Understanding Ancestry, Ethnicity, and the Global Impact of U.S. Racial Categories

How do ancestry and ethnicity differ across the United States and the world, and what are the global effects of American racial frameworks?

Ancestries have been defined in a number of ways: Descent, heritage, nationality, pan-ethnic identity, tribal affiliation, or region. The United States uses five major categories for civil rights tracking. Those five are Asian, Black, Native American, Pacific Islander, and White. This categorization for civil rights demographics does not equate to the p…