The United States of America - Culture

Culture

Main article: Culture of the United States See also: Social class in the United States

The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. Aside from the relatively small Native American and Native Hawaiian populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries. Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.

American culture is considered the most individualistic in the world. The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. By some measures social mobility is actually lower than other high-income countries such as France, Germany, Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries, though such studies are based on relative comparisons within each nation rather than absolute wealth earned throughout one's life, the US having both a more stretched out income distribution and a higher median income than those nations. While the mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.

The American middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary social trends such as modern feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree. While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.

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Famous quotes containing the word culture:

    The first time many women hold their tiny babies, they are apt to feel as clumsy and incompetent as any man. The difference is that our culture tells them they’re not supposed to feel that way. Our culture assumes that they will quickly learn how to be a mother, and that assumption rubs off on most women—so they learn.
    Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)

    Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    When women finally get liberated, they’ll do the same that men do—dog eat dog— that’s what our culture is.... Not cooperation but assassination. Women will cooperate until they attain certain goals. Then one will begin to destroy the other.
    Alice Neel (1900–1984)