Young Writers Society

On American Ethnicity
America is an interesting country.

It is, for instance, the first country to take people of many different nations, ethnicities, and religions and getting them to live together in peace (more or less). This is why America is known as a "Melting Pot". It's cultural diversity, we are told, is one thing that makes America strong. Ethnic groups celebrate their differences, highlight them, and display them.

There is good reason for this. For the longest time, America refused to acknowledge people for there contributions on the basis of ethnicity. The Civil Rights movement changed this for the better.

Many ethnic groups rose up during that period. The Asian-Americans, The Hispanic-Americans, The African-Americans, and European-Americans. This protects the new immigrants into America.

This is also against American policy in the past. It's diversity isn't really its greatest strength. Its ability to combine these different ethnicities into a single super-ethnicity; otherwise known as the American identity.

It always shocks me when I see people who are second generation (or greater) describe themselves as one of the ethnicities mentioned above. Unless you are born outside of America, you are American.[/pre]

Too true. Somewhat brief for an essay or anything, but good ideas. As for that last paragraph, I was just thinking about writing something about the term "Native American" and how it isn't really avoiding racism any more than "Indian" was. I mean, I was born in America, too!

And that's one thing I like about Canada. People are encouraged to keep their own culture at the same time as joining the culture that already exists. My friend Nhan was born here, but he's still Vietnamese as much as he's Canadian. As are all of my friends, whether they were born in Canada or not. I was watching a show about the Canadian identity once, and one of the people they interviewed, currently living in France, says that he will always be a Canadian living in France. But, in the big cities at least, you're Canadian if you've been living here for a few months and are planning on staying here. I really love the fact that there is a restaurant I can go to where I can eat kung pow, cheese blintzes, and Caesar salad.

Interesting, although all the African Americans were first brought there as slaves so........

Indian is a lot worse then Native American because they themselves never came from India.

Yeah, in a lot of cases the term African American is kind of odd. I mean, we don't call white people whose family have been on this continent since slavery, or before, British American or Spanish American.

I say Native American just because the term Indian can either apply to someone from Oklahoma or someone from India; it can get really confusing if use Indian for both.

People never really give up their heritage when they come to the United States, it just becomes woven into the rest of the American identity. For instance, everyone celebrates St. Patrick's Day now even if you don't have any Irish blood, everyone eats pasta and pizza, and even the Day of the Dead is gaining popularity in the states.

Regarding multi-ethnic restuarants, my favorite one is this random place down here in southern MD that is run by a Korean family and serves chinese food, Greek gyros, American subs, and pizza. And everything tastes great

And of course, just walking around Bethesda (suburb of Washington DC and where I live when not at college) I can find a restuarant for almost any type of food from Cajun to Zulu.

That is true, Nate, but I still see a difference in that respect.