Some
Notes on Immigration and Ethnicity in the US
This
is a collection of statistics from a variety of sources intended just
to give you a sense of trends. If you look around, you will find that
numbers vary widely according to source, methods of gathering and
categorizing information, and purposes for which the information was
gathered.
Immigration
Since
the 1700s, there have been three major waves of immigration:
- 4.8 million (mostly Irish, German, English, Scottish, Scandinavian)
- 23.3 million (mostly from Europe)
- 1968-present 33 million (primarily from Asia, Caribbean, Latin America)
1880-1924 over
2 million Russian Jews and Eastern European Jews emigrated to the US
to
escape pogroms and discrimination.
[This
is the background for Yezierska’s “Soap and Water,” as well as
for the Disney movie An American Tail, set in 1885; I find it
very interesting to look at this movie in terms of how US immigration
history is presented to children.]
12
million immigrants came from Europe during the same period.
1924 Congress
restricted immigration severely
1890 86
% of immigrants came from Europe
1960 75
% of immigrants came from Europe
1999 51
% came from Latin American
27
% from Asia
16
% from Europe
These
dramatic changes have, of course, resulted in changes in the
percentages of ethnic populations living in the US, changes which
continue to occur rapidly in the present.
Ethnic
Populations
Total
US population
White
Black
Indian/Native
Alaskan
Asian
& Pacific Islander
Hispanic
|
2000
census
281,421,906
75.1%
12.3%
.9%
3.7%
12.5%
(½ white; ½ other)
|
2010
census
308,745,538
72.4%
12.6%
.9%
5%
16.3%
2.9%
gave more than one “race”
|
The
percentages on these charts add up to more than 100%, because
Hispanics may be any race, and can be counted in more than one
category. The media made quite a fuss over the fact that the 2000
Census showed that Hispanics had outdistanced African Americans as
the largest minority group in the US; the fact that these categories
are not really equivalent makes direct comparisons questionable.
However, there is no question that the percentage of Caucasians in
the US is decreasing and the percentages of minority groups,
especially Hispanics and Asian Americans are increasing.
The
Harvard Encyclopedia
of American Ethnic Groups
(1980) catalogues well over 100 different ethnic groups in the US;
you can browse the table of contents at
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/THEHAR.html?show=contents
or see the table below extrapolated from it to get a sense of the
range of ethnic categories listed in 1980. I would imagine that both
the names and numbers of categories have changed a great deal since
that time.
Class
Issues
of class difference are important factors in reading American ethnic
literature. This information was taken from an essay by Gregory
Mantsios, “Rewards and Opportunities: The Politics and Economics of
Class in the US,” published in Rereading America
(Bedford/St. Martins’, 1998). They are probably different now,
since the gap between rich and poor has been widening rapidly during
the past several years.
The
wealthiest 20 % of the US population holds 85% of household wealth
and owns 7/8 of all consumer goods and financial assets.
50%
hold 3.5 % of household wealth.
14
% of the population live below the poverty line. (15.1% in 2010)
¼
of all children live in poverty.
3
mill. people are homeless and as many as 12 mill. have been homeless
at some point.
Your
chances of being poor in the US vary widely depending on your
ethnicity and gender:
If
you are white (both genders) your chances of being poor are 1 in 11;
if you are a female head of household and black or Hispanic, your
chances of living below the poverty line are 1 in 2!!! This
illustrates what is known as “double jeopardy” for females.
White
M/F White F (head) Hisp M/F Hisp. F Black M/F Black F
1
in 11 1 in 4 1 in 3 1 in 2 1 in 3 1 in 2
I
find it very interesting that despite our myth of the “ideal
nuclear family,” currently only about 20.2% of the US population
lives in a nuclear family arrangement with two adult parents present.
According
to the US Census Bureau, in 2010, 46.2 million people (15.1%) live
below the poverty line; 22% of children under age 18 live below
poverty line
(http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb11-157.html).
In
the early 20th century, social theorists thought that
ethnicity would decrease in importance as modernization,
industrialism, urbanization, and increasing emphasis on individualism
rather than community produced an American “melting pot.” To the
contrary, ethnicity and nationalism have grown in importance in the
US, especially after World War II, and we have had to conceptualize
ethnic relationships as more of a “salad bowl” or
“mosaic.”
One
terrible set of statistics that illustrates the ever-increasing
importance of “ethnicity” and “race” is the growing number of
hate crimes in this country. In 2010, the FBI reports that “Of the
6,624 single bias incidents, 47.3 percent were motivated by a racial
bias, 20.0 percent were motivated by a religious bias, 19.3 percent
were motivated by a sexual orientation bias, and 12.8 percent were
motivated by an ethnicity/national origin bias. Bias against a
disability accounted for 0.6 percent of single-bias incidents.”
(http://www.fbi.gov/sandiego/press-releases/2011/fbi-releases-2010-hate-crime-statistics)
It is important to note
that reporting by law enforcement is voluntary and it is widely
believed that hate crimes are seriously under-reported.
The
word “ethnic” has its root in the Greek word “ethnos,”
meaning “heathen” or “pagan.”
By
the middle of the 19th century the term began to refer to
racial characteristics. However, more recently, “race” is
understood to be a cultural construct, not a biological one. [In
general there is about .2 %--that’s 2 one-hundredths of a
%--difference in genetic material between any 2 randomly chosen
individuals. Race accounts for about .012 % of this difference. See
the 2004 PBS series on race, Race: The Power of an Illusion,
for a recent treatment of changing concepts of “race” in the US.
Joyner Library has copies you can check out if you are interested.
The series would be suitable for use in high school and college
classes.]
“Ethnicity”
has come to be understood to refer to aspects of relationships
between groups that consider themselves, and are regarded by others,
to be culturally distinctive based on commonalities of national
origin, history, religion, cultural practices, and/or language.
Appendix
Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups
Stephan Thernstrom, Editor
Harvard UP, 1980
Groups and Definitions
| Acadians Afghans Africans Afro-Americans Albanians Aleuts Alsatians American Indians Amish Anglo-American Anglo-Saxon Appalachians Arabs Armenians Aryan Asian Assyrians Australians and New Zealanders Austrians Azerbaijanis Bangladeshi Basques Belgians Belorussians Bosnian Muslims Bulgarians Burmese Canadians, British Cape Verdeans Carpatho-Rusyns Central and South Americans Chinese Copts Cornish Cossacks Creole Croats Cubans Czechs Danes Dominicans Dutch |
East Indians Eastern Catholics Eastern Orthodox English Eskimos Estonians Ethnic Heritage Studies Program Filipinos Finns Foreign Stock French French Canadians Frisians Gentile Georgians Germans Germans from Russia Greeks Gypsies Haitians Hawaiians Hispanic Hungarians Hutterites Icelanders Indochinese Indonesians Iranians Irish Italians Japanese Jews Kalmyks Koreans Kurds Latvians Lithuanians Luxembourgers Macedonians Maltese Manx Mexicans |
Mormons Mother Tongue Muslims Nordic North Caucasians Norwegians Oriental Oriental Orthodox Orthodox Pacific Islanders Pakistanis Pennsylvania Germans Poles Portuguese Puerto Ricans Race Romanians Russians Scotch-Irish Scots Serbs Slovaks Slovenes South Africans Southerners Spaniards Spanish Spanish-Surname Swedes Swiss Tatars Teutonic Thai Tri-Racial Isolates Turkestanis Turks Ukrainians Welsh Wends West Indians Yankees Zoroastrians |
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