In 30 years the United States is projected to no longer be majority white in population. How will that change America?
Poll- What do you think?
___________________________________________
Video:
___________________________________
Census: Minorities Constitute 37 Percent of U.S. Population
May 17, 2012
By Doris Nhan | National Journal
The Census Bureau on Thursday released estimates on the U.S. population’s growth in 2011, finding that racial and ethnic minorities for the first time made up more than half of all children born in the country, totaling 50.4 percent.
Here are other key findings to know from the report (estimates were projected based on data from the 2010 census):
•Minorities now account for 36.6 percent of the total population.
•Non-Hispanic whites are projected to become a minority by 2042, according to a 2008 release by the Census Bureau.
•There are 52 million Hispanics in the U.S., an increase of 3.1 percent, making it the largest minority group in the country.
•Asians were the second fastest-growing group, increasing by 3 percent to 18.2 million.
•The top five states/areas with a majority-minority population are: Hawaii; Washington, D.C.; California; New Mexico; and Texas.
•More than 11 percent of counties became majority-minority in 2011. Since April 2010, nine counties in five states have become majority-minority.
•Almost 24 percent of the population is under age 18. Nearly 34 percent of Hispanics and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are under 18. About one-fifth of non-Hispanic whites are under 18.
•In contrast, 13.3 percent of the total population is over age 65. About 16.7 percent of non-Hispanic whites are over 65.
•Non-Hispanic whites are projected to become a minority by 2042, according to a 2008 release by the Census Bureau.
•There are 52 million Hispanics in the U.S., an increase of 3.1 percent, making it the largest minority group in the country.
•Asians were the second fastest-growing group, increasing by 3 percent to 18.2 million.
•The top five states/areas with a majority-minority population are: Hawaii; Washington, D.C.; California; New Mexico; and Texas.
•More than 11 percent of counties became majority-minority in 2011. Since April 2010, nine counties in five states have become majority-minority.
•Almost 24 percent of the population is under age 18. Nearly 34 percent of Hispanics and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are under 18. About one-fifth of non-Hispanic whites are under 18.
•In contrast, 13.3 percent of the total population is over age 65. About 16.7 percent of non-Hispanic whites are over 65.
_________________________________________________________________
To understand the difference between Hispanic/Latino and one’s racial classification
See link:
___________________________________________________________________
Brazil is now majority Black
Brazil is the largest country in South America and is the world’s 5th largest country, both by geographical area and by population.
Brazil’s most recent 2010 census shows African-Brazilians in the majority for the first time at 97 million people of the nation’s 190 million people.
Results show 50.7% of Brazilians now define themselves as black or mixed race compared with 47.7% whites
The poorest section of society was 76.3% African-Brazilian and 23.7% white. The majority of Brazil’s slums are populated with mixed race and black populations.
In 1872, when Brazil’s first census was conducted, the population was split into just two groups: free people and slaves.
The wealthiest group of Brazilians was made up of 82.3% white people and just 17.7% African-Brazilians.
_______________________________________________
Video: Age of European Exploration – Pre-Colonial America
Will the United States look like Brazil?
Brazil is majority non-white but, the country’s wealth remains in the hands of whites, the government is majority white and the universities are majority white.
________________________
Brazil
Brazil was originally populated by Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. On March 9, 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral, a European Portuguese noble explorer, took a fleet of 13 ships and sailed far into the western Atlantic Ocean for India. On March 22, 1500 they reached Cape Verde off the coast of west Africa. On Wednesday April 22, 1500 the fleet landed in what is now Brazil. The Portuguese found the new land had inhabitants. The Europeans assigned the generic label “Indians” to these native people. The fleet resumed its voyage and headed to southern Africa and on to India.
The first permanent Portuguese settlement in the land which would become Brazil was São Vicente, which was established in 1532 by Martim Afonso de Sousa. The Treaty of Tordesillas signed on June 7, 1494, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal. France tried to settle in present-day Rio de Janeiro, from 1555 to 1567 and in what is now São Luís, from 1612 to 1614. The Dutch colonized what was called New Holland in the northern portion of Brazil between 1630 and 1654. On August 6, 1661, New Holland was formally ceded to Portugal through the Treaty of The Hague. The Portuguese expand westward into what is now Brazil by conquering more lands from the indigenous Americans and the Spanish.
European Jewish history in Brazil dates back to the time of the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Gaspar da Gama, a Jew by birth, but later kidnaped and forcibly baptized, accompanied Portuguese admiral Pedro Alvares Cabral when he landed in what is now Brazil in 1500, beginning a more than 500-year presence in the New World.
When the Inquisition in Portugal took hold in 1497, Jews fled to places throughout the world, including Brazil. They arrived in Brazil primarily as New Christians or Conversos (Jews converted to Christianity), but many secretly practiced Judaism and began a colonization drive to settle on the land.
In Dutch Brazil, Jews flourished in the sugar industry, tax farming and slave trade. Jews often purchased enslaved Africans and resold them at great profit. Those enslaved Africans kept often preferred to work for European Jews because both Shabbat and Sunday were rest days, whereas the European Portugese Christians only gave them Sunday off, and the Dutch Christians worked their enslaved Africans 7 days a week.
In 1808, the Portuguese court, fleeing from Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal, moved the government to its then-colony of Brazil in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
In 1815 the king vested Brazil with the dignity of a united kingdom with Portugal and Algarves. When king João VI of Portugal left Brazil to return to Portugal in 1821, his elder son, Pedro I, stayed in his stead as regent of Brazil. The independence war between the Brazilians and Portuguese lasted from February 1822 to November 1823, when the Portuguese surrendered. The new country was headed by Emperor Pedro I of Brazil. Pedro I abdicated in 1831 and left for Portugal leaving behind his 5-year-old son as Emperor Pedro II, which led the country ruled by regents between 1831 and 1840. Pedro II was deposed on November 15, 1889, by a Republican military coup led by General Deodoro da Fonseca.
Brazil obtained an estimated 35% of all enslaved Africans traded in the Atlantic slave trade. Before the 19th century, the majority of enslaved Africans in Brazil came from Central Africa and East Africa, the majority in the mid 1800s came from West Africa.
The last country to ban the Atlantic slave trade was Brazil in 1831.
Brazil Rio Branco Law (law of free birth) declares free the sons and daughters born to slave mothers after September 28, 1871. Slaveholders of the children’s parents were to provide care for the children until the age of 21, or turn them over to the state in return for monetary compensation.
In 1885 Brazil passed Sexagenarian Law freeing all slaves over the age of 60.
Brazil passed the Golden Law in 1888 abolishing slavery without indemnities to slaveowners or aid to newly freed slaves
From 1889 to 1930 Brazil was formally a constitutional democracy. Women and the illiterate (the majority of the population) were prevented from voting.
The 1964 Brazilian coup d’état overthrew President João Goulart by the Armed Forces on April 1, 1964.
In January 1985 Tancredo Neves, of the PMDB party, was elected the first civilian president since 1964. Neves was elected President by a majority of the Electoral College on January 15, 1985, where he received 480 votes. Neves died on April 21, 1985. Vice-President José Sarney de Araújo Costa became the President. The first direct presidential election was held on October 15, 1989 (first round) and November 15, 1989 (second round). Fernando Collor de Mello won the run-off election for a 5-year term. Fernando Collor resigned his term in office in 1992 just before the Brazilian Senate was to vote for his impeachment, which the did. Vice-President, Itamar Franco, assumed the presidency for the remainder of Collor’s term and remained president until 1994.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso started his first term as President of Brazil on January 1, 1995 and was reelected in 1998.
In 2002, Luiz Lula da Silva won the presidency of Brazil.
On October 31, 2010, Dilma Rousseff was the first woman elected President of Brazil, with her term beginning in the January 1, 2011. Rousseff was the first woman to become Chief of Staff to the President of Brazil (2005 – 2010), appointed by then President Luiz Lula da Silva.
__________________________________________________________
United States of America
The United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103) provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were “free white persons” of “good moral character”. It thus left out American Indians/Native Americans, indentured servants of any race, enslaved Africans, free blacks, and later Asians.
Official recording of immigration to the United States began in 1820 after the passage of the Act of March 2, 1819. From 1820 to 1867, figures represent alien passenger arrivals at seaports; from 1868 to 1891 and 1895 to 1897, immigrant alien arrivals; from 1892 to 1894 and 1898 to 2010, immigrant aliens admitted for permanent residence; from 1892 to 1903, aliens entering by cabin class were not counted as immigrants. Land arrivals were not completely enumerated until 1908.
The Emergency Quota Act (also know as: Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 or the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921), or the Per Centum Law or the Johnson Quota Act) restricted immigration into the United States. The act meant that only people of Northern and Western Europe who had similar cultures to that of America were likely to get in. The American government wanted to protect its culture when this act was introduced. Southern Europeans and Eastern European (including other countries) saw a drastic reduction in immigration levels.
The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson–Reed Act) was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans who were immigrating in large numbers starting in the 1890s, as well as prohibiting the immigration of Middle Easterners, Asians and people from India.
The National Origins Formula was an American system of immigration quotas, between 1921 and 1965, which restricted immigration on the basis of existing proportions of the population. The goal was to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the United States.
From 1907-1998 there were 15,436,967 persons naturalized in the United States according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security records
| PERSONS NATURALIZED BY REGION AND COUNTRY OF BIRTH: FISCAL YEARS 2002 TO 2011 | ||||||||||
| Region and country of birth | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 |
| REGION | ||||||||||
| Total | 572,646 | 462,435 | 537,151 | 604,280 | 702,589 | 660,477 | 1,046,539 | 743,715 | 619,913 | 694,193 |
| Africa | 31,489 | 28,529 | 34,531 | 38,830 | 50,397 | 41,652 | 54,418 | 60,383 | 64,022 | 69,738 |
| Asia | 238,965 | 196,972 | 224,072 | 243,514 | 263,516 | 243,783 | 330,361 | 276,375 | 251,598 | 249,940 |
| Europe | 86,587 | 68,932 | 83,961 | 91,745 | 101,125 | 81,788 | 108,688 | 90,214 | 78,011 | 82,209 |
| North America | 169,507 | 130,523 | 151,008 | 180,525 | 223,034 | 241,136 | 462,312 | 250,209 | 163,836 | 217,750 |
| Oceania | 2,348 | 2,889 | 3,551 | 3,898 | 3,657 | 3,342 | 4,781 | 3,928 | 3,646 | 3,734 |
| South America | 42,806 | 33,633 | 38,670 | 44,498 | 59,980 | 48,128 | 84,845 | 61,666 | 58,474 | 70,485 |
| Unknown | 944 | 957 | 1,358 | 1,270 | 880 | 648 | 1,134 | 940 | 326 | 337 |
A total of 56,384 persons were admitted to the United States as refugees during 2011.
The first refugee legislation in the United States was the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which brought 400,000 Eastern Europeans to the United States. Other refugee-related legislation included the
Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and the Fair Share Refugee Act of 1960.
Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and the Fair Share Refugee Act of 1960.
During 2011, 24,988 individuals were granted asylum, including 13,484 who were granted asylum affirmatively by the Department of Homeland Security4 (DHS) and 11,504 who were granted asylum defensively by the Department of Justice.
The leading countries of nationality for persons granted either affirmative or defensive asylum were China, Venezuela, and Ethiopia.
_______________________________________________________________
Native Americans/American Indians
It is estimated that the pre-Columbian population of the Americas was anywhere from as low as at 10 million or as high as nearly 100 million or more when Europeans first Arrived to North, Central and South America. As there were indigenous people located in almost every location where Europeans explored. In what it now the United States there were indigenous people inhabiting the lands from the tip of Florida to Maine and from the coast of North Carolina to the coast of California and the state of Washington. The population of European and African peoples in the Americas grew steadily, while the number of the indigenous people plummeted. Eurasian diseases devastated the Native Americans who did not have immunity as well as and genocide.
_______________________________
Video: European Immigration (1946)
_______________________________
African Americans/Blacks
In 1565, the colony of Saint Augustine in Florida, founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés became the first permanent European settlement in North America, and included an unknown number of free and enslaved Africans that were part of this colonial expedition.
Puritan New England (English Christian Protestants), Virginia, Spanish Florida, and the Carolina colonies engaged large-scale enslavement of Native Americans. Enslaved Indians/Native Americans were familiar with the environment and would often successfully escape into the wilderness. Foreign enslaved Africans were less likely to runaway into the wilderness because they would have difficulty surviving.
In 1607, English settlers established Jamestown, in Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World. In 1619, Dutch traders brought the first enslaved Africans to Jamestown.
The first Africans to be brought to English North America landed in Virginia in 1619. These individuals appear to have been treated as indentured servants, and a significant number of enslaved Africans even won their freedom through fulfilling a work contract or for converting to Christianity.
The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven enslaved blacks who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders to New Amsterdam (present day New York City), capital of the nascent province of New Netherland.
One of the first major establishments of African slavery in these English American colonies occurred with the founding of Charles Town (Charleston) and South Carolina in 1670.
The industrial revolution in Britain brought a new demand for efficiency, free trade and free labor. Britain’s ties with the United States of America were loosened when it lost its colonies in the American war of independence in 1776.
The Constitution of the United States was drafted in 1787 and in Section 9 of Article I allowed the continued “importation” of slaves and protected the trade until 1808.
The Constitution of the United States
Article. I
Section. 9
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
In 1874 Britain abolished slavery in the Gold Coast (now Ghana).
After the Spanish-American War, Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris (1898), by which Spain ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to the United States for the sum of $20 million. Under the same treaty, Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over Cuba. Cuba gained formal independence from the United States on May 20, 1902, as the Republic of Cuba. Under Cuba’s new constitution, the U.S. retained the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to supervise its finances and foreign relations. Under the Platt Amendment, the U.S. leased the Guantánamo Bay naval base from Cuba. During the 16th and 17th centuries, European Jews immigrated to Cuba from Brazil. Cuba’s European Jews were involved in all aspects of Cuban society and economy. Jews were instrumental in the sugar cane business and were involved in slavery as the European Spanish.
Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873.
Slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1886.
____________________________________
Cudjoe (Cudjo) Kazoola Lewis
Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis (1840 – 1935) is considered the last person born on African soil to have been enslaved in the United States when slavery was still lawful. Cudjoe was the longest-lived survivor of all those who were brought aboard the Clotilde and died in 1934 aged 94.
Kazoola was a native of Takon, a place north of Porto-Novo, Benin, where he was captured, and brought to the port of Ouidah.
The ship “Clotilde” under Captain William Foster sailed in 1860 from Ghana, West Africa for its final destination of Mobile, Alabama more than half a century after the slave trade had been outlawed. Over 100 Africans were aboard, having been sold into bondage by the King of Dahomey. Dahomey warriors raided a village near the city of Tamale in Ghana, and took the survivors to Whydah, now Benin, where they were put up for sale.
Together with more than a hundred other captured Africans, he was brought on the ship Clotilde to Mobile, Alabama, in the United States in 1860 during an illegal slave-trading venture.
In 1880, Lewis legally married Celia (Abile), a fellow Clotilda capture who had lived with Cudjo since 1866. Together they had 5 sons and 1 daughter.
After the Civil War——
Lewis and his ethnic people requested repatriation to Africa, but this was not arranged. He and other Africans established a community at Magazine Point near Mobile, Alabama which became called Africatown. They maintained their language and tribal customs for years and Lewis was very much a community leader, even meeting with prominent people such as Booker T. Washington. A man who became known as Charlie Poteet was their chief; their medicine man was named Jabez. In time, they formed a self-governing society. Cudjoe worked as a shingle maker until 1902, when he was injured in a train accident. He then became the church sexton for Africatown. They spoke their native language and carried on their African ethnic traditions into the 1950s.
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston famously interviewed and filmed Cudjoe.
The neighborhood was also called Plateau and was eventually incorporated within Prichard, a suburb of Mobile. The suburb was later demolished in 1901, as a result of growing tensions between the blacks and the whites in the South.
Video: AfricaTown Archeological Site
______________________________
Compared to the foreign born overall, African immigrants reported higher levels of English proficiency and educational attainment.
Today in Educational Attainment, black immigrants to the United States outperform native-born White Americans and Black Americans.
_______________________________
The U.S. Senate, the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, currently has no black elected members.
The Senate has several exclusive powers not granted to the U.S. House of Representatives, including consenting to treaties as a precondition to their ratification and consenting or confirming appointments of Cabinet secretaries, federal judges, other federal executive officials, military officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, and other federal uniformed officers, as well as trial of federal officials impeached by the House. The Senate has longer terms, and a smaller size, and statewide constituencies.
The only African Americans in the US Senate were:
Hiram Rhodes Revels Republican Mississippi 1870–1876
Blanche Bruce Republican Mississippi 1875–1881
Edward William Brooke, III Republican Massachusetts 1967–1979
Carol Moseley Braun Democrat Illinois 1993–1999
Barack Obama Democrat Illinois 2005–2008
Roland Burris Democrat Illinois 2009–2010
_______________________________
Puerto Ricans (Americans)
How Puerto Rico Became White:
An Analysis of Racial Statistics in the 1910 and 1920 Censuses
An Analysis of Racial Statistics in the 1910 and 1920 Censuses
By Mara Loveman and Jeronimo Muniz
University of Wisconsin, Madison
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Paper prepared for presentation at the Center for Demography and Ecology,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
February 7, 2006
University of Wisconsin-Madison
February 7, 2006
The gradual “whitening” of Puerto Rico over the course of the twentieth century is often noted in scholarly, journalistic, and popular descriptions of the island’s population. In 1899, a year after Puerto Rico came under U.S. dominion, the census reported that 62 percent of the population was white; by the year 2000, according to official census results, the white proportion of the Puerto Rican population reached 80 percent. Observers of Puerto Rican society have speculated about the sources of this trend, which is typically cited as evidence of the hold of “whitening ideology” on the island.
The proportion of whites in the Puerto Rican population in 1920 is at least ten percent higher than would be expected due to natural rates of population growth. And it appears, somewhat surprisingly, that any institutional bias of the Puerto Rican Census Office worked to mitigate the magnitude of whitening in this period rather than contributing to it. We find that the statistical whitening of Puerto Rico between 1910 and 1920 is primarily due to changes in the social definition of whiteness. The children of interracial unions, in particular, were much more likely to be classified as white in 1920 than in 1910.
The idea that race is a social construction is by now conventional wisdom across the social sciences, and the field of social demography is no exception. Indeed, it has become increasingly common for social demographers who investigate racial disparities to explicitly note, in published work, the socially constructed nature of race.
According to official statistics, the Puerto Rican population became significantly whiter over the course of the twentieth century. A census taken by the U.S. Department of War in 1899, a year after Puerto Rico came under U.S. dominion, found that 61.8 percent of the Puerto Rican population was “white.” A century later, the 2000 U.S. census results showed that 80.5 percent of the island’s population was “white.” What accounts for this dramatic shift in the racial composition of Puerto Rico’s population as reported in official statistics?
For those familiar with Puerto Rican society and history, this question may seem disingenuous. After all, ever since the island came under U.S. control Puerto Rican elites have worked long and hard to create and maintain Puerto Rico’s image as the “white island of the Antilles.” At the turn of the twentieth century, the effort to portray the Puerto Rican population as white was partly a response to scientific racism. Confronted with scientific theories that linked prospects for development to a society’s “racial stock,” Puerto Rican elites – like their counterparts elsewhere in Latin America – sought to position their society on the road to racial progress.2 Perhaps even more ominous than the predictions of race science, for Puerto Rican elites, was the specter of what might become of their society were their colonizers to see Puerto Rico as predominantly non-white. The shadow of the Jim Crow south hung over the island of Puerto Rico in the early twentieth-century, a constant reminder of what it meant to be non-white under the rule of the United States.
The Official Picture: Racial Statistics and the Whitening of Puerto Rico, 1899-2000
The gradual whitening of the Puerto Rican population began well before the U.S. took control of the island; a modest version of the trend appears already in the nineteenthcentury
statistics produced by the Spanish imperial government.3 The first U.S.-directed enumeration of the island’s population, in 1899, registered a minor racial “set-back” from the Spanish count of the population a few years before. From then on out, however, Puerto Rico’s enumerated white population began a steady upward climb, reaching a peak, apparently, around 1950. From 1899 to 1950, the white share of the population increased from 60 to 80 percent, remaining at about that level for the remainder of the twentieth century. No racial data were collected in the censuses of Puerto Rico between 1960 and 1990, but the 2000 census results registered a less than 1 percent increase in the percentage of whites in the Puerto Rican population from 1950.
statistics produced by the Spanish imperial government.3 The first U.S.-directed enumeration of the island’s population, in 1899, registered a minor racial “set-back” from the Spanish count of the population a few years before. From then on out, however, Puerto Rico’s enumerated white population began a steady upward climb, reaching a peak, apparently, around 1950. From 1899 to 1950, the white share of the population increased from 60 to 80 percent, remaining at about that level for the remainder of the twentieth century. No racial data were collected in the censuses of Puerto Rico between 1960 and 1990, but the 2000 census results registered a less than 1 percent increase in the percentage of whites in the Puerto Rican population from 1950.
By the year 2000, according to official statistics, the population of Puerto Rico was much more racially homogenous, and much whiter, than the population of the mainland United States. Even with the revision to the race question in the 2000 census allowing respondents to choose more than one race – a revision that was applied to Puerto Rican census forms as well – the Puerto Rican population self-identified overwhelmingly as white-and-only-white.
U.S. Census 2010 shows Puerto Rico
White: 75.8%
Black: 24.2%
European Jewish Americans
Jewish Americans are composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants. Ashkenazi Jews are white Europeans descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Minorities from all Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented, including Sephardi Jews, who are descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. Mizrahi Jews who are descended from the Afroasiatic (Semitic) mixed race Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus. Hebrew is a West Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Arabic is also Semitic language.
The American tradition of religious freedom was not always a feature of early American colonial life. Quakers, Lutherans, Catholics and Jews were vigorously expelled from the Puritan colonies in New England. Until 1759, Jews and Protestants were barred from French North America. Throughout the Spanish colonies, the Inquisition actively persecuted (and even executed) neo-Christians, converted Jews who proclaimed Catholicism but were suspected of secretly continuing the practice of their Judaism.
Even the generally tolerant Dutch tried to exclude all but members of the Dutch Reformed Church from their American colonies. But the first Dutch Jews who settled in the capital, New Amsterdam, had much to do with altering the policy of intolerance.
In 1654, 23 refugee men, women and children fleeing from the former Dutch colony of Recife, Brazil, landed in New Amsterdam. These Brazilian Jews were the descendants of perhaps 5,000 Jews who had been living in Recife, most of them secretly, since the mid-1500s. The Dutch captured portions of Brazil from the Portuguese in 1624, and some neo-Christians openly returned to the practice of their Jewish faith. When Portugal recaptured Brazil in 1654, these Jews feared the introduction of the Inquisition and fled.
A large number of Jews immigrated to Cuba from 1910 until 1920, including Sephardic Jews. Many of these Jews came from Eastern Europe and used Cuba as a stopover en route to the United States, which had a strict quota system at that time. Approximately 94 percent of Cuba’s Jewish population fled after the Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Some settled in Israel, thanks to secret diplomatic efforts made by the Canadian government.
The first known European Jews moved to the panhandle of Florida, the city of Pensacola, in 1763. By 1928, roughly 40 percent of Florida’s Jewish population lived in Jacksonville. During World War II, hotels previously inaccessible to Jews were owned by the army or government and began to allow Jewish customers. By 1960, more than 175,000 Jews resided in Florida. Many elderly Jews began to retire to South Florida. Others immigrated from the Caribbean (from Cuba and Puerto Rico) and Latin America. South Florida grew to have the single largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel. Miami’s first Jewish mayor, Abe Aronowitz, was elected in 1953.
By 1960 elderly Jews began to retire to South Florida. Others immigrated from the Caribbean and Latin America.
Cuban population (mainly white Cubans) increased by 44 percent, growing from 1.2 million in 2000 to 1.8 million in 2010.
_______________________________
Chinese Americans
The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1820 according to U.S. government records. There were 25,000 immigrants by 1852, and 105,465 by 1880.
The Magnuson Act also known as the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943 was immigration legislation proposed by U.S. Representative (later Senator) Warren G. Magnuson of Washington and signed into law on December 17, 1943 in the United States. It allowed Chinese immigration for the first time since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and permitted some Chinese immigrants already residing in the country to become naturalized citizens. This marked the first time since the Naturalization Act of 1790 that any Asians were permitted to be naturalized.
_______________________________
Japanese Americans
The Meiji Restoration accelerated industrialization in Japan, which led to its rise of Japan as a military power by the year 1905. Japanese began migrating to the U.S. in significant numbers. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 was an informal agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan whereby the U.S. would not impose restriction on Japanese immigration, and Japan would not allow further emigration to the U.S. The agreement was never ratified by the U.S. Congress, which in 1924 ended it. In 1906, the San Francisco, California Board of Education had passed a regulation whereby children of Japanese descent would be required to attend racially segregated separate schools. In the Agreement, Japan agreed not to issue passports for Japanese citizens wishing to work in the United States, thus effectively eliminating new Japanese immigration to America. In exchange, the United States agreed to accept the presence of Japanese immigrants already residing in America, and to permit the immigration of wives, children and parents, and to avoid legal discrimination against Japanese children in California schools.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 196 abolished the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Immigration Act of 1924.
Significant Japanese immigration did not occur until the Immigration Act of 1965 ended 40 years of bans against immigration from Japan and other countries.
_______________________________
Mexican Americans
Population growth between 2000 and 2010 varied by Hispanic/Latino group. The Mexican origin population increased by 54 percent and had the largest numeric change (11.2 million), growing from 20.6 million in 2000 to 31.8 million in 2010.
Mexican is not a race just as Hispanic/Latino is not a race. The country of Mexico by race has the following populations: mestizo (Amerindian-European) 60%, Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian 30%, white (including Spanish, English, German and other Europeans) 9%, other (inlcuding black and Asian) 1%. Mexican is a nationality and Mexican American denotes ethnic place of residence with origin. The terms Chicano/Chicana (Xicano/Xicana) have been popularly used, at one time, as reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent.
Mexicans accounted for about three-quarters of the 15.2 million increase in the U.S. Hispanic/Latino population from 2000 to 2010
_________________________________________________________
Video: Chicano! PBS Documentary – “Fighting For Political Power” -Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
____________________________________________________________
America’s neighbor Cuba, Has it gone from majority black to white in 8 years?
Click photos to enlarge view
__________________________________________________________________
American Naturalizing by State of Residence 2000-2003
_____________________________
American flow by region and country of last residence – 1820 to 2010
Click images to enlarge view:
____________________________________________
Persons obtaining U.S. legal permanent resident status by region and state 1892-2010
Dilemma X 
May 20, 2012
Did you know?, Government/Politics, Remember yesteryear