For other uses, see American (disambiguation), and American (word) for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts.

Americans

Total population
316.5 million
Regions with significant populations
United States        313,802,000[1]
Mexico 738,100–1,000,000 [2][3]  Canada 688,000–1,000,000 [4][5]  Philippines 250,000 [6]  United Kingdom 224,000 [7]  Brazil 170,000 [8]  Liberia 160,000 [9]  France 100,000 [10]  Israel 100,000 [11]  Germany 99,600 [12]  Hong Kong 60,000 [13]  Australia 56,276 [14]  Japan 52,684 [15]  Saudi Arabia 40,000 [16]  Costa Rica 40,000 [17]  Norway 33,509 [18]  South Korea 28,500 [19]  Lebanon 25,000 [20]  New Zealand 17,751 [21]
Languages
Primarily English, but also Spanish and others
Religion
Christian (Protestantism, Catholicism and Mormonism)[22] Unaffiliated (Agnosticism and Atheism)[22] Various non-christian religions (Judaism, and others)[22]

Americans, or American people, are the citizens of the United States of America. The country is home to people of different national origins. As a result, Americans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship. Aside from the Native American population, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.^[23]

Despite its multi-ethnic composition,^[24][25] the culture held in common by most Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European immigrants.^[24] It also includes influences of African American culture.^[26] Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics.^[24]

In addition to the United States, Americans and people of American descent can be found internationally. As many as 4 million Americans are estimated to be living abroad.^[4]

Racial and ethnic groups[link]

White and European Americans[link]

People of European descent or whites constitute the majority of the 308 million (308,745,538) people living in the United States, with 223,553,265 or 72.4% of the population in the 2010 United States Census, down from 89.5% (17.1% drop in 60 years) in the 1950 Census.^[27] They are people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. White Americans are the majority in forty-nine of the fifty states, with Hawaii as the exception. Non-Hispanic whites are the majority in forty-six states; the four minority-majority states are California, Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia has a non-white majority.

The largest continental ancestral group of Americans are Europeans who have origins in any of the original peoples of Europe. This includes people via African, North American, Caribbean, Central American or South American and Oceanian nations which have a large European diaspora.^[28]

The Spanish were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States.^[29] Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the United States.^[30] Twenty-one years later, Virginia Dare born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the Thirteen Colonies to English parents.

In 2009, German Americans (16.5%), Irish Americans (11.9%), and English Americans (9.0%) were the three largest self-reported ancestry groups in the United States forming 37.4% of the population.^[31]

Sixty million Americans, one fifth of the total United States population, claim British ancestry.^[32]

Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate^[33] and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income,^[34] and median personal income^[35] of any racial demographic in the nation.

European ancestries[36]
Rank	Ancestry	Percentage	Pop.	Rank	Ancestry	Percentage	Pop.
1	German	15.2%	42,841,569	11	Swedish	1.4%	3,998,310
2	Irish	10.8%	30,524,799	12	Russian	0.9%	2,652,214
3	English	8.7%	24,509,692	13	Welsh	0.6%	1,753,794
4	Italian	5.6%	15,638,348	14	Danish	0.5%	1,430,897
5	French	3.8%	10,658,000	15	Hungarian	0.5%	1,398,702
6	Polish	3.2%	8,977,235	16	Czech	0.4%	1,258,452
7	Scottish	1.7%	4,890,581	17	Portuguese	0.4%	1,173,691
8	Dutch	1.6%	4,541,770	18	Greek	0.4%	1,153,295
9	Norwegian	1.6%	4,477,725	19	British	0.4%	1,085,718
10	Scotch-Irish	1.5%	4,319,232	20	Swiss	0.3%	911,502
2000 United States Census Bureau *French Americans reported 8,309,908 inclu.French Canadian were 2,349,684 = 10,658,000								Benjamin Franklin (English). Henry Ford (Anglo-Irish, Belgian). Rita Hayworth (Spanish, English, Irish). Jacqueline Bouvier (French, English, Irish). Wright Brothers (English, Dutch, German-Swiss).[37] Paul Newman (Hungarian & Polish Jew, Slovak).

Black and African Americans[link]

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa.^[38] In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. According to the 2009 American Community Survey, there were 38,093,725 blacks in the United States, which represented 12.4% of the population. In addition, there were 37,144,530 non-Hispanic blacks, which represented 12.1% of the population.^[39]

Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations.^[40] As an adjective, the term is usually spelled African-American.^[41] More recent immigrants from Africa may, or may not, self-identify as "African-American";^[42][43] and may experience conflict with American-born African-Americans.^{[44][45][46][47]}

African American history starts in the 17th century with indentured servitude in the American colonies and progresses onto the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by African Americans. Some of these were slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Black Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.^[48]

African ancestries[49]
Rank	Ancestry	Percentage	Pop.	Rank	Ancestry	Percentage	Pop.
1	Black or African American alone	88.84%	38,093,725	9	South African	0.13%	55,895
2	Subsaharan African	6.68%	2,866,419	10	Liberian	0.12%	49,428
3	Black Hispanic	2.21%	949,195	11	Kenyan	0.10%	44,467
4	Nigerian	0.59%	254,794	12	Sudanese	0.09%	36,663
5	Ethiopian	0.44%	186,679	13	Sierra Leonean	0.03%	13,281
6	Other Subsaharan African	0.29%	126,463	14	Ugandan	0.03%	11,674
7	Cape Verdean	0.21%	90,828	15	Senegalese alone	0.02%	8,767
8	Ghanaian	0.20%	84,777	16	Zimbabwean	0.01%	6,367
2009 American Community Survey Bureau								Oprah Winfrey of Kpelle[50] descent (Liberia). Paul Robeson of Igbo descent (Nigeria).

Asian Americans[link]

Another significant population is the Asian American population, comprising 17.3 million in 2010, or 5.6% of the U.S. population.^[51][52] California is home to 5.6 million Asian Americans, the greatest number in any state;^[53] in Hawaii, Asian Americans make up the highest proportion of the population (57 percent).^[53] Asian Americans live across the country, yet are heavily urbanized, with significant populations in the Greater Los Angeles Area, New York metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay Area.^[54]

They are by no means a monolithic group. The largest sub-groups are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Cambodia, Mainland China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Asians overall have higher income levels than all other racial groups in the United States, including whites, and the trend appears to be increasing in relation to those groups.^[55] Additionally, Asians have a higher education attainment level than all other racial groups in the United States.^[56][57] For better or worse, the group has been called a model minority.^[58][59][60]

While Asian American have been in what is now the United States since before the Revolutionary War,^[61][62][63] relatively large waves of Chinese, Filipino and Japanese immigration did not begin until the mid-to-late 19th century.^[63] Immigration and significant population growth continue to this day.^[64] Due to a number of factors, Asian Americans have been stereotyped as "perpetual foreigners".^[65][66]

Asian ancestries[51]
Rank	Ancestry	Percentage	Pop.	Jose Calugas
1	Chinese	1.2%	3,797,379
2	Filipino	1.1%	3,417,285
3	Indian	1.0%	3,188,538
4	Vietnamese	0.5%	1,737,665
5	Korean	0.5%	1,707,027
6	Japanese	0.4%	1,304,599
	Other Asian	0.9%	2,799,448
	Asian American (total)	5.6%	17,320,856
2010 United States Census				Anna May Wong (Chinese), Jose Calugas (Filipino), Kalpana Chawla (Indian) Maggie Q (Vietnamese), Seo Jae-pil (Korean), Ellison Onizuka (Japanese)

Two or more races[link]

The U.S. has a growing multiracial identity movement. Multiracial Americans numbered 7.0 million in 2008, or 2.3% of the population.^[52] They can be any combination of races (White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, "Some other race") and ethnicities.^[67] Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, is biracial with his mother being of English and Irish descent and his father being of Kenyan birth.^[68][69]

American Indians and Alaska Natives[link]

Sacagawea was of Shoshone descent

Indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as American Indians and Inuit, made up 0.8% of the population in 2008, numbering 2.4 million.^[52] An additional 2.3 million declared part-American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry.^[70] The legal and official designation of who is Native American by descent aroused controversy by demographers, tribal nations and government officials for many decades. The blood quantum laws are complex and contradictory in admittance of new tribal members, or for census takers to accept any respondent's claims without official documents from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. Genetic scientists estimated that over 15 million other Americans may be one quarter or less of American Indian descent.