9.1c Ethnicity
Sociologists consider Hispanic and MENA as ethnic rather than racial categories. Ethnicity is based on sharing a common culture, such as behavior patterns, language, and religion (Morning, 2015). For example, Latino/a/x, Irish American, and Jewish are all ethnic categories. Therefore, a person could be both Hispanic and White, Black, or another racial category.
Like race, ethnicity is a fluid concept. It results from both self-identification and external perception, and it depends on the social and historical context. In other words, race and ethnicity are social constructs. Individual and group characteristics determine membership in a specific racial or ethnic category, which can change over time and place.
Sociologists discuss both race and ethnicity because individuals and groups may be advantaged or disadvantaged across one or both characteristics. For example, White Jewish people have racial privilege due to their White race but face prejudice and discrimination based on their Jewish ethnicity.
The U.S. Census measures race and ethnicity by relying on the ancestral geographic origin of the person completing the form. For example, it includes 23 ethnic groups under the racial category of Asian. Table 9.1 reports the size of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups. One of the largest is Filipinos.
Table 9.1
Largest Asian American Ethnic Groups in the United States, 2023
| Asian American Ethnic Groups | Total Number | Percentage within the U.S. Asian population | Percentage within the total U.S. population |
| Asian Indian | 5,160,203 | 19.93 | 1.54 |
| Chinese, except Taiwanese | 5,457,033 | 21.08 | 1.63 |
| Filipino | 4,640,313 | 17.92 | 1.39 |
| Korean | 2,023,517 | 7.82 | 0.60 |
| Vietnamese | 2,347,344 | 9.07 | 0.70 |
| Other Asian | 6,259,068 | 24.18 | 1.87 |
| Total Asian American | 25,887,478 | 100.00 | 7.73 |
Data based on U.S. Census Bureau. (2023a). BO2018: Asian alone or in any combination by selected groups. https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=B02018. In the public domain.
Like all Asian American ethnic groups, Filipinos are unique. However, Filipinos stand out because of the effect of Spain’s and the United States’ colonization of the Philippines. If the U.S. Census used shared culture or history instead of geography to decide race and ethnic groups, Filipinos could be counted as Latino instead of as (or in addition to) Asian American (Ocampo, 2014). For example, like Latinos, a large number of Filipinos are Catholic. Among, Filipino Americans, 57% are Catholic (Pew Research Center, 2023b) and 43% of Hispanic adults are Catholic (Pew Research Center, 2023a). In contrast, only 17% of Asian Americans are Catholic (Pew Research Center, 2023b). Spanish colonization led to cultural change that left Filipino Americans having a common background with Latina/o/x people, such as Catholicism, that sets them apart from other Asian Americans.
Photo 9.3
Filipino Americans Share Culture with Asian American and Latina/o/x People
