Never much into Star trek, but I vaguely remembered the image of the crew of the Enterprise being very multi racial, which in the 1960's and 1970's seemed pretty unusual and cool--everyone seemed to function smoothly and to accept one another. Looking at images of the crew now, it looks pretty tame and you can see more variety at my office today.
Nevertheless, I always liked the idea of a melange of people in America, strength through diversity.
How we could get there, seemed pretty clearly, immigration, but I have not been able to get my head around where all the people have come from, are coming from. Seems like for the past decade most of our immigrants are from South of the border, but then there's Africa and the Middle East.
One thing which the numbers show is the porportion of the nation which is immigrant, i.e. not born here is not at an all time high, but it is hovering around the vicinity where we've been at peak immigrant decades, roughly 13%. When I was a kid it was in the 6% range, which might be one reason I thought I was living in Leave It to Beaver land, and everyone was White.
I do know that between 1890 and 1965 the policy of the United States was to restrict the largest number to specific countries, so people from England and Germany and Scandinavia were preferred and the rationale was mostly racial: We Whites settled this continent (ignoring those non White folks who were here before them) and we want to keep our country looking just like us. Then, the Italians and Southern Europeans got in, then some Jews, then some Poles and Slavs.
But then in 1965, Congress decided to give preference to people who already had relatives living in the USA, the idea being we could say we just were pro family, but the real idea was if you had mostly White families here, then the folks allowed in would also be mostly White.
Didn't work that way.
So what do the numbers show?
Here are a few graphs. The best visual is the link showing where people came from over the decades and usually, they seemed to come from places where wars or famines or other disasters motivated people to leave their SHC's and gamble on a future in the USA.
Here's a very cool link which shows the sort of dynamic ebb and flow and notice where the immigrants come from tend to be from where on the planet the greatest trouble has been fomenting:
http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/
 |
| Very Diverse, for their day. |
Nevertheless, I always liked the idea of a melange of people in America, strength through diversity.
How we could get there, seemed pretty clearly, immigration, but I have not been able to get my head around where all the people have come from, are coming from. Seems like for the past decade most of our immigrants are from South of the border, but then there's Africa and the Middle East.
One thing which the numbers show is the porportion of the nation which is immigrant, i.e. not born here is not at an all time high, but it is hovering around the vicinity where we've been at peak immigrant decades, roughly 13%. When I was a kid it was in the 6% range, which might be one reason I thought I was living in Leave It to Beaver land, and everyone was White.
I do know that between 1890 and 1965 the policy of the United States was to restrict the largest number to specific countries, so people from England and Germany and Scandinavia were preferred and the rationale was mostly racial: We Whites settled this continent (ignoring those non White folks who were here before them) and we want to keep our country looking just like us. Then, the Italians and Southern Europeans got in, then some Jews, then some Poles and Slavs.
 |
| Ideal Immigrant. We need more of these. Or from Norway |
But then in 1965, Congress decided to give preference to people who already had relatives living in the USA, the idea being we could say we just were pro family, but the real idea was if you had mostly White families here, then the folks allowed in would also be mostly White.
Didn't work that way.
So what do the numbers show?
 |
| click to enlarge |
Here are a few graphs. The best visual is the link showing where people came from over the decades and usually, they seemed to come from places where wars or famines or other disasters motivated people to leave their SHC's and gamble on a future in the USA.
 |
| click to enlarge |
http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/
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