Melissa Lopez

The Ethnic American

          As Thomas Sowell of The Ethnic America: A History wrote, “the peopling of America is one of the great dramas in all of human history.”  America, which is commonly referred to as a “melting pot,” is made up of a variety of different races and ethnicities thus, how the term “ethnic American” came about.  What exactly is an “ethnic American” though and who can be classified as one?

         Since the arrival of the first Europeans in America, 45 million people have crossed every ocean and continent to reach the United States.  According to Sowell, “today, there are more people of Irish descent in the United States then in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries.  There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities of Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice.” The ethnic communities that make up the mosaic of American culture are so large that they cannot be labeled as a “minority” and so diverse that no one group can be labeled as a “majority”. 

         According to the 2000 US census (shown on the chart below), less than 4% of the population is Native American, Eskimo, or Aleut meaning that 96% of the population is considered to be “ethnic American” because they currently live in America however, originated from other countries across the globe.  In Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigrations by Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers, it is stated that many used to consider being an “American” as “shedding foreign ties, culture, and religion and adapting to what now may be called the values and beliefs of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America.”  In today’s society however, people are more willing to embrace their culture and see it as something unique.

  Just as America has become more and more diversified throughout the years, so has the acceptance of different cultures among society thus, many now see the term of “ethnic American” as having a positive correlation instead of as in before where it was seen in a negative light.