.
Punjabis share Punjab region heritage, Punjabi language, cultural traditions, though Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus exist. Yoruba share language, lineage, and customs. Religion becomes secondary. Han Chinese share ancestry, language, and Confucianism. Therefore, common descent, shared language and traditions, and, maybe, religion and tribal/political affiliations amongst them.
The US uses self-identified ancestry, nationality, and origin. Studies of the demographics of the world use common ancestry, language, and culture. The US comprises a population of 334 million people. No single ancestry is a majority.
The largest self-reported ancestries are German (12%), English (9%), Irish (9%), unspecified American (5%), and Italian (5%). The largest pan-ethnic groups are Hispanic/Latino (20%), African American (14%), Asian (7%), and Native American/Alaska Native (1-2%). Foreign born residents is 14%. Therefore, German, English, Irish, and Hispanic comprise half of the US, but with overlap.
The world has 8.2 billion people. The United States is 4% of the world population. Yet, their sociopolitics, charged and neutral, get applied to the world. This seems inappropriate and inaccurate. 3 distinct ethnolinguistic blocs comprise a larger share of the global population than the 4% held by Americans.
Han Chinese (Sinitic language family) comprise 17% of the global population. Indo-Aryan peoples (Begali, Hindi, and Punjabi) comprise 13%. Arabs (Arabic-speaking) comprise 6%. Each exist in the US. None exists as a large minority in the US [See above].
More than 7,000 ethnic groups extant in the world. May we take ourselves as persons then peoples first, perhaps?
I don’t know.
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