asked, “What ethnicity are you?” people whose families have lived in the United States
for more than a few generations usually cannot answer. If they are White, they assume
that their ancestors came from “somewhere in Europe,” but English, French, Swiss,
Prussian, Belgian, and Dutch immigrants intermingled so freely that they simply
forgot about the homeland and its customs.
The United States is called a “nation of immigrants.” Ever since the founding of
the East Coast colonies by immigrants who had been thrown out of England for being
too religious and “puritanical,” different ethnic groups have not only “enriched”
American life, but make that life possible in the first place. President John F. Kennedy
characterized the country’s greatness as based on this fact, that America is “a society
of immigrants, each of whom had begun life anew, on an equal footing.” This was,
he continued, the “secret” of America: “a nation of people with the fresh memory of
old traditions who dared to explore new frontiers.”
What are the origins of this nation of ethnic immigrants?
People from Europe
In the 2010 Census, 74.8 percent of the U.S. population was identified as White, most
of European ancestry. The largest ethnic groups were German (11.4 percent), Irish
(7.5 percent), Italian (4.5 percent), Polish (2.2%), and French (1.8 percent). We may
now call them “European Americans” as a matter of convenience, but really we are
saying “White people,” referring to race rather than ethnicity. The differences today
among many of these groups are far smaller than they once were. The White Euro-
pean population will experience only a 7 percent increase during the next 50 years,
increasing from 195.7 million in 2000 to 210.3 million in 2050.
People from North America
Native Americans (once called “Indians”) were the original inhabitants of North
America, present from at least 40,000 BC. When the first Europeans and Africans
arrived, there were between 2,000,000 and 10,000,000 people living north of the Rio
Grande, divided into around 800 linguistic and cultural groups. Some were the
nomadic hunter-gatherers of Hollywood-movie myth, but many were settled and
agrarian, living in villages as large and prosperous as any villages among the
European settlers. Still, the early European settlers usually approached the Native
Americans through stereotypes: They were “noble savages,” living without sin in a
sort of Garden of Eden, or they were “wild savages,” uncivilized and bestial. They
were systematically deprived of their land and herded onto reservations, if not hunted
and killed outright. William Henry Harrison and Andrew Jackson were both elected
to the presidency primarily on their prestige as “Indian fighters.” Political slogans
and illustrations of the day showed them as noble, heroic White men “saving” America
from the savage Indian threat. This threat was contrived as the excuse to appropri-
ate Native American land and natural resources, and especially to clear a path for the
transcontinental railroad. The stereotype of the Native American as uncivilized is still
intact today, though it has changed from “violent” to “intuitive.” Now movies have
Native American sages teaching the White characters about listening to their hearts
and staying close to nature.
Native Americans have long been used as mascots for sports teams. Did you know
that half of all high school, college, and professional teams that used Native Ameri-
can mascots in 1960 have changed their mascots? Despite claims that these mascots
are signs of “respect” for the tenacity and ferocity of the Native American tribes—
tribes upon whose appropriated land the colleges and universities may actually have
ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE UNITED STATES 263