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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.
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include people of a common language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment.
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:
Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. [1] The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. [2]
Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races. Race is often culturally understood to be rigid categories (Black, White, Pasifika, Asian, etc) in which people can be classified based on biological markers or physical traits such as skin colour or facial features. This rigid definition of race is ...
Nationality is sometimes used simply as an alternative word for ethnicity or national origin, just as some people assume that citizenship and nationality are identical. [37] In some countries, the cognate word for nationality in local language may be understood as a synonym of ethnicity or as an identifier of cultural and family-based self ...
The number of ethnicity/nationality options available on Soviet censuses was enormous—the Soviet Union offered 194 different choices for ethnicity/nationality in its 1926 census. [74] There were 97 options in 1939, 126 options in 1959, 122 options in 1970, 123 options in 1979, and 128 options for the Soviet Union in 1989. [ 74 ]
The word "race", interpreted to mean an identifiable group of people who share a common descent, was introduced into English in the 16th century from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza: the Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest example around the mid-16th century and defines its early meaning as a "group of people belonging to the same family and descended from a common ...