Cultural Groups
A cultural group is made up of people who sharethe same behavior, belief, and language. In the United State, there are manycultural groups. Except for the Native American, Native Hawaiian, and NativeAlaskan population, nearly all Americans settled or immigrated within the pastfive centuries. Mainstream American culture is a Western culture. It is largelyderived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from manyother sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. The minorgroups are called subcultures（亚文化群体）. Some major cultural minoritygroups in the US include Hispanic American, Native Americans, AfricanAmericans, etc.
Social Theories of Immigration
Over time all new immigrants adopt some aspectsof American culture and add something new. Sociologists have identified a fewmajor theories on how these immigrants integrate themselves into Americansociety. If multiculturalism is an ambiguous term for you to understand, thenwe’d like to introduce some other terms to describe the cultural mix of theUnited States.
i. Melting Pot Theory
According to the Melting Pot Theory, peoples fromvarious cultures come to America and contribute aspects of their culture tocreate a new and unique American culture. They result is that contributionsfrom many cultures are indistinguishable（不能区别的） from one another and areeffectively “melted” together.
ii. Salad Bowl Theory
According to the Salad Bowl Theory, there aretimes when newly arrived immigrants don’t lose the unique aspects of theircultures like in the melting pot model; instead they retain them. Much like theingredients in a salad, the unique characteristics of each culture are stillidentifiable（可确认的） within the larger American society, yetcontribute to the overall makeup of the salad bowl. This theory is alsoreferred to as pluralism（多元化）.
iii. Assimilation（同化）
Assimilation is the concept that eventuallyimmigrants or their descendants adopt enough of the American culture, such asby increasingly using English as their first language, while they may retainaspects or traditions of their cultural heritage, and they are uniquelyidentifiable as “American”.
Racial Discrimination
In its early years of the United States was asuccessful “melting pot”. The original settlers had similar backgrounds, cominglargely from Northern Europe, and were easily assimilated into society. Althoughthe later immigrants were from different backgrounds, they tended to be drawntogether.
As time went on, the characteristics of thedominant majority got solidified and determined to what extent other groupswere accepted. A large number of immigrants with obviously differentcharacteristics tended to be viewed as a threat to basic American values andthe American way of life. During the late 19th and 20th centuries,most immigrants came from poor countries and areas. For them, assimilation wasmuch harder because of the differences between their culture and language andthose of the established Americans. These new immigrants, feeling lost instrange surrounding, clustered together in small communities. Soon, many citieshad ethnic neighborhoods such as “Chinatown” and “Koreatown”.
The discrimination based on ethnicity and raceis not uncommon. Some people of the dominant majority, especially WASP (WhiteAnglo-Saxon Protestants) elite, are objected to everyone who is not a WASP.Non-WASP European ethnics, such as Italians, Greeks and Irish, often rejectHispanics, Asians and Blacks, because these groups are not white. The Blacksare at the very bottom of the society. Most of them are the members of the workingclass and make up the impoverished（贫困人群）. Despite the progress made by racial minorities since the 1960s,social inequality remains a stubborn issue in the current United States.
