EEUU Culture

Culture

The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. There is no "American" ethnicity; aside from the now small Native American and Native Hawaiian populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries. The culture held in common by most Americans is referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English and Dutch settlers. German, Irish, and Scottish cultures have also been very influential. Certain cultural attributes of Mandé and Wolof slaves from West Africa were adopted by the American mainstream; based more on the traditions of Central African Bantu slaves, a distinct African American culture developed that would also deeply affect the mainstream. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanic people of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced many new cultural elements. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has had broad impact. The resulting cultural mix may be described as a homogeneous melting pot, or as a pluralistic salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.
While the mainstream culture holds that the U.S. is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. The American middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary social trends such as modern feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree. While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute. Though the American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants, some analysts find that the U.S. has less social mobility than Western Europe and Canada.
Women now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees. In 2005, 28% of households were married childless couples, the most common arrangement. The extension of marital rights to homosexuals is contentious—several states permit civil unions in lieu of marriage. Between 2003 and 2008, the supreme courts of Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut ruled those states' bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The California ruling was superseded by a state constitutional amendment, approved by voters in November 2008 that defines marriage as between a man and woman. Between 2004 and 2008, voters in 13 other states approved similar constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.