A European American (also known as a Euro-American) is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the original peoples of Europe.
The Spanish were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States. Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida, was the first known person of European descent born in what is now the United States. Twenty-one years later, Virginia Dare, born in 1587 on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the Thirteen Colonies to English parents.
In 2009, German Americans (16.5%), Irish Americans (11.9%), English Americans (9.0%) and Italian Americans (6.4%) were the four largest self-reported ancestry groups in the United States forming 43.8% of the total population.
Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income, and median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation (following Asian-Americans who rank first in those categories.)
Read more about European American: Origins, Culture, Demographics, European Ancestries Table
Famous quotes containing the words european and/or american:
“If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.”
—Simone Weil (19091943)
“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”
—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale 17881879, U.S. novelist, poet and womens magazine editor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 36-40 (December 1828)