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Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America [...]

Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America [...]Today, there are more people of Irish ancestry in the United States than in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries. There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities in Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice. The sheer magnitude of American ethnic communities makes them autonomous cultures with lives of their own—neither copies of some “mainstream” model nor mere overseas branches of some other country’s culture. Chow mein, the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and the Afro hairdo all originated on American soil. Far from taking direction from overseas, American ethnic communities have supplied leadership to their countries of origin.The first president of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, was born in Brooklyn. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was born in Milwaukee. Liberia was for more than a century ruled by the descendants of freed African Americans […] From San Francisco to Boston is the same distance as from Madrid to Moscow. Yet here there is one language, one set of laws, and one economy in an area that, in Europe, is fragmented into a multitude of nations, languages, and competing military and political blocs. The size and cohesion of the American society are all the more remarkable because of the diverse origins of the people who make it up.