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The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. [1] At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories (White, Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander), as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories.
The Interagency Committee agreed, stating that "race" and "ethnicity" were not sufficiently defined and "that many respondents conceptualize 'race' and 'ethnicity' as one and the same underscor[ing] the need to consolidate these terms into one category, using a term that is more meaningful to the American people." [5] The AAA also stated:
Around 1900 and before, the primordialist understanding of ethnicity predominated: cultural differences between peoples were seen as being the result of inherited traits and tendencies. [74] With Weber's introduction of the idea of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity became more divided from each other.
Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: "A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses.
The Census Bureau said a combined 43.6% of Americans who self-identify as Hispanics either reported being of “Some Other Race” (35.5%) or did not respond to the race question in the 2020 count ...
Researchers have investigated the relationship between race and genetics as part of efforts to understand how biology may or may not contribute to human racial categorization. Today, the consensus among scientists is that race is a social construct, and that using it as a proxy for genetic differences among populations is misleading. [1] [2]
Those differences clearly have no basis in ethnicity, so race is completely socially constructed. Some [who?] argue it is preferable when considering biological relations to think in terms of populations, and when considering cultural relations to think in terms of ethnicity, rather than of race. These developments had important consequences.
The Census Bureau also recognizes differences in ethnicity among the population, and it defines ethnicity as whether a person is of Hispanic origin or not. For this reason, ethnicity is broken out into two categories in its data, Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. Hispanics may report as any race. [9]