Racial Diversity: Historical Worksheet
Throughout most of the history of the United States, the majority race in most locations has been White, also referred to as Caucasian or White American. Of the White American race, there are two separate ethnic origins defined by the United States Census Bureau that a person may belong to – Hispanic or Non-Hispanic. A White Hispanic person is defined as a “citizen or resident who is racially white and of Hispanic descent”. The ancestral backgrounds that most members of the White Non-Hispanic racial group share are Europe, the Middle East, and North African, while those of Hispanic descent have ancestors from Spain or Latin America and Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa (United States Census Bureau, 2012).
Two of the larger racial minority groups in U.S. history are Black or African Americans, comprising about 12.5% of the population, and Asian Americans who make up about 4.5% of the population. Black Americans are primarily descended from Africans who were involuntarily brought to American and the United States between the early 1600’s and the mid-1800’s, so specific African nations of origin are usually untraceable. Since the 1970’s, there has been a growing population within the Black American racial group who originate in Jamaica, Haiti, and Barbados. Black Americans have been a significant minority group since the early 1900’s. Asian Americans typically share ancestral backgrounds in China, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei. Asian Americans have been a notable minority group since the mid-20th century but there were large influxes of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese immigrants in the mid-to-late 19th century (United States Census Bureau, 2010).
Laws have been used to enforce discrimination against minority racial and ethnic