Talk:White Americans

In the admixture section, there are a few studies which list the sex haplogroups of White Americans. These studies all estimate less than 5% Native American ancestry.

However, preceding these studies is a much larger study by Bryc, et al. (2015), which gave a substantially higher estimate. But for whatever reason, this article deniea that info to the Wikipedia reader.

On page 23, Bryc, et al. (2015) give Native American mtDNA haplogroup frequencies for White Americans with 0.01-0.02+ Native American population ancestry.

Cohort Prop N. Am. ancestry N. Am. haplogroups Total N Rate

European Americans 0.01–0.02 96 1,278 7.5%

European Americans > 0.02 774 2,697 28.7%

African Americans 0.01–0.02 16 838 1.9%

African Americans > 0.02 34 305 11.1%

4GP Europeans all countries 21 15,651 0.13%

4GP Europeans excl. Spain 7 15,021 0.047%

This is big. Note that the average White American in Bryc's study had approximately 0.18% Native American ancestry (see Figure 1 in the main article). Yet, they have shown that even samples with Amerindian admixture that is substantially below the White American average of 0.18% (0.01-0.02%) had a rate of 7.5% Amerindian mtDNA haplogroups.

The sample with >0.02% admixture had nearly 30% Native American mtDNA haplogroups. Note that this is much higher than the figure for African Americans, who had just 11%.

It's pretty clear that these authors report a much higher rate of indigenous haplogroups among White Americans. It's remarkable that this study's samples had Amerindian haplogroup frequencies only somewhat lower than Latin American countries like Brazil, which have much higher rates of total population admixture.

Bryc, et al. (2015) note that, among people in Europe, less than 0.05% have a Native American haplogroup (with the exception of Hispanic Europeans, who have historical links to the Americas, and a lot more Amerindian admixture):

Excluding Spain, Native-American-specific haplogroups are detected in fewer than 0.05% of individuals with four grandparents from Europe and can be explained by survey errors in reporting all four grandparents’ birth places.

Only 0.047% of non-Spanish Europeans had an Amerindian haplogroup. So in the lower bound, White Americans are ~150 times more likely to have a direct Native American ancestor than White people in Europe. At the upper bound, they are ~500 times more likely!

If this section only describes results that make White Americans look "white as possible", while failing to mention results that point in the other direction, we've deceived the reader in to believing there was only a little admixture between Whites and Native Americans in this country's history. But in Bryc's study, perhaps 1 in 5 White Americans are directly descended from a Native American woman. We've gotta add this to the article. It's the largest US admixture study to date and it's already referenced multiple times.

Amaebi-uni (talk) 15:06, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

"30% Native American mtDNA haplogroups" Native American populations had a higher than expected genetic impact on the wider population, and more living descendants than previously thought? Interesting. Have there been any sources commenting on the results of the Bryc study in the decade since its publication? Dimadick (talk) 09:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm unable to access the article, apparently paywalled/not open access.Can you give more details about the article, as it's possibly accessible via the WP library. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 18:02, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

The first paragraph of the lead section repeats itself verbatim after citation 9, with the next word starting mid-sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-13426-69 (talk) 19:22, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Issue still persists. I do not have the credentials to edit this article, otherwise I'd fix this myself. Haruhism (talk) 06:33, 18 March 2026 (UTC)