As in New England, the power of the human will and an intensely cherished abstract design have triumphed over an unfriendly habitat. The Mormon way of life is expressed in the settlement landscape and economic activities within a region more homogeneous internally than any other U.S. culture area.
CaliforniaCalifornia.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In contrast, northern California has yet to gain its own strong cultural coloration. From the beginning of the great 1849 gold rush the area drew a diverse population from Europe and Asia as well as the older portions of the United States. Whether the greater part of northern California has produced a culture amounting to more than the sum of the contributions brought by immigrants is questionable. San Francisco, the regional metropolis, may have crossed the qualitative threshold. An unusually cosmopolitan outlook that includes an awareness of the Orient stronger than that of any other U.S. city, a fierce self-esteem, and a unique townscape may be symptomatic of a genuinely new, emergent local culture.
Southern California is the most spectacular of the Western regions, not only in terms of economic and population growth but also for the luxuriance, regional particularism, and general avant-garde character of its swiftly evolving cultural pattern. Until the coming of a direct transcontinental rail connection in 1885, the region was remote, rural, and largely inconsequential. Since then, the invasion by persons from virtually every corner of North America and by the world has been massive, but since the 1960s in-migration has slackened perceptibly, and many residents have begun to question the doctrine of unlimited growth. In any event, a loosely articulated series of urban and suburban developments continue to encroach upon what little is left of arable or habitable land in the Coast Ranges and valleys from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.
Although every major ethnic and racial group and every other U.S. culture area is amply represented in southern California, there is reason to suspect that a process of selection for certain types of people, attitudes, and personality traits may have been at work at both source and destination. The region is distinct from, or perhaps in the vanguard of, the remainder of the nation. One might view southern California as the super-American region or the outpost of a postindustrial future, but its cultural distinctiveness is very evident in landscape and social behaviour. Southern California in no way approaches being a “traditional region,” or even the smudged facsimile of such, but rather the largest, boldest experiment in creating a “voluntary region,” one built through the self-selection of immigrants and their subsequent interaction.
The remaining identifiable Western regions—the Willamette valley of Oregon, the Puget Sound region, the Inland Empire of eastern Washington and adjacent tracts of Idaho and Oregon, central Arizona, and the Colorado Piedmont—can be treated jointly as potential, or emergent, culture areas, still too close to the national mean to display any cultural distinctiveness. In all of these regions is evident the arrival of a cross section of the national population and the growth of regional life around one or more major metropolises. A New England element is noteworthy in the Willamette valley and Puget Sound regions, while a Hispanic-American component appears in the Colorado Piedmont and central Arizona. Only time and further study will reveal whether any of these regions, so distant from the historic sources of U.S. population and culture, have the capacity to become an independent cultural area.
United States: The northern Pacific CoastThe northern Pacific Coast.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Wilbur Zelinsky
People
A country for less than two and a half centuries, the United States is a relatively new member of the global community, but its rapid growth since the 18th century is unparalleled. The early promise of the New World as a refuge and land of opportunity was realized dramatically in the 20th century with the emergence of the United States as a world power. With a total population exceeded only by those of China and India, the United States is also characterized by an extraordinary diversity in ethnic and racial ancestry. A steady stream of immigration, notably from the 1830s onward, formed a pool of foreign-born persons unmatched by any other nation; 60 million people immigrated to U.S. shores in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many were driven, seeking escape from political or economic hardship, while others were drawn, by a demand for workers, abundant natural resources, and expansive cheap land. Most arrived hoping to remake themselves in the New World.
Spectators are showered with confetti during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.© Joseph Sohm/Dreamstime.com
Americans also have migrated internally with great vigour, exhibiting a restlessness that thrived in the open lands and on the frontier. Initially, migratory patterns ran east to west and from rural areas to cities, then, in the 20th century, from the South to the Northeast and Midwest. Since the 1950s, though, movement has been primarily from the cities to outlying suburbs and from aging northern metropolises to the growing urban agglomerations of the South, Southwest, and West.
United States: Age breakdownEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
At the dawn of the 21st century, the majority of the U.S. population had achieved a high level of material comfort, prosperity, and security. Nonetheless, Americans struggled with the unexpected problems of relative affluence, as well as the persistence of residual poverty. Crime, drug abuse, affordable energy sources, urban sprawl, voter apathy, pollution, high divorce rates, AIDS, and excessive litigation remained continuing subjects of concern, as were inequities and inadequacies in education and managed health care. Among the public policy issues widely debated were abortion, gun control, welfare reforms, and capital punishment.
Many Americans perceive social tension as the product of their society’s failure to extend the traditional dream of equality of opportunity to all people. Ideally, social, political, economic, and religious freedom would assure the like treatment of everyone, so that all could achieve goals in accord with their individual talents, if only they worked hard enough. This strongly held belief has united Americans throughout the centuries. The fact that some groups have not achieved full equality troubles citizens and policy-makers alike.
Ethnic distribution
After decades of immigration and acculturation, many U.S. citizens can trace no discernible ethnic identity, describing themselves generically only as “American,” while others claim mixed identities. The 2000 U.S. census introduced a new category for those who identified themselves as a member of more than one race, and, of 281.4 million counted, 2.4 percent chose this multiracial classification. Ten years later, in the 2010 census, those figures had grown to 2.9 percent of 308.7 million.
United States: Population by race and Hispanic originEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Ethnic European Americans
Although the term ethnic is frequently confined to the descendants of the newest immigrants, its broader meaning applies to all groups unified by their cultural heritage and experience in the New World. In the 19th century, Yankees formed one such group, marked by common religion and by habits shaped by the original Puritan settlers. From New England, the Yankees spread westward through New York, northern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. Tightly knit communities, firm religious values, and a belief in the value of education resulted in prominent positions for Yankees in business, in literature and law, and in cultural and philanthropic institutions. They long identified with the Republican Party. Southern whites and their descendants, by contrast, remained preponderantly rural as migration took them westward across Tennessee and Kentucky to Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. These people inhabited small towns until the industrialization of the South in the 20th century, and they preserved affiliations with the Democratic Party until the 1960s.