Interethnic relations (in the USA and Great Britain)

USA today is both a “salad bowl” and a “melting pot” of nations represented in the country. Even though nowadays the whole world tends to grow cosmopolitan, the USA remains the best example of tolerance and homelike atmosphere for aliens.

If to turn to the ethnic make-up of the country, the number of the nationalities is merely uncountable.

For centuries the most vivid example of discrimination was the state of the Native Americans and the blacks in their country. Undoubtedly the situation has changed today to a great extend if not to say reversed for the values of humanity have eventually prevailed over cruelty and discrimination.

There are also other “ingredients” in the “salad bowl” of the American nation. These are Hispanics who “form the second largest cultural minority in the United States, after the nation’s 30 million blacks”. This group is actually quite diverse as it embraces the whole number of people of different nationalities — Cubans, Mexicans, South Americans, Puerto-Ricans, Brazilians and other. Though many of them have long ago become an integral part of the American culture, got assimilated, in general this group is still among those who are facing hardships, discrimination, sometimes even disdain. And many of them somehow fail to enter the society on equal terms with others. Though for that there are reasons and explanations, the most common of which being “lower levels of education, difficulties with English”. It should be mentioned though that Cuban population, for example, is “largely middle-class. Many of these immigrants are educated people with backgrounds in professions or business. As a result, they have had more economic success in the USA than many other Hispanics”. Thus it proves to a certain extent the fact that it depends on the person himself if he manages to integrate in the society or not.

Apart from these large groups, the American nation is constituted of the whole range of other nationalities, less numerous but not less important. Basically a representative of almost every nation in the world can find his fellow countryman in America. Numerous Europeans, countless Arabs, multitude of Chinese and Japanese cohabitate and make up one nation, however different they all might be. In the streets of big American cities one can easily meet an Indian or Arabian woman in their national dresses and everybody is just glad to tolerate this, as one of the peculiar aspects of American life, as soon as it doesn’t come in contradiction with law, common sense and ideas of the nation. Otherwise it inevitably leads to misunderstanding on the both sides and as a result — to problems and conflicts which are hard to solve.

Let’s outline the main problems ethnic minorities face.

The first and the major one is the problem of racial discrimination. Although numerous laws in the US as well as in GB make it unlawful to discriminate on racial grounds in employment, training, education, the provision of goods, facilities and services and other activities, people from ethnic minority groups are more at risk of being the victim of a racially motivated attack than white people.

Besides they have lower levels of economic activity than white people.

Another big problem is breaking out between these minority groups. For example, in the US two largest minorities – Blacks and Hispanics – are often at odds over such issues as jobs, immigration, political empowerment and what leaders in both camps fear most is that white politicians will try to play off the two groups against each other.

To my mind it is a natural phenomenon that there are difficulties ethnic minorities face because of the variation in their traditions, the way they see the world and for many it is quite difficult to understand a person from another culture. But at the same time, they are also people and should be treated in the proper way. So people should be tolerant to each other. Because they have far more to gain from pooling their strengths than from bickering with each other.

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