One of the world’s great melting pots, America boasts an astonishing variety of cultures and creeds. The country’s diversity was shaped by its rich history of immigration, though today regional differences (East Coast, South, West Coast and Great Lakes) play an equally prominent role in defining American identity. Religion, sport, politics and, of course, socio-economic backgrounds are also pivotal in creating the complicated American portrait.
America has long been called a ‘melting pot,’ which presumes that newcomers came and blended into the existing American fabric. The country hasn’t let go of that sentiment completely. On one hand, diversity is celebrated (Cinco de Mayo, Martin Luther King Jr Day and Chinese New Year all get their due), but on the other hand, many Americans are comfortable with the status quo.
Immigration is at the crux of the matter. Immigrants currently make up around 14% of the population. Nearly 1.4 million foreign-born individuals move to the US legally each year, with the majority from India, China and Mexico. Another 10.7 million or so are in the country illegally. This is the issue that makes Americans edgy, especially as it gets politicized.
‘Immigration reform’ has been a Washington buzzword for nearly two decades. Some people believe the nation’s current system deals with illegal immigrants too leniently – that higher walls should be built on the border, immigrants who are in the country unlawfully should be deported and employers who hire them should be fined. Other Americans think those rules are too harsh – that immigrants who have been here for years working, contributing to society and abiding by the law deserve amnesty. Perhaps they could pay a fine and fill out the paperwork to become citizens while continuing to live here with their families. Despite several attempts, Congress has not been able to pass a comprehensive package addressing illegal immigration, though it has put through various measures to beef up enforcement. The issue of immigration, legal or otherwise, has become a recurring battleground during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Politics has a lot to do with Americans’ multicultural tolerance. When asked if immigration strengthens the nation, most Americans (62%) said yes, according to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center. But when these responses were parsed by political party, there was a divide. While more than 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents responded that immigration strengthened the nation, only 49% of Republicans did.
Many people point to the election of President Barack Obama as proof of America’s multicultural achievements. It’s not just his personal story that stands out (white mother, black father, Muslim name, time spent living among the diverse cultures of Hawaii, Indonesia and Chicago, among others), or that he was the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office (in a country where as recently as the 1960s African Americans couldn’t even vote in certain regions). It’s that Americans of all races and creeds voted overwhelmingly to elect the self-described ‘mutt’ and embrace his message of diversity and change.
When the Pilgrims (early settlers to the US who fled their European homeland to escape religious persecution) came ashore, they were adamant that their new country would be one of religious tolerance. They valued the freedom to practice religion so highly they refused to make their Protestant faith official state policy. What’s more, they forbade the government from doing anything that might sanction one religion or belief over another. Separation of church and state became the law of the land.
Today Protestants are on the verge of becoming a minority in the country they founded. According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, Protestant numbers have declined steadily to under 50%. Meanwhile, other faiths have held their own or seen their numbers increase.
The country is also in a period of exceptional religious fluidity. Forty-four percent of American adults have left the denomination of their childhood for another denomination, another faith or no faith at all, according to Pew. A unique era of ‘religion shopping’ has been ushered in. As for the geographic breakdown: the USA’s most Catholic region is shifting from the Northeast to the Southwest; the South is the most evangelical; and the West is the most unaffiliated.
All that said, America’s biggest schism isn’t between religions or even between faith and skepticism. It’s between fundamentalist and progressive interpretations within each faith. Most Americans don’t care much if you’re Catholic, Episcopalian, Buddhist or atheist. What they do care about are your views on abortion, contraception, LGBT+ rights, stem-cell research, teaching of evolution, school prayer and government displays of religious icons. The country’s Religious Right (the oft-used term for evangelical Christians) has pushed these issues onto center stage, and the group has been effective at using politics to codify its conservative beliefs into law. This effort has prompted a slew of court cases, testing the nation’s principles on separation of church and state. The split remains one of America’s biggest culture wars, and it almost always plays a role in politics, especially during elections.
American culture is often stratified by age groups. Here’s a quick rundown to help you tell Generation X from Z, and then some.
Baby Boomers Those born from 1946 to 1964. After American soldiers came home from WWII, the birthrate exploded (hence the term ‘baby boom’). Youthful experimentation, self-expression and social activism was often followed by midlife affluence.
Generation X Those born between 1965 and the early 1980s. Characterized by their rejection of Baby Boomer values, skepticism and alienation.
Millennials Those born from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Weaned on iPods, instant messaging and social networking, they are the largest living generation in the US.
Generation Z Those born in the 2000s. These kids and young adults have never known a world without the internet and often interact more on social media than face to face.
The USA has one of the world’s highest standards of living. The median household income in 2018 was around $62,000, though it varies by region (with higher earnings in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and West and lower earnings in the South). Wages also vary by ethnicity, with African Americans and Latinxs earning less than whites and Asians ($40,232 and $50,486 respectively, versus $65,273 and $81,331 as of 2017). Likewise the wage gap between men and women continues to persist, with women earning roughly 80% of what men earn.
About 90% of Americans are high-school graduates, while some 35% go on to graduate from college with a four-year bachelor’s degree.
More often than not there are two married parents in an American household, and both of them work. Single parents head 25% of households. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average adult works 42 hours per week. Divorce is common – some 40% of first marriages go kaput – but both divorce and marriage rates have declined over the last three decades. Despite the high divorce rate, Americans spend more than $55 billion annually on weddings. The average number of children in an American family is two.
While many Americans hit the gym or walk, bike or jog regularly, 47% don’t get the amount of daily activity recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health researchers speculate this lack of exercise and Americans’ fondness for sugary and fatty foods have led to rising obesity and diabetes rates. More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight, with one-third considered obese, the CDC says.
About 25% of Americans volunteer their time to help others or help a cause. This is truer in the Great Lakes states, followed by the West, South and Northeast, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service. Eco-consciousness has entered the mainstream: most big chain grocery stores – including Walmart – now sell organic foods, and many cities are pushing to go ‘zero waste.’ Still, only 34% of waste generated in the US is recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Americans tend to travel close to home. As of 2018, 42% of Americans have passports, so most people take vacations within the 50 states, and America’s reputation as the ‘no-vacation nation,’ with many workers having only five to 10 paid annual vacation days, contributes to this stay-at-home scenario. That said, 41.7 million US citizens traveled outside of North America in 2018, a 9% increase over 2017. According to the US Department of Commerce’s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, Mexico and Canada are the top countries for international getaways, followed by the UK, Dominican Republic, France, Italy and Germany.
Some regional US stereotypes have solid data behind them, thanks to a 2008 study titled The Geography of Personality. Researchers processed more than a half-million personality assessments collected from individual US citizens, then looked at where certain traits stacked up on the map. Turns out ‘Minnesota nice’ is for real – the most ‘agreeable’ states cluster in the Great Lakes, Great Plains and South. The most neurotic states? They line up in the Northeast. But New York didn’t place number one, as you might expect; that honor goes to West Virginia. Many of the most ‘open’ states lie out West. California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington all rate high for being receptive to new ideas, although they lag behind Washington, DC, and New York. The most dutiful and self-disciplined states sit in the Great Plains and Southwest, led by New Mexico. Go figure.
What really draws Americans together, sometimes slathered in blue body paint or with foam-rubber cheese wedges on their heads, is sports. It provides a social glue, so whether a person is conservative or liberal, married or single, Mormon or pagan, chances are come Monday at the office they’ll be chatting about the weekend performance of their favorite team.
The fun and games go on all year long. In spring and summer there’s baseball nearly every day. In fall and winter a weekend or Monday night doesn’t feel right without a football game on, and through the long days and nights of winter there’s plenty of basketball to keep the adrenaline going. Those are the big three sports. Auto racing has revved up interest in recent years. Major League Soccer (MLS) is attracting an ever-increasing following. And ice hockey, once favored only in northern climes, is popular nationwide – the LA Kings are two-time Stanley Cup winners while teams from sun-soaked Nashville, Tampa Bay and Vegas have made it to the finals.
Baseball may not command the same TV viewership (and subsequent advertising dollars) as football, but with 162 games over a season versus 16 for football, its ubiquity allows it to maintain its status as America’s pastime.
Besides, baseball isn’t about seeing it on TV, it’s all about the live version: being at the ballpark on a sunny day, sitting in the bleachers with a beer and hot dog, and indulging in the seventh-inning stretch, when the entire park erupts in a communal singalong of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame.’ The playoffs, held every October, still deliver excitement and unexpected champions. The New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs continue to be America’s favorite teams, even when they’re abysmal.
Tickets are relatively inexpensive – the cheap seats average about $25 at most stadiums – and are easy to get for most games. Minor-league baseball games cost half as much, and can be even more fun, with lots of audience participation, stray chickens and dogs running across the field, and wild throws from the pitcher’s mound. For info, click to www.milb.com.
Football is big, physical and rolling in dough. With the shortest season and least number of games of any major sport, every match takes on the emotion of an epic battle, where the results matter and an unfortunate injury can deal a lethal blow to a team’s play-off chances.
Football is also the toughest because it’s played in fall and winter in all manner of rain, sleet and snow. Some of history’s most memorable matches have occurred at below-freezing temperatures. Green Bay Packers fans are in a class by themselves when it comes to severe weather. Their stadium in Wisconsin, known as Lambeau Field, was the site of the infamous Ice Bowl, a 1967 championship game against the Dallas Cowboys where the temperature plummeted to –13°F – mind you, that was with a wind-chill factor of –48°F.
The rabidly popular Super Bowl is pro football’s championship match, held in late January or early February. The bowl games (such as Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl) are college football’s title matches, held on and around New Year’s Day.
In recent years the National Football League has come under fire for failing to adjust the rules of the sport in reaction to overwhelming proof that repeated concussions (a byproduct of tackles) have a permanent effect on players. A 2017 study by Boston University of the brains of 111 NFL players showed that 110 had a degenerative brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Though TV ratings for NFL games have taken a slight hit, the sport remains popular: 1.06 million children and teens played tackle football in 2017, according to a study by JAMA Pediatrics.
The men’s teams bringing in the most fans these days include the Chicago Bulls, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the San Antonio Spurs and, last but not least, the Golden State Warriors, which won three championships (and made it to every NBA final) between 2015 and 2019. Small-market teams such as Oklahoma City and Milwaukee have true-blue fans and star players like Russell Westbrook and Giannis Antetokounmpo, and such cities can be great places to take in a game.
Though not as celebrated, the women’s professional basketball teams (known as the WNBA) put on thrilling performances as well. The Washington Mystics, Los Angeles Sparks and Minnesota Lynx are a few teams to watch, and standouts include Breanna Stewart (Seattle Storm), Brittney Griner (Phoenix Mercury), A’ja Wilson (Las Vegas Aces) and Candace Parker (LA Sparks).
College-level basketball also draws millions of fans, especially every spring when March Madness rolls around. This series of men’s college play-off games culminates in the Final Four, when the four remaining teams compete for a spot in the championship game. The Cinderella stories and unexpected outcomes rival the pro league for excitement.
There’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned discussion of politics to throw a bucket of cold water onto a conversation. Many Americans have fairly fixed ideas when it comes to political parties and ideologies, and bridging the Republican–Democratic divide can often seem as insurmountable as leaping over the Grand Canyon. Here’s a quick cheat sheet on the American two-party system.
Known as the GOP (Grand Old Party), Republicans believe in a limited role of federal government. They also prescribe fiscal conservatism: lower taxes, privatization and reduced government spending constitute the path toward prosperity. Historically, Republicans were strong supporters of the environment: Theodore Roosevelt was a notable conservationist who helped create the National Parks system, and Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. More recently, however, Republicans have sided with business over environmental regulation, particularly under the Trump administration. Climate change remains a hot topic: as of 2019, 150 Republican members of Congress deny its basic tenets. This includes James Inhofe, a veteran lawmaker from Oklahoma and senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee – he is the author of the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. Republicans are typically socially conservative, and are often opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion and transgender rights. A fundamentalist wing of the party believes in creationism and a literal interpretation of the Bible. The Republican Party is most successful in rural regions, and has more support in the South and Great Plains.
The Democratic Party is liberal and progressive. The role model for most Democrats is Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal policies (namely creating government jobs for the unemployed and regulating Wall Street) are credited with partially ending the Great Depression. Democrats believe government should take an active role in regulating the economy to help keep inflation and unemployment low, and in a progressive tax structure to reduce economic inequality. They also have a strong social agenda, endorsing the government to take an active role in providing poverty relief, maintaining a social safety net, creating a health-care system for all and ensuring civil and political rights. By and large, Democrats support abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and believe in subsidizing alternative energy sources to help combat climate change, which most party members accept as indisputable. The Democratic Party is strongest in big cities and in the Northeast.