Virgin Island Americans

2010 Census

The exact number of Virgin Island Americans is unknown. As of the 2010 Census, 11,674 people listed U.S. Virgin Islander as their ethnicity. British West Indian was listed by 88,043; this ethnicity includes Americans whose ancestry can be traced to the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Barbados, British Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, or Trinidad and Tobago—though several of those have their own ethnic identity categories in the census. It can be assumed that at least a couple thousand of the 88,000 British West Indians are British Virgin Island Americans, which would suggest 15,000 or so as a base minimum Virgin Island American population. The population of the U.S. Virgin Islands themselves is 106,405 as of the 2010 Census, but most residents are Afro Caribbean and do not identify as ethnic Virgin Islanders. The white population of the U.S. Virgin Islands is a little over 7,000, including Hispanic whites, who are predominantly Puerto Rican. Most Virgin Island Americans living on the mainland United States migrated during the 1960s and 1970s.

Languages of the U.S. Virgin Islands

The official language of the U.S. Virgin Islands is English, but Virgin Islands Creole is commonly spoken, with Saint Croix possessing its own unique dialect thereof, known as Crucian. Virgin Islands Creole, which is also spoken in the British Virgin Islands and the nearby Dutch islands of Saba, Saint Martin, and Saint Eustatius, is just called “dialect” by its speakers; the full name is a scholarly term rarely heard in other contexts. The creole formed as a pidgin English spoken by enslaved African people, which was creolized as it was passed on to subsequent generations, along with Dutch influence from the Dutch owners of enslaved people on Saint Thomas and Saint John.

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