Americans

Americans are citizens of the United States of America. The country is home to people of many different national origins. As a result, most Americans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance. Although citizens make up the majority of Americans, non-citizen residents, dual citizens, and expatriates may also claim an American identity.

Overview

The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, and American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.

Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can also be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists, settlers, and immigrants. It also includes influences of African-American culture. 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 19th and early 20th 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.

White Americans

White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or reported as White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as "White" or reported entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian" and so is a wider group than European American. Like all official U.S. racial categories, "White" has a "Not Hispanic or Latino" and a "Hispanic or Latino" component, the latter consisting mostly of White Mexican Americans and White Cuban Americans. The term "Caucasian" is often used interchangeably with "White", although the terms are not synonymous. However, the English-Americans and British-Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as the stock tend to self-report and identify as simply 'Americans' due to the length of time they have inhabited America.

The ten largest ancestries of American Whites are: German Americans (16.5%), Irish Americans (11.9%), English Americans (9.2%), Italian Americans (5.5%), Mexican Americans (5.4%), French Americans (4%), Polish Americans (3%), Scottish Americans (1.9%), Dutch Americans (1.6%), and Norwegian Americans (1.5%). However, the English-Americans and British-Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as the stock tend to self-report and identify as simply 'Americans' due to the length of time they have inhabited America.

White people

White people is a racial classification specifier, depending on context used for people of Europid ancestry. The contemporary usage of "white people" or a "white race" as a large group of (mainly European) populations contrasting with "black", American Indian, "colored" or non-white originates in the 17th century. It is today particularly used as a racial classifier in multiracial societies, such as the United States (White American), the United Kingdom (White British), Brazil (White Brazilian), and South Africa (White South African). Various social constructions of whiteness have been significant to national identity, public policy, religion, population statistics, racial segregation, affirmative action, white privilege, eugenics, racial marginalization and racial quotas.

The term "white race" or "white people" entered the major European languages in the later 17th century, in the context of racialized slavery and unequal status in European colonies. Description of populations as "white" in reference to their skin color predates this notion and is found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient sources. Scholarship on race generally distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions of collective difference.

White

White is an achromatic color, literally a "color without hue", that is a mixture of the frequencies of all the colors of the visible spectrum. It is one of the most common colors in nature, the color of sunlight, snow, milk, chalk, limestone and other common minerals. In many cultures white represents or signifies purity, innocence, and light, and is the symbolic opposite of black, or darkness. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, white is the color most often associated with perfection, the good, honesty, cleanliness, the beginning, the new, neutrality, and exactitude.

In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore a white toga as a symbol of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity; the widows of kings dressed in white rather than black as the color of mourning. It sometimes symbolizes royalty; it was the color of the French kings (black being the color of the queens) and of the monarchist movement after the French Revolution as well as of the movement called the White Russians (not to be confounded with Belarus, literally "White Russia") who fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922). Greek and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of new churches, capitols and other government buildings, especially in the United States of America. It was also widely used in 20th century modern architecture as a symbol of modernity, simplicity and strength.