European American
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A European American, or a Euro-American, is an American of European descent, otherwise referred to white or Caucasian.
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Specificity
The term is more specific than White or Caucasian in that these terms in their official usage include Americans of European, North African, Southwest Asian, and Middle Eastern ancestry. "Non-Hispanic White" is an official term of the U.S. government that is also more specific, but covers slightly different ground than European American. Non-Hispanic White excludes Hispanics who are of European (especially Spanish) descent, and includes non-Europeans such as Arabs and Iranians. Nonetheless, when examining demographic data, the "Non-Hispanic White" category corresponds most closely to European Americans.
Origin
The term was coined in response to the increasing racial diversity of the United States, as well as in recognition of this demographic diversity moving more into the mainstream of the society in the latter half of the 20th century.
As a linguistic concern, the term is often meant to discourage a dichotomous view of the racial landscape, in which "Whites" are conceived as separate from the rest of the racial groups, which have dual-name terms denoting ancestry, such as African Americans or Asian Americans.
Use of the term also represents a general end to the socioethnic disunity among Americans of different European ancestry (e.g. Irish Americans, Italian Americans), including the homogenization of culture and intermarriage that took place during the 20th century. Although it should be noted that one can be a European American and still belong to a specific ethnic group.
Use
The term European American has begun to see fairly widespread use in the mainstream since 2000, with both pollsters (notably Harris Poll's online division) and even major academic journals now often using it to distinguish between European-descent Caucasians and other Caucasians (especially Hispanics).<ref>For use in population history and genetics, for example, see
- Carlson et al. (2005). Genomic regions exhibiting positive selection identified from dense genotype data. Genome Res 15: 1553–1565.
- Stajich et al. (2005). Disentangling the effects of demography and selection in human history. Mol Biol Evol 22: 63–73.
- Akey et al. (2004). Population history and natural selection shape patterns of genetic variation in 132 genes. PLoS Biol 2: e286.</ref>