TD civi. US
Population
1) Immigration
From the 16th to the late 18th Century : the first immigrants
The 19th and Early 20th Centuries: - the two Europeans waves
- the Quotas Acts of the 1920s
From the Mid-20th Century to Nowadays: - immigration from the Third World
- the family reunification policy of the 1960s
- the Immigration Act of 1990
Melting pot: describes how the “Homo Americanus” is supposedly born, of the mix of all the
different immigrants
Old immigration: from the 1600s until the 1880s (= industrial explosion after the Civil War)
Common elements to the old immigration: the WASPs (White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant):
people of the same ethnic origin and the same background
→ the same Anglo-Saxon background, the same religious background (strong opposition to
Catholics)
The predominance of the WASPs in the USA is still true today
Only one president wasn’t a WASP: Kennedy
Today, Hispanics are the highest and the fastest gain in population
(1984: stickers → “a vote for Reagan is a vote for God”)
1830s – 1840s: Irish immigration
→ very bad treatment of them (life expectancy of 27)
They were the poorest of Irish population who suffered from starvation
Many of them died of tuberculosis of the bones
Boom of industrialization > manpower needs (besoins de main-d’oeuvre)
> massive waves of immigration from Europe
→ southern Italy (political and economic immigration) (cf “unité italienne”)
Russia (opposition to the tsar > political immigration; religious and ethnic immigration, for
example, Jews)
Armenia
1880 – 1913: 20 million of European people immigrated
1917: vote of the Literacy Act = the first thing done to limit immigration
> everyone who wants to go to the USA must know how to read and write in English
1921 – 1924: Quota Laws = reduces immigration to people of Anglo-Saxon origin
(= period of fundamentalist Puritanism)
After the 2nd World War: Johnson’s Administration decided to make it easier for people to
immigrate because the continent (=Europe) was to be rebuilt
1965: Family reunion program (= “Brothers and Sisters Act”)
During 2 decades, it covered about 80% of immigration in the USA
(same kind of programs in Europe, cf the “regroupement familial”)
General program, mentality, to favor family connections rather than merit from Mexico
(belongs to North American continent), Central America and South America
Today, the origin of the immigrants in the USA: 80% come from the 1/3rd World
The number 1 origin = the Mexicans (25% of all immigrants)
Asian immigration: after Vietnam War, a substantial people from Vietnam, but now, Indians
and Filipinos
Caribbeans
Today, the Latinos are the largest immigration group
> Hispanics = largest minority group in the USA
14% of the US population are Latinos
13% are Blacks
Big areas of immigration:
- the South, the Sun Belt (California, Texas and Florida → these states were formerly
Spanish)
- New York City receives about 10% of immigration still today
At the end of the 1980s: strong anti-immigration movement
→ problem of the de-industrialization > no jobs enough for unskilled persons (skilled =
qualifié; unskilled = non-qualifié)
( in 1980, employees at Chrysler in Detroit, Michigan, earned between $5 and $15 an hour
and the had job security; today, you practically have very few industries)
(very important expression: upward (social) mobility = ascension sociale, it’s when you climb
the rungs of society)
Car industry (= motor industry): Chrysler, Ford and General Motors
Steel industry: the most important group is US steel
De-industrialization > important problems for immigrants because they get industrial jobs
(Unemployment in the USA: slightly the same as in Europe)
> the USA start to curb (jauger, réduire, restreindre) immigration
1990 : the Immigration Act = favors immigration of skilled workers
In the USA, the reference is now given by quotas of visas opened to skilled workers
Increase of the population (= population growth) in the USA is still due to the immigration =
outside source
Today, European immigration accounts for about 5% of immigration
De-industrialization has an impact on distribution and population in general
2) Aspects of US society
Latest census (in year 2000): about 275 million of inhabitants in the USA
The USA has a relatively normal birth rate, with higher rate in some communities as the
Blacks or the Hispanics
(Proper (convenable, adequate, correct) medical care [= proper medical coverage])
Whites have a higher life expectancy than the minorities
The USA is getting more ethnically diverse
It’s a multicultural, multiracial end multi-ethnic society
From a population pattern (modèle) point of view, strong economic areas until the age of
prosperity (les 30 Glorieuses) were the North East and the Midwest (cf big industries of the
Midwest, for example Chicago or Detroit, with the car industry of the big 3)
Cf Michael Moore’s film about the de-industrialization: The Big One
The de-industrialization has led to the same phenomenon in the USA and in Europe: aging
population (people live longer than before and families have fewer children) >
transformations in the American family
What we use to call the nuclear family (= the traditional pattern of the 1980s: a married
couple with 2 or 3 children, “daddy goes to work and mummy stays at home”) doesn’t
account now for 20% of the American families
What are the reasons of this event?
→ both combination of working women (more than 60%) (> 2 working parents) and a
number of children decreasing (= fewer and fewer)
> = DINK families (= Double Income No Kids)
(double income = when both the man and the woman work)
Later marriages (= people marry at a later age) > children at a later age > fewer children
High rate of divorce > important number of one-parent families > feminization of poverty
(generally, women earn fewer than men)
Marriage isn’t considered as a primary objective (cf 50% divorce)
60% of Black families are single-headed (= single-parent) families
Increasing number of teenage pregnancies (15% of US teenagers and 25% of Afro-American
teenagers)
Result = transformations of US society (for example, feminization of poverty leads to an
increasing crime rate, juvenile delinquency)
Total transformation of the family pattern (for example, in the 1990s, the number of
unmarried couples doubled)
Substantial drop(baisses) in incomes
Cf Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Nickel and Dimed, on (not) getting by in America (nickel =
pièce de 5 cents; dime = pièce de 10 cents; nickel-and-dime = de camelote, au rabais)
(catering = petite restauration; nursing house = old folks house)
Heavy prices of medical insurances
Temporary workers (= contract workers) > no job security
New distribution of population
Suburbanization (business areas are in the cities; coexistence of both relatively posh areas and
inner cities, ghettos, with high rate of crime, poverty, unemployment…)
Importance of the de-industrialization of the USA
The family structure is strongly hit by this issue
Issues are always composed of combined elements, combined effects (for example, women,
Blacks, families…)
Squeeze on welfare system and social programs the last past years
Program “From welfare to workfare” > women have to join the workforce > increase of the
level of poverty in the USA
Basic needs of people are going up economically
For example, housing in California is totally out of reach
> 2 phenomenon:
- differences between suburbs and inner cities > suburbanization for upper-class and well
middle-class
- gentrification (embourgeoisement) in inner cities
3) Minorities (hyphenated Americans (américains à traits d’union) : AfroAmericans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans… = you aren’t American,
you’ve some kind of specificity as an American)
A] Hispanics (and Caribbeans)
Largest minority = Hispanics
They are growing faster than any other group
They started to move in the 1960s
They are the ethnic group who profited the most of the “Brothers and Sisters Act”
They represent a younger population
Differences in the group: the Mexicans (who get the low-paid jobs, in general) = the
Chicanos, the Porto-Ricans (Porto-Rico is controlled by the USA, it’s a dominion, a touched
territory), the Cubans (in general better educated) (most of them are in Florida; mafia in
Florida is often headed by Cubans), people from the Caribbean (Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican
Republic)
= Hispanics aren’t homogeneous from a social, economic and even political point of view
They share a lot of common features (points communs) with the Afro-Americans (level of
education and level of income), but Hispanics still have a relatively family culture
They are a group which is reluctant (reticent) to integrate itself
Mexicans often don’t consider themselves as immigrates, they think that they settle on their
territory; they are reluctant to speak English
B] Afro-Americans
Blacks can’t be compared with immigrants, because they didn’t come to the USA on their
own will, they came to the USA with chains
They were sold to slave owners along the southern cost of the American continent
1st Black ship with slaves: 1619 (one year the Pilgrim Fathers)
The Constitution of the USA recognized the existence of slavery
1850: fugitive slave Act (cf Missouri compromise)
1857: Dred vs Scott decision > accelerated the conflict which led to the Civil War: a runaway
slave can never be free, even if he or she escaped to a state where slavery is illegal
(the “underground railroad” = le chemin de fer clandestin)
13th, 14th and 15th Amendments: the “Civil War Amendments” (= the “Reconstruction
Amendments”)
1875: 1st Civil Rights Act which bared (to bar = ici, defender) segregation in public facilities
(équipements publics, installations publiques)
1880s: end of the occupation of the South by the northern army
1896: Plessy vs Ferguson decision > reinforces segregation under the concept of “separate but
equal” > “apartheid”, strict segregation in schools, hospitals, restaurants, cemeteries, prisons,
entertainments…
1910: beginning of a rebellious movement → creation of the NAACP (National Association
for the Advancement of Coloured People)
1954: Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka > reversed the Plessy vs Ferguson decision =
segregation is unconstitutional
1955: Rosa Parks refused to give her sit to a white man in the bus > bus boycott in
Montgomery, Alabama
Martin Luther King = young preacher from Atlanta: he created the SCLC (Southern Christian
Leadership Conference)
1963: Kennedy is president
The movement activated by the Black community started to gather white supports
Cf the “freedom riders”: to help Blacks registered to vote
Turning point = march on Washington D.C. (there were more Whites than Blacks)
Black movement in the USA = starting point of many other liberation movements, for
example, Women liberation movement (1967)
1964: 2nd Civil Rights Act
1965: Voting Rights Act
Beginning of programs of affirmative action (concern all groups discriminated)
1968: in April, assassination of MLK; in June, assassination of JFK
From a legal point of view, there is no longer in the USA any disposition that can keep Blacks
from having their rights
Discrimination shifted (ici, se déplacer) from a legal discrimination to an economic
discrimination
Unemployment for Blacks is twice as high as Whites
Blacks have always been victim of unemployment since the end of slavery
They also suffer from poverty
They have less chances of getting good education, particularly in the deep South
De-industrialization > low-paid jobs
Despite affirmative action, they is still discrimination in recruitment
Blacks and Hispanics suffer more from poverty than Whites:
In 2003, ¼ of the Black population lived below the poverty line and 33% of Black children
grow up in poverty
Children and older people are the most concerned by poverty
A half of children and older people have no health coverage
High infantile mortality rate is twice for Blacks and Hispanics than for Whites
Generally, all the problems in US society are worth for Blacks and Hispanics
60% of Black families are headed by a single parent
High rate of teenage pregnancy
Logical consequences: black families only get about 60% of a white family income and 65%
of black children grow up with only a mother as earner
Black and Hispanics women accumulate 2 discriminations concerning earning (sex and colour
discrimination) > they earn less (cf the glass ceiling = le plafond de verre)
Problems in housing: schools are neighbourhood schools > segregation (that is to say black
children, who live in black neighbourhoods, go to black schools; white children, who live in
white neighbourhoods, go to white schools)
Disproportionate rates of Blacks and Hispanics in prison for crimes
41% of AIDS victims in the USA are black
65% of women AIDS victims are black
Emergence (emergence, ≠ emergency = urgence) of a black middle-class
Blacks – Whites gap
C] Asian-Americans
It’s a very fast growing minority
This minority is due to immigration
1st Asians: their status was close to slavery
They came to build the railroad and lived in ghettos (“Chinatowns”)
Once the railroad was built: Chinese Exclusion Act > Chinese were the 1st victims of quotas
This lasted until Japan attacked China during the 2nd World War
Many Japanese lived in the USA in that period > they were put in concentration camps
Today, the Asian minority:
- 25% are Chinese
- 20% are Filipinos
- 20% are Japanese
- 11% are Korean
- 10% are Vietnamese
They are relatively successful (more middle-class people than in the other minorities)
They often success better than the rest of the population because: they work hard and they like
money, they are in the capitalistic system and they have a close family ethic
Despite of all this, they aren’t paid as well as Whites (cf glass ceiling)
Majority of them lives in the suburbs (= proof that they are middle-class)
10% are poor
Recent immigrants and more economical and political refugees
D] Native Americans
They are a very small percentage of the population of the USA: 1%
They are, by far, the poorest minority
They have been subjected to the worst treatment of the minorities
Genocide
All the treaties and the promises made after the War of Independence were broken
The West was conquered by violence
They were killed, deported or assimilated by force (they were put in schools, they had to
speak English and cut their hair, families were separated, they had to become Christian, their
lands were systematically stolen, they had no protection…)
Now they live on reservations
BIA = Bureau of Indian Affairs (one of the most corrupted agency in the USA)
AIM = American-Indian Movement
To make money, many reservations have made casinos, but they are still extremely poor
A very substantial percentage is integrated and doesn’t consider any longer himself as Indians
(for example, Marlon Brando, Harrison Ford)