Italians (Italian: italiani) are an ethnic group native of Southern Europe that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence (though the principle of jus sanguinis is used extensively and arguably more favorably in the Italian nationality law), and are distinguished from people of Italian descent and, historically, from ethnic Italians living in the unredeemed territories adjacent to the Italian Peninsula.

In 2012, in addition to the 60 million Italians in Italy and 3,000 in San Marino, Italian-speaking, autonomous groups are found in neighboring countries: about 500,000 in Switzerland, a large, but undefined population in France (Nice, Corsica), and smaller groups in Slovenia and Croatia, primarily in Istria. If regarded as an ethnic group, they constitute one of the world's largest.

Because of wide-ranging and long-lasting diaspora, about 4 and half million Italian citizens and over 70 million people of full or part Italian ancestry live outside of Italy, most notably in South America, North America, Australia and parts of Europe.

Daniel Franzese (born May 9, 1978) is an American actor. He has worked in film, TV and theater.

Franzese was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, the son of Denise and Ralph "R. J." Franzese, a lounge singer. Franzese attended Piper High School in Sunrise, Florida from 1992–1996.

Daniel has appeared in more than fourteen films, including Bully, Party Monster, Mean Girls, Bristol Boys and War of the Worlds. Daniel also featured in the web series Foodies the first episode aired in 2011.

On October 12, 2007 Daniel curated his first art show called Halloween, a multi-artist show which examined celebrity, vanity, money and the day we get to dress up and ask strangers for goodies.

On April 25, 2008, at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery in Los Angeles, California, Franzese curated an art show called depARTed. The show featured art inspired by stars that died before their time. All art was inspired by famous personalities from Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Anna Nicole Smith to notable figures like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., to artists like Keith Haring and Isabella Blow. Artists included dRon English, Keyth Ryden (also known as KRK Ryden), and Jessicka.

The term black people is used in some socially-based systems of racial classification for humans of a dark-skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups represented in a particular social context. Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class and socio-economic status also play a role, so that relatively dark-skinned people can be classified as white if they fulfill other social criteria of "whiteness" and relatively light-skinned people can be classified as black if they fulfill the social criteria for "blackness" in a particular setting.

As a biological phenotype being "black" is often associated with the very dark skin colors of some people who are classified as "black". But, particularly in the United States, the racial or ethnic classification also refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry, or to exhibit cultural traits associated with being "African-American". As a result, in the United States the term "black people" is not an indicator of skin color but of socially based racial classification.