Data Viz | Demographics
ROOTS BEYOND RACE
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by ANDI EGBERT | Nov. 12, 2019
Our Roots Beyond Race project is the most comprehensive portrait of Americans’ identity available anywhere. Typically, discussions of race and ethnicity show U.S. residents in five or six broad categories. This project goes beyond basic race groups to reveal our incredibly varied “roots”—our family histories, including immigration patterns across generations and up to the present.
Roots Beyond Race contains data on 198 heritage groups and demonstrates the complex, overlapping, and fascinating origins of those who live in the United States. These data are self-reported and therefore reveal Americans’ own construction of identity. Multi-racial and multi-origin people appear in all race and heritage groups they reported to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Download select findings for the U.S. and all states and explore all the results in our interactive tools below.
Source: APM Research Lab analysis of the IPUMS version of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey.
Notes: The Asian/Pac. Islander, Black, Indigenous, Latino, and White race/ethnicity groups include both single race and multiracial people. The White, non-Hispanic group includes only people who identify as White race alone and non-Hispanic.
*NOS refers to Not Otherwise Specified. *NOS groups do NOT include the sum of other more specific origin countries. Zero values mean the estimate was fewer than 2,000 people and the data were unreliable. Under "any race," the percentage of the heritage group that is U.S.-born (including Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands) is provided as a point of context (in the tooltip) for all groups estimated to be 10,000 or more.
KEY FINDINGS
Thirteen percent of Americans claim German heritage, more than any other group. In the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota, more than 3 in 10 residents have German roots, leading the nation.
Twelve percent of Americans have Mexican ties, second only to German. Mexican immigrants or descendants are especially common in the southwestern states. One-third or more of all residents in Texas, California, and New Mexico claim Mexican heritage, followed closely by Arizona (29%).
About 1 in 10 Americans claim Irish ancestry, but you are more than twice as likely to meet someone with Irish roots in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which lead the nation.
About 1 in 10 Americans have African American heritage [see note in FAQs below]. In Mississippi and Washington, D.C., 35% of residents or more claim African American roots.
Some newer (often refugee) arrivals and their children are concentrated in certain states. For example, Minnesota is home to 74,000 residents with Somali roots, more than five times as many as the next closest state of Washington (13,000). About 542,000 Floridians also claim Haitian roots, more than three times the next most frequent state of New York (180,000). California leads in the nation in residents with Syrian ties (24,000), while Indiana is home to the greatest number of Burmese residents (25,000) in the country.
Even when grouped by race, Americans are incredibly diverse. About 26.7 million White Americans claim Mexican heritage (or 10.9%); nearly 2.2 million Black Americans claim European (not otherwise specified) heritage (4.7%); about 906,000 Latinos claim African American heritage (or 1.5%); about 326,000 Asian or Pacific Islanders claim German heritage (1.4%); and 384,000 Indigenous residents claim Irish heritage (6.8%). These examples speak to the way that our understanding of Americans’ identity is often shortchanged by basic race groups.
Source: APM Research Lab analysis of the IPUMS version of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey.
Notes: The Asian/Pac. Islander, Black, Indigenous, Latino, and White race/ethnicity groups include both single race and multiracial people. The White, non-Hispanic group includes only people who identify as White race alone and non-Hispanic.
*NOS refers to Not Otherwise Specified. *NOS groups do NOT include the sum of other more specific origin countries. Zero values mean the estimate was fewer than 2,000 people and the data were unreliable. Under "any race," the percentage of the heritage group that is U.S.-born (including Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands) is provided as a point of context (in the tooltip) for all groups estimated to be 10,000 or more.
KEY FINDINGS
As this data visualization reveals, racial labels comprise very different populations from state to state. For example, the largest Asian/Pacific Islander heritage group in California is Chinese, while in Georgia, it is Asian Indian; in Minnesota, it is Hmong; in Nebraska, it is Nepali and Vietnamese; and in Nevada, it is Filipino.
Numbering 43.5 million, more Americans claim German heritage than any other group, followed by Mexican heritage, with 37.9 million tracing their family history to our southern neighbor.
Among Asian or Pacific Islanders (including multiracial people), the five most common heritage groups nationally are Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Korean.
Among Black (including multiracial) people, the five most common heritage groups nationally are African American, Mexican, European (not otherwise specified), Jamaican, and Haitian.
Among single-race Indigenous people, the three most common tribal affiliations are Navajo, Cherokee, and Chippewa/Ojibwe. Among Indigenous people (including multiracial persons), the three most common heritage groups nationally are Mexican, Irish, and German.
Among Latinos (including multiracial people), the five most common heritage groups nationally are Mexican, Puerto Rican, Spanish, Salvadoran, and Cuban.
Among White (including multiracial) people, the five most common heritage groups nationally are German, Irish, Mexican, English, and Italian.
Notes about use
Please include the following citation for information sourced from this project: Source: APM Research Lab, Roots Beyond Race, 2019. Available at: apmresearchlab.org/rootsbeyondrace. On social media, please use the hashtag #RootsBeyondRace.
If you would like an interview with our team about these data, or would like to embed these tools, please email us at info@apmresearchlab.org.