2010 United States Census
The 2010 United States Census is the twenty-third and most recent United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010; the census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators serving to spot-check randomly selected neighborhoods and communities. As part of a drive to increase the count's accuracy, 635,000 temporary enumerators were hired; the population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, a 9.7% increase from the 2000 Census. This was the first census in which all states recorded a population of over half a million, as well as the first in which all 100 largest cities recorded populations of over 200,000; as required by the United States Constitution, the U. S. census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 U. S. Census was the previous census completed. Participation in the U. S. Census is required by law in Title 13 of the United States Code. On January 25, 2010, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves inaugurated the 2010 Census enumeration by counting World War II veteran Clifton Jackson, a resident of Noorvik, Alaska.
More than 120 million census forms were delivered by the U. S. Post Office beginning March 15, 2010; the number of forms mailed out or hand-delivered by the Census Bureau was 134 million on April 1, 2010. Although the questionnaire used April 1, 2010 as the reference date as to where a person was living, an insert dated March 15, 2010 included the following printed in bold type: "Please complete and mail back the enclosed census form today." The 2010 Census national mail participation rate was 74%. From April through July 2010, census takers visited households that did not return a form, an operation called "non-response follow-up". In December 2010, the U. S. Census Bureau delivered population information to the U. S. President for apportionment, in March 2011, complete redistricting data was delivered to states. Identifiable information will be available in 2082; the Census Bureau did not use a long form for the 2010 Census. In several previous censuses, one in six households received this long form, which asked for detailed social and economic information.
The 2010 Census used only a short form asking ten basic questions: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010? Were there any additional people staying here on April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1? Mark all that apply: Is this house, apartment, or mobile home – What is your telephone number? What is Person 1's name? What is Person 1's sex? What is Person 1's age and Person 1's date of birth? Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin? What is Person 1's race? Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else? The form included space to repeat all of these questions for up to twelve residents total. In contrast to the 2000 census, an Internet response option was not offered, nor was the form available for download. Detailed socioeconomic information collected during past censuses will continue to be collected through the American Community Survey; the survey provides data about communities in the United States on a 1-year or 3-year cycle, depending on the size of the community, rather than once every 10 years.
A small percentage of the population on a rotating basis will receive the survey each year, no household will receive it more than once every five years. In June 2009, the U. S. Census Bureau announced. However, the final form did not contain a separate "same-sex married couple" option; when noting the relationship between household members, same-sex couples who are married could mark their spouses as being "Husband or wife", the same response given by opposite-sex married couples. An "unmarried partner" option was available for couples; the 2010 census cost $13 billion $42 per capita. Operational costs were $5.4 billion under the $7 billion budget. In December 2010 the Government Accountability Office noted that the cost of conducting the census has doubled each decade since 1970. In a detailed 2004 report to Congress, the GAO called on the Census Bureau to address cost and design issues, at that time, had estimated the 2010 Census cost to be $11 billion. In August 2010, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that the census operational costs came in under budget.
Locke credited the management practices of Census Bureau director Robert Groves, citing in particular the decision to buy additional advertising in locations where responses lagged, which improved the overall response rate. The agency has begun to rely more on questioning neighbors or other reliable third parties when a person could not be reached at home, which reduced the cost of follow-up visits. Census data for about 22% of U. S. househol
Hispanic and Latino Americans
Hispanic Americans and Latino Americans are Americans who are descendants of people from Spain and Latin America, respectively. More it includes all Americans who speak the Spanish language natively, who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, whether of full or partial ancestry. For the 2010 United States Census, people counted as "Hispanic" or "Latino" were those who identified as one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the census questionnaire as well as those who indicated that they were "other Spanish, Hispanic or Latino." The national origins classified as Hispanic or Latino by the United States Census Bureau are the following: Argentine, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Costa Rican, Honduran, Panamanian, Bolivian, Spanish American, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Venezuelan. Brazilian Americans, other Portuguese-speaking Latino groups, non-Spanish speaking Latino groups in the United States are defined as "Latino" by some U. S. government agencies. The Census Bureau uses the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably."Origin" can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage or country of birth of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States.
People who identify as Spanish, Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. As one of the only two designated categories of ethnicity in the United States, Hispanics form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages. Most Hispanic Americans are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan or Colombian origin; the predominant origin of regional Hispanic populations varies in different locations across the country. Hispanic Americans are the second fastest-growing ethnic group by percentage growth in the United States after Asian Americans. Hispanic/Latinos overall are the second-largest ethnic group in the United States, after non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics have lived within what is now the United States continuously since the founding of St. Augustine by the Spanish in 1565. After Native Americans, Hispanics are the oldest ethnic group to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Many have Native American ancestry. Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, as well as Florida.
Its holdings included present-day California, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas, all of which were part of the Republic of Mexico from its independence in 1821 until the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848. Conversely, Hispanic immigrants to the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area derive from a broad spectrum of Latin American states. A study published in 2015 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, based on 23andMe data from 8,663 self-described Latinos, estimated that Latinos in the United States carried a mean of 65.1% European ancestry, 18.0% Native American ancestry, 6.2% African ancestry. The study found that self-described Latinos from the Southwest those along the Mexican border, had the highest mean levels of Native American ancestry; the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" refer to an ethnicity. Hispanic people may share some commonalities in their language, culture and heritage. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the term "Latino" includes peoples with Portuguese roots, such as Brazilians, as well as those of Spanish-language origin.
In the United States, many Hispanics and Latinos are of both Native American ancestry. Others are predominantly of European ancestry or of Amerindian ancestry. Many Hispanics and Latinos from the Caribbean, as well as other regions of Latin America where African slavery was widespread, may be of sub-Saharan African descent as well; the difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino is confusing to some. The U. S. Census Bureau equates the two terms and defines them as referring to anyone from Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. After the Mexican–American War concluded in 1848, term Hispanic or Spanish American was used to describe the Hispanos of New Mexico within the American Southwest; the 1970 United States Census controversially broadened the definition to "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race". This is now the common formal and colloquial definition of the term within the United States, outside of New Mexico.
The term Latino has developed a number of definitions. One definition of Latino is "a Latin male in the United States"; this is the oldest and the original definition used in the United States, first used in 1946. This definition encompasses Spanish speakers from both Europe and the Americas. Under this definition, immigrants from Spain and immigrants from Latin America are both Latino; this definition is consistent with the 21st-century usage by the U. S. Census Bureau and OMB, as the two agencies use Latino interchangeably. A definition of Latino is as a condensed form of the term "Latino-Americano", the Spanish word for Latin-American, or someone who comes from Latin America. Under this definition a Mexican American or Puerto Rican, for example, is both a Hispanic and a Latino. A Brazilian American is a Latino by this definition, which includes those of Portuguese-speaking origin from Latin America. However, an immigrant from Spain would be classified as European or White by American sta
Latimer County, Oklahoma
Latimer County is a county located in the southeastern part of the U. S. state of Oklahoma. Its county seat is Wilburton; as of the 2010 census, the population was 11,154. The county was created at statehood in 1907 and named for James L. Latimer, a delegate from Wilburton to the 1906 state Constitutional Convention. Prior to statehood, it had been for several decades part of Choctaw Nation; this area was occupied for at least 3500 years by cultures of indigenous peoples. The most recent of the prehistoric peoples established complex earthworks during the Mississippian culture. Archeological excavations have revealed artifacts from Archaic and Mississippian cultures. Living in what is now southeastern Oklahoma, these peoples were direct ancestors of the Caddo Nation, a historic confederacy of tribes that flourished in east Texas and northern Louisiana before removal to another area of Indian Territory. In the 1970s excavations at the McCutchan-McLaughlin site revealed many details about the lives and deaths of the Fourche Maline culture people, who lived in this area in the Woodland Period, about 300 BCE to 800 CE.
These hunter-gatherers were physically healthier than descendants in more complex cultures who depended on maize agriculture, but they were often beset by warfare. Numerous remains were found in mass graves, killed by spears; this archeological site continues to be studied and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1831, the area now known as Latimer County was organized as part of Gaines County in the Choctaw Nation in the Indian Territory after the Choctaw were removed by the federal government from their traditional territory in the American Southeast, they designated the county seat as Gaines Courthouse. In 1858, the Butterfield Overland Mail established a route through the territory, which included stage stops at Edwards's Station, Holloway's Station, Riddle's Station and Pusley's Station near Higgins; the beginning of large-scale coal mining attracted railroad construction to the area to get the commodity to market. The chief coal mining areas were in the mountains in the north of the county, in the Choctaw Segregated Coal Lands.
Coal mining companies were established in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1889-90, the Choctaw Coal and Railway Company laid 67.4 miles of track from Wister to McAlester. The Missouri and Texas Railway completed a branch line from North McAlester to Wilburton in 1904; as a prelude to Oklahoma being admitted as a state to the Union, the Dawes Act was extended to the Choctaw and others of the Five Civilized Tribes. These had all been removed from the Southeast. Choctaw tribal control of communal lands was dissolved, the lands were allotted to individual households of tribal members, in an effort to encourage subsistence farming on the European-American model; the Choctaw lost most of their land, with individuals retaining about one-quarter of the land in the county. The government declared any remaining land to be'surplus. Tribal governments were dissolved, Oklahoma became a state. By 1912, the newly organized county had 27 mines. Most coal was produced by the large companies. Native-born whites held most of the jobs as miners, but African Americans, European immigrants from the British Isles and Italy, Mexicans worked as laborers in the mining industry.
In less than two decades, the coal industry collapsed, due to labor unrest seeking relief from harsh working conditions and unfair labor practices, competition from oils, the effects of the Great Depression. From 1920 to 1930, the county lost about 2,000 people. By 1932, only one mine still operated in the county. Mining towns lost half of their populations, at one point, 93.5 percent of those remaining in the country were surviving on government relief, through programs started by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Federal construction projects to build infrastructure and invest for the future provided many jobs for the unemployed. Locally such projects included Wilburton Municipal Airport, schools at Panola and elsewhere, road-paving works; the Civilian Conservation Corps, another federal program conducted in collaboration with state governments, developed a park project at the state game preserve, now part of Robbers Cave State Park. In 1933, Spanish–American War veterans established Veterans Colony in the county, buying land together.
The war veterans could grow their own food, living year round in a community. In years, membership was opened to veterans of all wars. Veterans Colony still operates. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 729 square miles, of which 722 square miles is land and 7.0 square miles is water. The Sans Bois Mountains span the northern border of the county, while the Winding Stair Mountains extend into its southern part; the Fourche Maline and Sans Bois creeks drain the northern part of the county into the Poteau River, a tributary of the Arkansas River. Buffalo and Gaines Creeks drain the southern part into the Kiamichi River, a tributary of the Red River. U. S. Highway 270 State Highway 1 State Highway 2 State Highway 63 State Highway 82 Haskell County Le Flore County Pushmataha County Pittsburg County As of the census of 2000, there were 10,692 people, 3,951 households, 2,868 families residing in the county; the population density was 15 people per square mi
German Americans
German Americans are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of 44 million in 2016, German Americans are the largest of the ancestry groups reported by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey; the group accounts for about one third of the total ethnic German population in the world. None of the German states had American colonies. In the 1670s, the first significant groups of German immigrants arrived in the British colonies, settling in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia. Immigration continued in large numbers during the 19th century, with eight million arrivals from Germany. Between 1820 and 1870 over seven and a half million German immigrants came to the United States. By 2010, their population grew to 49.8 million immigrants, reflecting a jump of 6 million people since 2000. There is a "German belt" that extends all the way across the United States, from eastern Pennsylvania to the Oregon coast. Pennsylvania has the largest population of German-Americans in the U.
S. and is home to one of the group's original settlements, founded in 1683 and the birthplace of the American antislavery movement in 1688, as well as the revolutionary Battle of Germantown. The state of Pennsylvania has 3.5 million people of German ancestry. They were pulled by the attractions of land and religious freedom, pushed out of Germany by shortages of land and religious or political oppression. Many arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, others for the chance to start fresh in the New World; the arrivals before 1850 were farmers who sought out the most productive land, where their intensive farming techniques would pay off. After 1840, many came to cities. German Americans established the first kindergartens in the United States, introduced the Christmas tree tradition, introduced popular foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers to America; the great majority of people with some German ancestry have become Americanized and can hardly be distinguished by the untrained eye.
German-American societies abound, as do celebrations that are held throughout the country to celebrate German heritage of which the German-American Steuben Parade in New York City is one of the most well-known and is held every third Saturday in September. Oktoberfest celebrations and the German-American Day are popular festivities. There are major annual events in cities with German heritage including Chicago, Milwaukee, San Antonio, St. Louis; the Germans included many quite distinct subgroups with differing cultural values. Lutherans and Catholics opposed Yankee moralizing programs such as the prohibition of beer, favored paternalistic families with the husband deciding the family position on public affairs, they opposed women's suffrage but this was used as argument in favor of suffrage when German Americans became pariahs during World War I. On the other hand, there were Protestant groups that emerged from European pietism such as the German Methodist and United Brethren; the first English settlers arrived at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, were accompanied by the first German American, Dr. Johannes Fleischer.
He was followed in 1608 by three carpenters or house builders. The first permanent German settlement in what became the United States was Germantown, founded near Philadelphia on October 6, 1683. Large numbers of Germans migrated from the 1680s to 1760s, with Pennsylvania the favored destination, they migrated to America for a variety of reasons. Push factors involved worsening opportunities for farm ownership in central Europe, persecution of some religious groups, military conscription. Immigrants paid for their passage by selling their labor for a period of years as indentured servants. Large sections of Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia attracted Germans. Most were German Reformed. German Catholics did not arrive in number until after the War of 1812. In 1709, Protestant Germans from the Pfalz or Palatine region of Germany escaped conditions of poverty, traveling first to Rotterdam and to London. Anne, Queen of Great Britain, helped; the trip was long and difficult to survive because of the poor quality of food and water aboard ships and the infectious disease typhus.
Many immigrants children, died before reaching America in June 1710. The Palatine immigration of about 2100 people who survived was the largest single immigration to America in the colonial period. Most were first settled along the Hudson River in work camps. By 1711, seven villages had been established in New York on the Robert Livingston manor. In 1723 Germans became the first Europeans allowed to buy land in the Mohawk Valley west of Little Falls. One hundred homesteads were allocated in the Burnetsfield Patent. By 1750, the Germans occupied a strip some 12 miles long along both sides of the Mohawk River; the soil was excellent. Herkimer was the best-known of the German settlements in a region long known as the "German Flats", they kept to themselves, married their own, spoke German, attended Lutheran churches, retained their own customs and foods. They emphasized farm owner
Multiracial Americans
Multiracial Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may include Americans of mixed race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2010 US census 9 million individuals or 2.9% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence. Historical reasons, including slavery creating a racial caste and the European-American suppression of Native Americans led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity that of the culture in which they were raised. Prior to the mid-20th century, many people hid their multiracial heritage because of racial discrimination against minorities. While many Americans may be biologically multiracial, they do not know it or do not identify so culturally, any more than they maintain all the differing traditions of a variety of national ancestries. After a lengthy period of formal racial segregation in the former Confederacy following the Reconstruction Era and bans on interracial marriage in various parts of the country, more people are forming interracial unions.
In addition, social conditions have changed and many multiracial people do not believe it is advantageous to try to "pass" as white. Diverse immigration has brought more mixed race people into the United States, such as a significant population of Hispanics identifying as mestizos. Since the 1980s, the United States has had a growing multiracial identity movement; because more Americans have insisted on being allowed to acknowledge their mixed racial origins, the 2000 census for the first time allowed residents to check more than one ethno-racial identity and thereby identify as multiracial. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the first biracial President of the United States. Today, multiracial individuals are found in every corner of the country. Multiracial groups in the United States include many African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Métis Americans, Louisiana Creoles, Melungeons, Lumbees and several other communities found in the Eastern US. Many Native Americans are multiracial in ancestry while identifying as members of federally recognized tribes.
The American people are multi-ethnic descendants of various culturally distinct immigrant groups, many of which have now developed nations. Some consider themselves multiracial, while acknowledging race as a social construct. Creolization and integration have been continuing processes; the Civil Rights Movement and other social movements since the mid-twentieth century worked to achieve social justice and equal enforcement of civil rights under the constitution for all ethnicities. In the 2000s, less than 5% of the population identified as multiracial. In many instances, mixed racial ancestry is so far back in an individual's family history, that it does not affect more recent ethnic and cultural identification. Interracial relationships, common-law marriages and marriages occurred since the earliest colonial years before slavery hardened as a racial caste associated with people of African descent in the British colonies. Virginia and other English colonies passed laws in the 17th century that gave children the social status of their mother, according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, regardless of the father's race or citizenship.
This overturned the principle in English common law by which a man gave his status to his children – this had enabled communities to demand that fathers support their children, whether legitimate or not. The change increased white men's ability to use slave women sexually, as they had no responsibility for the children; as master as well as father of mixed-race children born into slavery, the men could use these people as servants or laborers or sell them as slaves. In some cases, white fathers provided for their multiracial children, paying or arranging for education or apprenticeships and freeing them during the two decades following the American Revolution. Many other white fathers abandoned their mothers to slavery; the researcher Paul Heinegg found that most families of free people of color in colonial times were founded from the unions of white women, whether free or indentured servants and African men, indentured or free. In the early years, the working-class peoples worked together, their children were free because of the status of the white women.
This was in contrast to the pattern in the post-Revolutionary era, in which most mixed-race children had white fathers and slave mothers. Anti-miscegenation laws were passed in most states during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, but this did not prevent white slaveholders, their sons or other powerful white men from taking slave women as concubines and having multiracial children with them. In California and the western US, there were greater numbers of Asian residents; these were prohibited from official relationships with whites. White legislators passed laws prohibiting marriage between European and Asian Americans until the 1950s. Interracial relationships have had a long history in North America and the United States, beginning with the intermixing of European explorers and soldiers, who took native women as companions. After European settlement increased and fur trappers married or had unions with women of native tribes. In the 17th century
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
The Choctaw Nation is a Native American territory and federally recognized Indian Tribe with a tribal jurisdictional area and reservation comprising 10.5 counties in Southeastern Oklahoma. The Choctaw Nation maintains a special relationship with both the United States and Oklahoma governments; as of 2011, the tribe has 223,279 enrolled members, of which 84,670 live within the state of Oklahoma and 41,616 live within the Choctaw Nation's jurisdiction. A total of 233,126 people live within these boundaries; the tribal jurisdictional area is 10,864 square miles. The tribe has jurisdiction over its own members; the chief of the Choctaw Nation is Gary Batton, who took office on April 29, 2014, after the resignation of Gregory E. Pyle; the Choctaw Nation Headquarters, which houses the office of the Chief, is located in Durant. The tribal legislature meets at the Council House, across the street from the historic Choctaw Capitol Building, in Tuskahoma; the Capitol Building is now the Choctaw Nation Museum..
The Choctaw Nation is one of three federally recognized Choctaw tribes. The latter two bands are descendants of Choctaw who resisted the forced relocation to Indian Territory; the Mississippi Choctaw preserved much of their culture in small communities and reorganized as a tribal government under new laws after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Those Choctaw who removed to the Indian Territory, a process that went on into the early 20th century, are federally recognized as the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma; the removals became known as the "Trail of Tears." The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's tribal jurisdictional area covers 10,864 square miles, encompassing eight whole counties and parts of five counties in Southeastern Oklahoma: Atoka County, most of Bryan County, Choctaw County, most of Coal County, Haskell County, half of Hughes County, a portion of Johnston County, Latimer County, Le Flore County, McCurtain County, Pittsburg County, a portion of Pontotoc County, Pushmataha County. The Tribal Headquarters are located in Durant.
Opened in June 2018, the new headquarters is a 5-story, 500,000 square foot building located on an 80-acre campus in south Durant joining other tribal buildings such as the Regional Health Clinic, Wellness Center, Community Center, Child Development Center, Food Distribution. Headquarters was located in the former Oklahoma Presbyterian College, with more offices scattered around Durant; the current chief is Gary Batton and the assistant chief is Jack Austin, Jr. The Tribal Council meet monthly at Tvshka Homma; the tribe is governed by the Choctaw Nation Constitution, ratified by the people on June 9, 1984. The constitution provides for a legislative and a judicial branch of government; the chief of the Choctaw Tribe, elected every four years, is not a voting member of the Tribal Council. They are elected for four-year terms; the legislative authority of the tribe is vested in the Tribal Council, which consists of twelve members. The General Fund Operating Budget, the Health Systems Operating Budget, the Capital Projects Budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2017 and ending September 30, 2018 was $516,318,568.
The supreme executive power of the Choctaw Nation is assigned to a chief magistrate, styled as the "Chief of the Choctaw Nation". The Assistant Chief is appointed by the Chief with the advice and consent of the Tribal Council, can be removed at the discretion of the Chief; the current Chief of the Choctaw Nation is Gary Batton, the current Assistant Chief is Jack Austin, Jr. The Chief's birthday is a tribal holiday. Before Oklahoma was admitted as a state to the union in 1907, the Choctaw Nation was divided into three districts: Apukshunnubbee and Pushmataha; each district had its own chief from 1834 to 1857. The three districts were re-established in 1860, again each with their own chief, with a fourth chief to be Principal Chief of the tribe; these districts were abolished at the time of statehood. The tribe reorganized to re-establish its government; the legislative authority is vested in the Tribal Council. Members of the Tribal Council are elected by the Choctaw people, one for each of the twelve districts in the Choctaw Nation.
In order to be elected as council members, candidates must have resided in their respective districts for at least one year preceding the election. "Candidates for the Tribal Council must be at least one-fourth Choctaw Indian by blood and must be twenty-one years of age or older at the time they file for election." Once elected, a council member must remain a resident of the district from which he or she was elected during the term in office. This policy ensures the involvement and interaction of successful candidates with their constituency. Once in office, the Tribal Council members have scheduled county council meetings; the presence of these tribal leaders in the Indian community creates a sense of understanding of their community and its needs. The Tribal Council is responsible for adopting rules and regulations which govern the Choctaw Nation, for approving all budgets, making decisions concerning the management of tribal property, all other legislative matters; the Tribal Council Members are the voice and representation of the Choctaw people in the tribal government.
The Tribal Councils assist the community to implement an economic development strategy and to plan and direct Tribal resources to achieve self-sufficiency. The Tribal Council is working to strengthen
Asian Americans
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry. The term refers to a panethnic group that includes diverse populations, which have ancestral origins in East Asia, South Asia, or Southeast Asia, as defined by the U. S. Census Bureau; this includes people who indicate their race on the census as "Asian" or reported entries such as "Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Other Asian". Asian Americans with other ancestry comprise 5.6% of the U. S. population, while people who are Asian alone, those combined with at least one other race, make up 6.9%. Although migrants from Asia have been in parts of the contemporary United States since the 17th century, large-scale immigration did not begin until the mid-18th century. Nativist immigration laws during the 1880s–1920s excluded various Asian groups prohibiting all Asian immigration to the continental United States. After immigration laws were reformed during the 1940s–60s, abolishing national origins quotas, Asian immigration increased rapidly. Analyses of the 2010 census have shown that Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial or ethnic minority in the United States.
As with other racial and ethnicity-based terms and common usage have changed markedly through the short history of this term. Prior to the late 1960s, people of Asian ancestry were referred to as Oriental and Mongoloid. Additionally, the American definition of'Asian' included West Asian ethnic groups Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, Assyrian Americans, Iranian Americans, Kurdish Americans, Arab Americans, although these groups are now considered Middle Eastern American; the term Asian American was coined by historian Yuji Ichioka, credited with popularizing the term, to frame a new "inter-ethnic-pan-Asian American self-defining political group" in the late 1960s. Changing patterns of immigration and an extensive period of exclusion of Asian immigrants have resulted in demographic changes that have in turn affected the formal and common understandings of what defines Asian American. For example, since the removal of restrictive "national origins" quotas in 1965, the Asian-American population has diversified to include more of the peoples with ancestry from various parts of Asia.
Today, "Asian American" is the accepted term for most formal purposes, such as government and academic research, although it is shortened to Asian in common usage. The most used definition of Asian American is the U. S. Census Bureau definition, which includes all people with origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent; this is chiefly because the census definitions determine many governmental classifications, notably for equal opportunity programs and measurements. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Asian person" in the United States is sometimes thought of as a person of East Asian descent. In vernacular usage, "Asian" is used to refer to those of East Asian descent or anyone else of Asian descent with epicanthic eyefolds; this differs from the U. S. Census definition and the Asian American Studies departments in many universities consider all those of East, South or Southeast Asian descent to be "Asian". In the US Census, people with origins or ancestry in the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent are classified as part of the Asian race.
As such, "Asian" and "African" ancestry are seen as racial categories for the purposes of the Census, since they refer to ancestry only from those parts of the Asian and African continents that are outside the Middle East and North Africa. In 1980 and before, Census forms listed particular Asian ancestries as separate groups, along with white and black or negro. Asian Americans had been classified as "other". In 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a directive requiring government agencies to maintain statistics on racial groups, including on "Asian or Pacific Islander". By the 1990 census, "Asian or Pacific Islander" was included as an explicit category, although respondents had to select one particular ancestry as a subcategory. Beginning with the 2000 census, two separate categories were used: "Asian American" and "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander"; the definition of Asian American has variations that derive from the use of the word American in different contexts.
Immigration status, citizenship and language ability are some variables that are used to define American for various purposes and may vary in formal and everyday usage. For example, restricting American to include only U. S. citizens conflicts with discussions of Asian American businesses, which refer both to citizen and non-citizen owners. In a PBS interview from 2004, a panel of Asian American writers discussed how some groups include people of Middle Eastern descent in the Asian American category. Asian American author Stewart Ikeda has noted, "The definition of'Asian American' frequently depends on who's asking, who's defining, in what context, why... the possible definitions of'Asian-Pacific American' are many and shifting... some scholars in Asian American Studies conferences suggest that Russians and Israelis all might fit the field's subject of study." Jeff Yang, of the Wall Street Journal, writes that the panethnic definition of Asian American is a unique American construct, as an identity is "in beta".
Scholars have grappled with the accuracy, correctn
Haskell County
