America as a Multiethnic Society: Immigration and Multiculturalism

Defining Multiethnic vs. Multinational Society

America is not a multinational society, but rather a multiethnic society. The result of this multiethnicism has been the multicultural society in which we live. This multiculturalism has been a strength of American society, because in the United States the traditional view has been one of a melting pot, where all immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated without state intervention. One of the dangers of pursuing multiculturalist social policies is that social integration and cultural assimilation can be held back, potentially encouraging economic disparities and the exclusion of minority groups from mainstream politics. Immigrant groups must be encouraged to participate in the larger society, learn the majority language, and enter the labor force.

A multinational society is one in which the population consists of two or more ethnically distinct nations of significant size. This contrasts with a nation-state, where a single nation comprises the bulk of the population. Examples of multinational societies include Belgium, Canada, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Switzerland. Multinational states differ from states such as Japan, Poland, or the Koreas, in which an overwhelming majority of the population is ethnically homogeneous. Multiethnic societies, by contrast, integrate different ethnic groups irrespective of differences in culture, race, and history under a common social identity larger than any single "nation" in the conventional sense.

Between 1492 and 1965, 82 percent of all persons on earth who migrated to American shores came from Europe. After 1965, when Congress revised the notorious National Origins Quota Act, the number of newcomers to America began to grow rapidly once again, and the proportion of Europeans among them fell sharply. In the decade of the 1960s, more than 3 million immigrants arrived, of whom only 34 percent were Europeans. There were 5 million immigrants in the 1970s, with only 18 percent from Europe. In the 1980s, almost 10 million people immigrated to America, and only 11 percent of them were Europeans. Immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean accounted for more than 83 percent of all new entrants during the 1980s. Until recently an amalgam almost exclusively of European nationalities, the United States is rapidly becoming the first major nation to be a microcosm of all the peoples of the world — the first truly "universal" nation. Once a basically biracial society dominated by white males, the new America will be one in which no single ethnic group or gender will ever again automatically predominate.^[1]

Multiethnic societies have existed in various historical contexts, such as ancient China, the Roman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In modern times, the formation of the United States, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia are examples of more or less successful multiethnic societies. As Adeed Dawisha has written:

"What distinguishes a nation from an ethnic group or any other collectivity has to be the nation's self-derived desire to achieve political sovereignty within a recognized territory. Lacking such a desire, a group can be a number of things but not a nation. That is precisely why Canada is, and the old Yugoslavia was, a multinational society, since significant ethnic groups within these two countries agitated for political independence, hence constituting nations. The United States, on the other hand, with its profusion of culturally based ethnicities, is not a multinational society, but rather a multiethnic society, since none of its ethnic groups desires political separation and sovereignty."^[2]

Immigration History and the Making of a Diverse America

The population of the colonies that later became the United States grew from zero Europeans in the mid-1500s to 3.2 million Europeans and 700,000 African slaves by 1790. At that time, it is estimated that three-fourths of the population were of British descent, with Germans forming the second-largest free ethnic group at approximately seven percent of the population. Between 1629 and 1640, some 20,000 Puritans emigrated from England, most settling in the New England area of North America. In an event known as the Great Migration, these people became the Yankees of New England, who later spread to New York and the Upper Midwest. From 1609 to 1664, some 8,000 Dutch settlers peopled the New Netherlands, which later became New York and New Jersey, and between 1645 and 1670, some 45,000 Royalists and indentured servants left England to work in the Middle Colonies and Virginia.

From about 1675 to 1715, the Quakers made their move, leaving the Midlands and North England for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Quaker movement became one of the largest religious presences in early colonial America.

Germans migrated early into several colonies, but mostly to Pennsylvania, where they made up a third of the population by the time of the Revolution. Germans made up almost one-tenth of the country's total population by the end of the eighteenth century. At least 500,000 Germans immigrated in the first half of the nineteenth century — 20,000 arriving in 1816–1817 alone, fleeing famine, and some 61,000 fleeing to America after the failed Revolutions of 1848. Between 1850 and 1930, about five million Germans immigrated to the United States, with a peak between 1881 and 1885, when a million Germans left Germany and settled mostly in the Midwest.

Approximately 250,000 Irish left Ulster (the northern province of Ireland) between about 1710 and 1775, settling in western Pennsylvania, Appalachia, and the western frontier — regions that would later become Kentucky and Tennessee. As a result of the Great Famine, which struck Ireland between 1845 and 1849, many Irish families were forced to emigrate. By 1854, between 1.5 and 2 million Irish had left their country. In the United States, most Irish became city-dwellers; with little money, many settled in the port cities where their ships arrived. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French Canadians left Canada to emigrate to the United States, settling mainly in New England. Given the French-Canadian population at the time, this was a massive exodus. The 1980 census recorded 13.6 million Americans claiming French ancestry, a large proportion of them descendants of emigrants from French Canada.

The years 1910 to 1920 were the high point of Italian immigration to the United States. Over 2 million Italians immigrated in those years, with a total of 5.3 million immigrating between 1820 and 1980.

About one million Swedes immigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century, driven by famine, poverty, and religious oppression in Sweden. This accounted for approximately twenty percent of Sweden's total population at that time. Most came from the southern parts of Sweden and settled mainly in the Midwest. Minnesota in particular has a large proportion of residents with Swedish ancestry.

The majority of African slaves came to the future United States before it gained independence. "Race became the single determinant of community, especially in those places where slavery obliged special laws defining the Afro-American's place. Even those blacks who were not mere chattel were generally denied minimum citizen rights."^[3] The numbers remain uncertain, but it is believed that some 300,000 slaves arrived in the British North American colonies before Independence, and some 100,000 were imported in the period between the American Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The slave trade was made illegal in 1808, upon the expiration of a constitutional clause prohibiting such a law.^[4]

A large number of indentured servants from the British Isles, Ireland, and Continental Europe — especially Germany — came to the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the bulk arriving in the half-century before 1776. Most served terms of four to fourteen years and arrived in the colonies of Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia. While history tends to emphasize the British shipment of convicts to its Australian colony, some 50,000 European convicts also crossed the seas to North America in an earlier penal transportation system between 1700 and 1770.

The United States was first settled by Native Americans and subsequently developed by various racial and ethnic groups. Each group of immigrants contributed aspects of its culture of origin to American culture. The United States has changed from a melting pot to a vast society with widely varying cultural backgrounds. In years past, America was a collection of Chinese, Germans, Italians, Scots, Croats, and others, all seeking freedom. Today, even the concept of a single English-speaking nation is fading. In the past, immigrants were taught in English in the public schools. Today, children are taught in German, Italian, Polish, and 108 other languages and dialects, with most of these programs funded by 139 million federal dollars. As Sandra Stotsky has observed, "The linguist's egalitarian attitude toward dialect has evolved into the multicultural notion that dialect as a cultural feature is part of one's identity as a member of that culture."^[5]

Preconditions for a Functioning Multiethnic Society

An important precondition for the success of a multiethnic society is the availability of a common language, as was the case in the Roman Empire and still is in the United States. Alternatively, several "overlapping" languages, as found in the European Union or Canada, can serve the same function. Even within the European Union, however, English functions as the lingua franca for business and scientific exchange. An even more important precondition for the functioning of a multiethnic society is an education toward tolerance and understanding — not the weak tolerance of those who feel themselves inferior, but the strong tolerance of a self-confident yet humble personality, one able and willing to learn from others without fear of losing its own identity.

Due to their ethnic or cultural heterogeneity, multiethnic societies are generally more fragile and carry a higher risk of conflict. In the worst cases, such conflicts can cause the breakdown of these societies. Recent examples include the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and the peaceful separation of Czechoslovakia. Forced coexistence of ethnically different populations can give rise to nationalistic and racist tendencies that, over time, become strong enough to destroy a multiethnic society.

Until recently, emigrants in the United States longed for admission into society's mainstream. Increasingly, however, some groups have demanded separation from mainstream society in order to preserve their customs and languages. Whatever accommodation takes place must be accepted by the receiving society. The growing number of such accommodations directed toward immigrant culture worries many Americans, who fear that special treatment for newcomers will weaken the country's unifying force. Today, the trend is toward multiculturalism, diversity, and adapting society to the newcomer, rather than encouraging the newcomer to adapt to the broader society.

Conclusion: Integration, Assimilation, and the Future of American Society

The level of ethnic conflict in the United States is, comparatively, quite small, and has been substantially reduced over a remarkably short period — roughly fifty years, measured from the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. This reduction in conflict has also contributed to declining racism in immigration policies. As Paul Rubin has observed, this change was not the product of biological evolution but of learning and shifts in culture and the relative social costs of discrimination. Rubin also notes that ethnic groups in the United States are far more genetically diverse than groups in countries experiencing significant ethnic conflict. In Yugoslavia, for example, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims were all Slavs, and the differences between them were primarily religious, not ethnic or genetic.^[11]

The very multiethnicism that has been a source of strength for this country is also contributing to serious problems in our society. With legal and illegal immigration increasing, this is a challenge that must be addressed. The United States has always been a haven for those seeking a better life and should continue to be so, but greater efforts must be made to assimilate new arrivals into the mainstream of educational and employment opportunities. Failure to do so may result in incalculable damage to the very foundation of this nation.