USA - People

By 2050, communities of color may represent the majority of the US population. On May 7, 2017, at 6:13 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the U.S. population clock is projected to cross the 325 million threshold. That’s according to Vintage 2016 population estimates produced by the U.S. Census Bureau. The US population was estimated, as of July 1, 2016, to be a bit over 323,000,000, growing at a rate of a bit less than 2,000,000 annually.

The United States is a multicultural country with people from all over the world who have now made the USA their home. The Ethnic Groups are: White 82%, Black 13%, Asian 4.2% Amerindian and Alaska native 1.0%, Native Hawaiian and Other 0.2%. Language: The main language is English although Spanish is spoken by a sizeable minority.

Fifteen Largest Ancestries: 2000
German	15.2%	42.8
Irish	10.8%	30.5
African American	8.8%	24.9
English	8.7%	24.5
"American"	7.2%	20.2
Mexican	6.5%	18.4
Italian	5.6%	15.6
Polish	3.2%	9.0
French	3.0%	8.3
Native American	2.8%	7.9
Scottish	1.7%	4.9
Dutch	1.6%	4.5
Norwegian	1.6%	4.5
Scotch-Irish	1.5%	4.3
Swedish	1.4%	4.0

The number who reported "American" and no other ancestry increased from 12.4 million in 1990 to 20.2 million in 2000, the largest numerical growth of any group during the 1990s. The three largest ancestries in 1990 were German, Irish, and English. In 2000, these groups were still the largest European ancestries, but each had decreased in size by at least 8 million and by more than 20 percent (Table 2). As a proportion of the population, German decreased from 23 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2000, while Irish and English decreased from 16 percent to 11 percent, and from 13 percent to 9 percent, respectively.

Millions of immigrants came to America. They all left behind their families and friends, a familia way of life, a sense of belonging, and set out for a strange new land where the language was foreign and the customs unfamiliar. Biologically discrete races are not, and have never been, a precondition for racial prejudice or inequality.

Many of the large European-origin groups reported, such as German, Irish, and Italian, reflect populations that are likely to have fairly recent ancestors — perhaps parents or grandparents — for whom the immigrant story has been heard first-hand. For many white Americans, however, ethnic identities have become primarily symbolic attachments to cuisine or expressions of the distinctive contributions of one's ancestral community. Variations in European ancestry, which were strongly tied to socioeconomic status during the first half of the twentieth century, are no longer associated with educational or employment opportunities, residential patterns, or even marital choices.

Intersectionality is the recognition that different forms of oppression can interact and overlap, combining to create even more harm. People are impacted by layer-upon-layer of bias stemming from race, gender, nationality, immigration status, sexual orientation, and similar social identities. Conversely, others benefit from privilege based on the same categories.

Federal Heritage Months
January	AVAILABLE
February	Black History
March	Women's History
	Irish American Heritage
April	Arab American Heritage
May	Older Americans
	Jewish American Heritage
	Asian-Pacific American Heritage
June	Gay and Lesbian Pride
July	AVAILABLE
August	AVAILABLE
September	Hispanic Heritage
October	Disability Employment Awareness
	Italian American Heritage
	Pilipino American Heritage
	LGBTQ+ Heritage
November	Native American Heritage
	Trans Awareness Week
December	AVAILABLE

These Heritage Months are different from the Health Awareness Months. The calendar is full of special months, weeks, and days that raise awareness for a variety of important health issues and conditions? There are at least 24 different awareness campaigns for cancer alone. In recent years, ethnicity hss reemerged as a topic of considerable interest in the United States and it appears to be accompanied by an ethnic revitalization on the part of many third, fourth and fifth generafion descendents of former ethnic minorities. Mass immigration at the turn of the 20th century made the country more diverse and transformed American life by filling a demand for workers, diffusing new traits into the American culture and impacting the growth of cities.

Many people left their farms for the cities seeking greater job opportunities. The Great Migration marked the mass movement of African Americans who fled the rural South for the urban North. They sought to escape prejudice and discrimination and secure better-paying jobs. They helped transform northern cities economically (e.g., as workers and consumers) and culturally (e.g., art, music, literature).

Urbanization transformed the physical nature of cities. Central cities focused on industry and commerce. Buildings became taller and tenement buildings provided housing for working families. Cities acquired additional land as they expanded outward. The crowding of cities led to increased crime with the development of gangs. Improvements in transportation (e.g., trolleys, automobiles) facilitated the development of suburbs. A growing middle class could easily commute between residential areas and the central cities for business and recreation.

An increase in immigration to the United States from southern and eastern Europe preceded World War I. Nativism after the war was reflected in the passage of immigration quotas. Intolerance toward immigrants, Catholics and Jews was exhibited by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia followed by post-war labor strikes and a series of bombs sent to public and business officials in the United States stirred fears of revolution among Americans. The Red Scare of 1919-1920 was a reaction to these perceived threats and led to the incarceration and deportation of many aliens.

Historically, antipathy and bigotry toward all American minorities were commonplace, including the savage wars to wrest control of the lands of American Indians, the campaigns to deny citizenship and other basic rights to Asians, and the economic and political exploitation of the peoples of Mexican origin in Texas and elsewhere. As these patterns have receded in recent decades, there have been increases in residential integration, economic mobility, and intermarriage among many American Indians, Asians, and Latinos with whites. There has been much less integration and intermarriage of blacks with whites.

Assimilation has never meant a “melting pot” where everyone “melted” into a homogenous “American” stew. As political scientist Peter Skerry writes, assimilation “has typically meant that immigrants have adapted and changed in disparate domains, rejecting their immigrant past in some ways (forgetting their parents’ mother tongue and speaking English, or learning to tolerate individuals with sharply different values) and holding on to other aspects of their heritage (ethnic cuisine, specific religious holidays, family traditions from the homeland).” It is a process that spans generations and involves a fair share of ambivalence. The loss of traditions and a psychic sense of displacement mix with the benefits of becoming a middle-class American. There are always two sides to every bargain.

The United States has ratified two of the international instruments related to the fight against racial discrimination: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Despite having also signed other relevant instruments, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which could enhance the protection and recognition of the rights of people, the internal processes for ratification of these instruments have been stalled for a long time. The United States has not signed and ratified any of the human rights treaties that would allow United States citizens to present individual complaints to the United Nations human rights treaty bodies.

Courts in general in the United States are reluctant to consider international human rights treaties and jurisprudence when these are invoked as independent legal arguments. Owing to these factors, human rights treaties are generally not recognized as giving rise to individually enforceable rights in United States courts.

African Americans labor under the weight of one of the most rigid systems of racial hierarchy in modern times, a system born in slavery, sustained by the legacy of the one-drop rule, and cemented with the passage of time. Blacks and whites share a limited and potentially diminishing interest in claiming identities beyond their race. Economic reductionism is ill thought out. It cannot explain why the white working class is so invested in whiteness. It does not indicate how to unravel the intertwined material, psychological, and cultural phenomena of structural racism.

Voter ID laws with increased identification requirements and limits on early voting and registration in several states served to discriminate against minorities such as African Americans, contrary to the spirit of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion among the United States population. Hate crime groups, including white supremacist terror groups, are still active in the United States, targeting African Americans, as was seen in the attack at a church in Charleston in 2015. The Confederate flag is considered as a symbol of hate for many African Americans and they have led campaigns to have it removed, however it still is used by some local authorities.

The term intersectionality is a word used to refer to the complex and cumulative way that the effects of different forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, and yes, intersect—especially in the experiences of marginalized people or groups.

The term was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in a 1989 essay that asserts that antidiscrimination law, feminist theory, and antiracist politics all fail to address the experiences of black women because of how they each focus on only a single factor. Crenshaw writes that "[b]ecause the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated."

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce "Cancel Culture" what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. "'Cancel culture' tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine. "It means different things to different people," says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

"It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity," says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it "a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense." "I don't think it's real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it," says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. "From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didn't talk about 'cancel culture' when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldn't afford the bail."

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in "All the Money in the World" replaced by Christopher Plummer's. Others are only partially "canceled." Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also had a deal with the previously "canceled" Garrison Keillor.