How many nationalities are there in America?

America is a country of immigrants and diversity. The United States accepts more immigrants than any other country-more than 50 million in total-and still accepts nearly 700 thousand people every year. In the past, many American writers emphasized the idea of melting pot, which meant that new immigrants would abandon their old traditions and accept the American way. For example, generally speaking, immigrant children learn English, not their parents' first language. Recently, however, Maines began to pay attention to diversity, and all ethnic groups began to rebuild and celebrate their heritage. Immigrant children often learn two languages when they grow up.

American Indian

More than 20,000 years ago, there were the first American immigrants. They were people roaming the mainland: hunters and their families followed the herds from Asia across the land bridge where the Bering Strait is located today. When Christopher Columbus "discovered" the new continent in 1492, there were about1500,000 native Americans living in the present American continent, although people's estimates of this number varied greatly. Columbus mistakenly thought that the place where he landed-San Salvador Island in the Bahamas-was India, so he called Native Americans "Indians".

In the next 200 years, people from several European countries followed Columbus's footsteps, crossed the Atlantic, explored America, and established trading posts and colonies. The influx of Europeans brought great disaster to Native Americans. Through treaties, wars and oppressive rule, land was transferred from Indians to Europeans, and later to Americans, while Indians retreated with the west. In the19th century, the primary task of the government to solve the Indian "problem" was to force the tribe to live in a specific area called a reservation. In order to keep the land they have been using, some tribes fought. Most of the reservations were of poor quality, and Indians began to rely on the help of the government. Poverty and unemployment among Native Americans still exist today.

The land war and the European diseases that Indians were born with no immune function led to a sharp decline in their population, which fell to a low of 350 thousand in 1920. Some tribes have completely disappeared; Among them are Mandans from North Dakota. In 1804- 1806, they helped meriwether Lewis and william clark explore the barren and uninhabited land in the northwestern United States. Some tribes have lost their language and most of their culture. But it turns out that Native Americans are very adaptable. Today, their number is about 2 million (accounting for 0.8% of the total population of the United States), and only about one third of Native Americans still live on reservations.

Jinmen

Among the early immigrants in the United States, English was the dominant race, and English became the most popular American language. But other people of the same nationality soon poured in. 1776, Thomas Paine, a spokesman for the colonial revolutionary cause, wrote: "Europe, not Britain, is the motherland of the United States. Immigrants come not only from Britain, but also from other European countries, including Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. But in 1780, three out of every four Americans are of British or Irish descent.

From 1840 to 1860, the United States ushered in the first wave of immigration. Throughout Europe, about 5 million people leave their homes every year because of hunger, crop failure, population growth and political turmoil. In Ireland, an epidemic resulted in the failure of potato granules, and 750,000 people starved to death on the streets. Many survivors emigrated. In l847 alone, the number of immigrants from Ireland to the United States reached 1 1, 8120,000. Today, there are about 39 million Irish Americans.

1848- 1849 The failure of the German Confederate Revolution led to many German immigrants. During the American Civil War (186 1- 1865), the federal government encouraged immigrants from Europe, especially those from German states, to recruit soldiers. In return for joining the federal army, immigrants can get land. By 1865, about one-fifth of the federal soldiers were wartime immigrants. Today, 22% of Americans have German ancestors.

Jews began to come to America in large numbers around 1880. During this 10 year, they were brutally persecuted in Eastern Europe. In the following 45 years, 2 million Jews moved to the United States, and the current Jewish population in the United States exceeds 5 million.

In the late19th century, so many people entered the United States that the American government opened a special entry port for Alice Island at the entrance of new york City. From the opening of 1892 to the closing of 1954, Alice Island became the gateway for120,000 people to enter the United States. It was preserved as part of the National Museum of the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty is a gift from France to the American people in 1886. It stands on an island near Alice Island. The Statue of Liberty has become the first visual experience of many immigrants for their future motherland. On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, a touching poem by the poet Emma Lazarus is engraved: "Give me your tired, poor and/or shrinking people who are eager to breathe freely,/Give me the unfortunate people abandoned on your coast. /To those who are homeless and shaken by the storm,/I will hold my lamp high by the Golden Gate! "

Involuntary migration

Among the immigrants who came to North America, one group was reluctant. That's African. Among them, between 16 19 and 1808, 500,000 people were sold as slaves. At that time, it was illegal to import slaves to the United States. However, the custom of owning slaves and their descendants continues, especially in the south, which is dominated by agriculture, and requires a lot of labor to plow the fields.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War in the northern free state and the southern slave-holding state (in which 1 1 has left the union), the process of ending slavery began in April/2008. 1863 65438+ 10 1 In the middle of the war, President abraham lincoln issued the The Emancipation Proclamation, announcing the abolition of slavery in those states that left the union. With the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the American Constitution in 1865, slavery was abolished throughout the United States.

However, even after the end of slavery, black Americans were still hindered by apartheid and low-level education. In order to find opportunities, black Americans set off a wave of domestic immigration, that is, from rural areas in the south to cities in the north. But black people in many cities can't find jobs; According to laws and customs, they must live separately from whites and in a shabby neighborhood called the ghetto.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, black Americans began to demand equal treatment according to law and end racial discrimination through non-violent protests such as boycotts and demonstrations.

The civil rights movement reached its climax on August 28th. 1963. At that time, more than 200,000 people of different races gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to listen to Kim Jong Il's speech: "I have a dream that one day, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit on the red hill in Georgia, * * * Syria will be brotherly ....... I have a dream that one day, my four children will be in a place where they are not. Shortly thereafter, the US Congress passed a law prohibiting discrimination in elections, education, employment, housing and public accommodation.

Today, African Americans account for 65,438+02.7% of the total population of the United States. In recent decades, blacks have made great progress and the black middle class has really grown up. 1996, 44% of employed blacks held "white-collar" positions-management, professional and administrative jobs, rather than services or jobs requiring manual labor. In the same year, 23% of blacks aged between 18 and 24 entered the university, while only 15% in 1983. But the average income of blacks is lower than that of whites, and the unemployment rate of blacks, especially young men, is still higher than that of whites. In addition, many African-Americans still can't get rid of those urban neighborhoods where drug abuse and crime are serious because of poverty.

In recent years, the focus of the civil rights debate has shifted. With the implementation of the anti-discrimination law and the steady entry of blacks into the middle class, the question becomes whether the government needs to take some remedial measures for the influence of previous discrimination. These measures, known as "affirmative action", can include hiring a certain number of blacks (or members of other ethnic minorities) in the workplace, accepting a certain number of ethnic minorities, enrolling students in schools, or delineating electoral boundaries to improve the possibility of minority representatives being elected. In view of the necessity, effectiveness and fairness of these schemes, the public debate became more intense in the1990s.

Perhaps the biggest change in the past decades is the change in the attitude of white citizens in the United States. Since King delivered his speech "I have a dream", a generation has matured. Young Americans, in particular, show new respect for all races, and whites from all walks of life are becoming more and more willing to accept blacks.

To sum up, the United States has no nationality and racial division, mainly based on skin color.

In other words, there are as many nationalities as there are in the world, hehe.