Minorities in the United States

Résumé du document

African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and American Indians and also homosexuals form the most well-known minority groups in the US. Minorities represent roughly 25% of the American population, and they are growing at much faster rate than Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent. Within a span of hundred years, the population of the US is expected to be evenly divided between whites and ethnic minorities. New York City already displays this pattern (well over 60% of its population belongs to one minority group or another) and so does California, with 40% of its inhabitants falling into a minority category, mainly because of the great influx of Hispanics and Asian Americans located there.

Extraits

[...] In 1961, Illinois became the first state to authorize private homosexual practices between consenting adults. The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbidding discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, religion, national origins or sex was the stepping stone for the acceptance of gays in mainstream American society. In 1965, the right to a private life was deemed inalienable by the Supreme Court. Still, gays had to wait until the 1969 Stonewall Inn incident gay bar in NY in which homosexuals rebelled against a police raid) for their movement to gain momentum. [...]

[...] Since 1961 Affirmative Action programmes have tried to redress the past discrimination of blacks by encouraging preferential hiring for government jobs in business and education. In 1962 James Meredith was the first black admitted to the University of Mississippi. Kennedy had to send in troops. On August 1963 there was a massive march of blacks and whites on Washington D.C. at the call of M. L. King who delivers an unforgettable speech Have a Dream', but on March 1968: M. L. [...]

[...] Americans of Hispanic descent are the fastest growing minority today: they represent nearly 13% of the American population (over 30 million) and have overtaken the black community. They are the leading ethnic group in the US. African-Americans make up of the total American population and their rate of increase is twice that of whites. The third most numerous minorities of the US population), Asians also have a fast rate of growth: 3.5 million in million in 1997. There are approximately two million self-identified American Indians or Native Americans today. What is the origin of those minorities? [...]

[...] As a result, a certain number of Mexicans do not consider themselves as immigrants, but feel they are merely settling on territory that formerly was theirs. Asian-Americans Asians have long been immigrants to the US. Before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which placed a sixty-year ban upon Asian entry, many Chinese had come to the west coast of the US as labourers, to build the railroads, work in the golden mines or as domestic servants. The current wave of Asian immigration is fairly recent. It is the result of the opening up of national borders after the immigration laws of 1965. [...]

[...] African-Americans Slavery was abolished by the end of the eighteenth century in the north of the Mason-Dixon line. During the Civil War in September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in territories held by the Confederacy. In 1865 the 13th Amendment was ratificated: it was the abolition of slavery. In 1868, the 14th and the 15th Amendment were ratificated, they give blacks American citizenship and the right to vote. In 1866, the Civil Rights Act declared Blacks citizens and denies states the power to restrict their rights. [...]