"An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of humans based on people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area."
In other words, a nationality IS an ethnic group, but so are other things. Not only that, but a person can belong to multiple ethnic groups. And while ethnicity can be based on your DNA, it certainly doesn't have to be.
With the new update, Nepalese and Indonesian have been added! Also, Indians have overtaken Filipinos to become the second largest group. Other then that, most of the trends remain the same.
Taiwanese is actually considered part of the Chinese-American population on this quiz. Thanks for pointing it out though--I'll add it as one of my caveats.
Lebanese-Americans are not considered as people originating from the Middle East were not considered "Asian Americans" by the 2010 United States census, being counted as "white" instead. However, the Lebanese-American population is ~502,000, so if they were considered Asian-American they would be on this list.
Oh that's weird. That seems really arbitrary to me that the US gov't just doesn't classify a people from the continent of Asia, as Asians. Don't really get that one.
Lebanese people are more Mediterranean than proper Asian people, they share more with North Africa or Southern Europe than with East Asia... In fact that points the problems with US "race" classification, too, in my European point of view. Continents are freaking huge, and Asia is by far the hugest so "Asian-American" or "asian" itself doesn't mean much , whereas people of European descent are considered "white" but are Italian-American, Polish-American, etc... "African-American" seems quite different because it refers to the specific descent of former African slaves... but it excludes people who have Northern African origins or simply people of late African descent like former US president Obama...
Isn't "African-American" used for all black people from the states, no matter if they descent from slaves or from immigrants who came to the country more recently?
There are white Turks as well but Turkish people are mostly a Middle Eastern people. They have some European influences but overall they're not really European.
The whole problem with these classifications is that race (i.e. white, black, asian [appearance not the continent], etc) is just what you look like. It's useful to describe how a person *may* experience the world based on how people perceive them but that's about it.
The experiences of a Lebanese person are often somewhat different to that of Thai person, so for census statistics it kind of makes sense to separate the Middle East from East Asia. It's just a bit silly that by consequence it suggests people from the continent of Asia are not Asian. I also personally think Middle Easterners should get their own category on the census but that's another issue
Thanks so much! :) It feels incredible to have been on this site for several years (mostly playing/commenting but also making a few quizzes) and to have finally had my first feature!
I'm guessing what HinesBrothers meant was why individual Indian groups like Gujaratis, Punjabis, etc. are not on here while Hmong are. My best guess is that the Hmong aren't willing to identify as Vietnamese or Chinese while Indian sub-groups identify as Indian. As Quizmaster said in the pinned comment, ethnicity can be pretty vague, and ultimately on a census people will put down how they self-identify. "Gujarati" is as much an ethnicity as "Indian," but on the census most people of that group will identify as "Indian" so that's what we have on the quiz.
Tried Mongolian and got the point for Hmong - it looks like Hmong allows you to leave out the leading H - maybe should require that first H to stop unrelated flukes? Also, Laotian people are frequently referred to as Lao, maybe also allow Lao as an answer?
The word "groups" is confusing. I tried listing ethnic groups like "Lao" and "Bengali", only to find that you have to type "Laotian" and "Bangladeshi". Indian and Pakistani are the same ethnic group, so I didn't bother to try Pakistani. Pakistani is a nationality. What you meant to say was "Largest Asian American Nationalities".
I agree. Khmer is an ethnic group, Cambodian is a nationality. Just as in the previous comment, where Lao and Hmong are ethnic groups, while Laotian is a nationality.
Perhaps a caveat that specifies that groups are not necessarily nationalities would be helpful, given that all but one of these are a nationality. I mean I don't know why Hmong is singled out, but not say, Tamil or Hakka or any of hundreds of others amongst these populations. I know the quiz says 'ethnic groups', but everything else leads you to believe this is ethnic groups as defined by nationality, so it would be helpful to just make it a tad more explicit.
I actually had a caveat like this on my original quiz, but Quizmaster removed it when he featured the quiz. I think it's fair to re-add the caveat since Hmong is kinda an outlier in this regard, but I'll let Quizmaster make the final call on this.
About 1/3 of Bengalis are Indians, so it would be wrong to say that Bengalis and Bangladeshis are the same thing. That said, I did try Bengali after I got Bangladeshi only to see if it would work.
Please see the comments above. This is all from Census data and the Census typically identifies based on national origin. Hmong are an exception most likely because they don't identify with a nationality.
Russians are not on this list, I know part of Russia is in Europe but the majority of it is in Asia and they did have Alaska for a long period of time.
Russians are considered white, whether or not they are from Asia. Even if they did count, I doubt there would be enough of them, due to the low population of the region and few settling in Alaska.
There are actually a lot of Russians (or people of Russian descent) living in America, and if they were considered Asian they'd easily make this list. But the vast majority of Russians live in Europe and most of the ones that live in Asia are descended from European settlers in Siberia. The indigenous people of Siberia, such as Turkic and Tungusic peoples, would probably be considered Asian, but there aren't a ton of those in the US.
So surely this would be ethnic groups. In some cases, ethnic groups have been largely combined in the American context (hence "Indian" and "Filipino" while the Hmong/Laotian distinction is preserved). But that WOULD mean accepting "Bengali."
Yes, it is indeed asking for the name of the group, not the country. That's why the quiz accepts "Bangladeshi" and not "Bangladesh" or "Bengali" (the latter of which crosses national borders).
As I've already said, the Census can't take everything into account and relies a lot on self-identification. Organizing things by nationality makes more sense from an official perspective because it's more concrete and less complicated than identifying the thousands of cultural/linguistic ethnic groups across America. If you have complaints with this system, take it up with the Census Bureau, not me.
I was looking through the user created quizzes starting with j to see how popular I was (35 takes on 4 quizzes) and I saw you with ONE featured quiz. Above zero, but no more than one. And it was a good quiz!
Haha, thanks! I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I have another quiz that is quite popular and has been nominated a lot, and I have a feeling it'll get featured soon :)
Yes, but the US Census considers Middle Easterners white. Don't ask me why--personally, I consider them Asian-Americans. But this quiz follows the Census Bureau definitions so I can't change that.
What causes Malaysia to be absent? I think I've read that there were strained relations between Malaysia/USA. I'm not sure why. Maybe due is Islam, or corruption issues. I think there are problems in the sea in that area/piracy. I know of the Strait of Malacca- but there are so many countries in that area that I don't know which does what.
I guess Malaysia is richer than Indonesia on a per capita basis.
Oh my god this quiz could take so much improvement
1. these are mostly nationalities
2. why would you then single out hmong, which is an ethnicity, but just write "indian", which is a nationality instead of singling out the different indian ethnic groups. Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayali, Sindhi, Marathi etc
3. Bangladeshi is again a nationality. Bengali is the ethnicity but that somehow isn't accepted
4. Same for China. "Chinese" is a nationality, Han is the (major) ethnic group. Taiwanese people are an entirely separate ethnicity, though the majority of citizens of Taiwanese nationality are also Han.
5. Indonesian is also not an ethnicity but a nationality. Javanese is the most prominent ethnicity here, but there are many many others once again.
6. Pakistani is also a nationality, not an ethnicity
I agree; I don't think this quiz should be featured. To me, the word "ethnic" is essentially the person's race. If culture and tradition are said to be part of ethnicity, I'd accept some of that, but when people say "ethnic" they do not mean the nationality; they mean race.
Can you please read the pinned comment by Quizmaster, and literally every other comment in the comment section, before judging my quiz? This issue has already been brought up so many times, and I already explain why this quiz is like this so many times. The quiz is factually correct as is. If it makes you upset, then make your own quiz on the topic instead of criticizing mine.
I think you should rename this quiz, replacing the word "ethnicity" with "country of origin".
All but one of the answers in your list are demonyms for sovereign states, many of which are multi-ethnic countries, and it's completely absurd to use those particular demonyms to describe ethnicities.
For example, India alone has more than 700 officially recognised ethnicities, and even if you try and group the larger ones into broader categories, you're still going to be left with several clusters that are as different and distinguishable from each other as African ethnicities are from European ethnicities, but within each of those clusters you're still going to find separate ethnicities that are as ethnically different from each other as Swedes, Italians and Russians are from each other.
Still a very interesting quiz, though. Thanks for putting it together and updating it.
"An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of humans based on people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area."
In other words, a nationality IS an ethnic group, but so are other things. Not only that, but a person can belong to multiple ethnic groups. And while ethnicity can be based on your DNA, it certainly doesn't have to be.
The experiences of a Lebanese person are often somewhat different to that of Thai person, so for census statistics it kind of makes sense to separate the Middle East from East Asia. It's just a bit silly that by consequence it suggests people from the continent of Asia are not Asian. I also personally think Middle Easterners should get their own category on the census but that's another issue
So surely this would be ethnic groups. In some cases, ethnic groups have been largely combined in the American context (hence "Indian" and "Filipino" while the Hmong/Laotian distinction is preserved). But that WOULD mean accepting "Bengali."
As I've already said, the Census can't take everything into account and relies a lot on self-identification. Organizing things by nationality makes more sense from an official perspective because it's more concrete and less complicated than identifying the thousands of cultural/linguistic ethnic groups across America. If you have complaints with this system, take it up with the Census Bureau, not me.
Small print:
I forgot Indian.
I guess Malaysia is richer than Indonesia on a per capita basis.
1. these are mostly nationalities
2. why would you then single out hmong, which is an ethnicity, but just write "indian", which is a nationality instead of singling out the different indian ethnic groups. Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayali, Sindhi, Marathi etc
3. Bangladeshi is again a nationality. Bengali is the ethnicity but that somehow isn't accepted
4. Same for China. "Chinese" is a nationality, Han is the (major) ethnic group. Taiwanese people are an entirely separate ethnicity, though the majority of citizens of Taiwanese nationality are also Han.
5. Indonesian is also not an ethnicity but a nationality. Javanese is the most prominent ethnicity here, but there are many many others once again.
6. Pakistani is also a nationality, not an ethnicity
joke btw
"I'm Laotian. I come from Laos."
"The ocean, what ocean?"
All but one of the answers in your list are demonyms for sovereign states, many of which are multi-ethnic countries, and it's completely absurd to use those particular demonyms to describe ethnicities.
For example, India alone has more than 700 officially recognised ethnicities, and even if you try and group the larger ones into broader categories, you're still going to be left with several clusters that are as different and distinguishable from each other as African ethnicities are from European ethnicities, but within each of those clusters you're still going to find separate ethnicities that are as ethnically different from each other as Swedes, Italians and Russians are from each other.
Still a very interesting quiz, though. Thanks for putting it together and updating it.