Creolization refers to the development of new forms of language and expression from contact among diverse cultures. Black English vernacular, for example, represents a creolized linguistic form that has developed stable forms centuries after first contact, while Spanglish and Chinglish refer to contemporary transnational creoles. The recombination of various identities has made creolization a fundamentally American process from Broadway stage to popular music to visual arts to food.

Creole, however, is not used to categorize settlers in the US as it was in Latin America.

As an ethnic term, it refers primarily to descendants of French creoles in Louisiana, whose dilemmas of ethnicity race and class are detailed by Virginia Dominguez in White by Definition (1985).