Culture of The United States - Race and Ancestry

Race and Ancestry

Race in the United States is based on physical characteristics and skin color and has played an essential part in shaping American society even before the nation's conception. Until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, racial minorities in the United States faced institutionalized discrimination and social as well as economic marginalization. Today the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of the Census recognizes four races, Native American or American Indian, African American, Asian and White (European American). According to the U.S. government, Hispanic Americans do not constitute a race, but rather an ethnic group. During the 2000 U.S. Census Whites made up 75.1% of the population with those being Hispanic or Latino constituting the nation's prevalent minority with 12.5% of the population. African Americans made up 12.3% of the total population, 3.6% were Asian American and 0.7% were Native American.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—ratified on Dec 6, 1865—abolished slavery in the United States. The northern states had outlawed slavery in their territory in the late 18th and early 19th century, though their industrial economies relied on raw materials produced by slaves. Following the Reconstruction period in the 1870s, an apartheid regulation emerged in the Southern states named the Jim Crow laws that provided for legal segregation. Lynching was practiced throughout the U.S., including in the Northern states, until the 1930s, while continuing well into the civil rights movement in the South.

Chinese Americans were earlier marginalized as well during a significant proportion of U.S. history. Between 1882 and 1943 the United States instituted the Chinese Exclusion Act barring Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. During the second world war roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans, 62% of whom were U.S. citizens, were imprisoned in Japanese internment camps by the U.S. government following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, an American Military Base, by Japanese troops. Hispanic Americans also used to face segregation and other forms of discrimination. Although not proscribed by the law, they were regularly subject to second class citizen status.

Due to exclusion from or marginalization by earlier mainstream society, there emerged a unique sub-culture among the racial minorities in the United States. During the 1920s, Harlem, New York became home to the Harlem Renaissance. Music styles such as Jazz, Blues, Rap, Rock and roll as well as numerous folk-songs such as Blue Tail Fly (Jimmy Crack Corn) originated within the realms of African American culture, and was later on adopted by the mainstream. Chinatowns can be found in many cities across the country and Asian cuisine has become a common staple in mainstream America. The Hispanic community has also had a dramatic impact on American culture. Today, Catholics are the largest religious denomination in the United States and out-number Protestants in the South-west and California. Mariachi music and Mexican cuisine are commonly found throughout the Southwest, with some Latin dishes, such as burritos and tacos, found anywhere in the nation.

Economic variance and substantive segregation, is commonplace in the United States. Asian Americans have median household income and educational attainment exceeding that of other races. African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans have considerably lower income and education than do White Americans or Asian Americans. In 2005 the median household income of Whites was 62.5% higher than that of African American, nearly one-quarter of whom live below the poverty line. 46.9% of homicide victims in the United States are African American.

The concept that blackness was ugly degraded African Americans, manifesting itself as internalized racism. In her novel The Bluest Eye (1981), Toni Morrison depicts the effects of the legacy of 19th century racism for poor black people in the United States. The novel tells of how the daughter of a poor black family, Pecola Breedlove, internalizes white standards of beauty to the point where she goes mad. Her fervent wish for blue eyes comes to stand for her wish to escape the poor, unloving, racist environment in which she lives. In the 1960s, the Black is Beautiful cultural movement sought to dispel this notion.

After the attacks by Muslim terrorists on September 11, 2001, discrimination against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. rose significantly. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) reported an increase in hate speech, cases of airline discrimination, hate crimes, police misconduct as well as racial profiling. The USA PATRIOT Act, signed into effect by President Bush on October 26, 2001, has also raised concerns for violating civil liberties. Section 412 of the act provides the government with "sweeping new powers to detain foreign nationals and immigrants indefinitely with little or no due process at the discretion of the Attorney General." Other sections also allow the government to conduct secret searches, seizures, and surveillance, and to freely interpret the definition of "terrorist activities".