Is America Really More Diverse?
It
is often said that America is more diverse than ever before. There is no doubt
this is true in an objective sense. Certainly, the population of the United
States today comes from a greater variety of nations, languages, religions, and
cultures than ever before. And yet, an argument can be made that we are not so
diverse as we were in the early twentieth century when the majority of
Americans could trace their ancestries to Europe.
To
appreciate this idea, we must recognize that some of the largest countries of immigrant
origin were far more heterogeneous than they are now. Germany is one
example. Today, more Americans can trace their ancestry to Germany than
any other country, but for most of the 19th century, Germany did not
exist as a unified nation-state. What we now call a country was, in fact, a
hodgepodge of more than thirty principalities and states. Immigrants who came
here considered themselves Prussians, Hessians, Bavarians, and others. They
differed from each other culturally and religiously. The German language may
have united them, but the newcomers often spoke regional dialects and very few knew
any English.
Today globalization has smoothed over many localized identities. Relatively few newcomers come from isolated peasant cultures. This was not the case during the great waves of European immigration when most arrivals came to America’s cities from rural backwaters. The Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and social media, in general, have brought about a cross-cultural awareness, call it a cosmopolitanism, that did not exist, say, in 1888, when Matt Morgan drew the accompanying illustration.
Today globalization has smoothed over many localized identities. Relatively few newcomers come from isolated peasant cultures. This was not the case during the great waves of European immigration when most arrivals came to America’s cities from rural backwaters. The Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and social media, in general, have brought about a cross-cultural awareness, call it a cosmopolitanism, that did not exist, say, in 1888, when Matt Morgan drew the accompanying illustration.
American
immigration shifted remarkably starting in 1882 when the federal government took
control of admissions. Whereas most immigrants had come from northern and
western Europe, the mix suddenly changed. The “new immigrants,” as they were
then called to distinguish them from the founding “colonial stock” or “old
immigrants,” seemed utterly alien to many mainstream Americans.
Opinion
writers and university professors thought America was heading down a dangerous
road. The nation was abandoning our Anglo-Saxon roots in favor of a dangerous
diversity. Morgan’s humorous
illustration conveys a bit of this dread. Front and center is a Yankee, not
unlike the familiar depiction of Uncle Sam. Our Yankee looks like a dressed-up
farmer, who has come to the big city, perhaps for the first time.
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