Race, ethnicity, and immigration trends in the United States

Cultural Diversity:

One of the things that I have always had a difficult time understanding is the animosity that exists between different races and ethnicities, and why that animosity would exist. While I understood the historical reasons of racial animosity, I did not really understand how Hispanics and Asians fit into the underlying historical racial animosity between whites and African-Americans. Understanding how different minority groups have historically been pitted against one another by dominant groups, establishing caste-type systems that depended upon the different locations in the United States helped me understand why the various minority groups have not consistently joined together to pursue common goals, even if doing so would have been the most expedient thing to do. Instead, different ethnic groups have had their own civil rights movements, and have worked towards equity in different ways.

I have learned new information about my own ethnic history. I had not really studied extensively about the history of immigration into the United States, and though I was aware that the English were not the first European settlers in North America, I did not fully appreciate how diverse early immigration was. The English were not the only Europeans to maintain a significant presence in colonial America, and, in fact, some of the early colonists came from ethnic groups that are not considered prominent in main stream modern American society. I have a very diverse ethnic background, and part of that background is German. I had no idea how pervasive the German influence was on early America. I was inspired to look at how the German influence continues in different parts of the country, and was surprised to find that there continue to be communities in the more rural parts of the United States that are almost entirely German.

Many people think that the United States will look dramatically different in 2050 and worry about the negative impact of those changes. There will undoubtedly be differences in how the United States looks in 2050, but that is not necessarily a cause for alarm. In fact, it is not unprecedented in American history. Immigration may be at an all-time high as far as numbers, but the percentage of people who were immigrants was actually higher in the 1910s (Wilson, 2009). By 2050, the United States will become even more profoundly a country of immigrants, because "nearly one in five Americans will have been born outside the U.S.A. Vs. one in eight in 2005" (El Nassar, 2008). Many people talk about the new majority population, but there will actually not be a majority population. "Whites who are not Hispanic, now two-thirds of the population, will become a minority when their share drops to 47%," but no other ethnic group will immediately emerge as a majority. Hispanics, which are already the largest minority group, will compose 29% of the population (El Nassar, 2008). Blacks will remain a stable minority at 13% of the population, but Asians will decline in percentage, from 9% to 5%.