Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
The U.S. is quite different from Anglo-Canada is that it hasn't been dominated by white Anglo (often Protestant) people for a very, very long time. Traditional mainstream American culture contains many more different influences from African-American to Hawaiian to Louisiana Cajun to yes, even Mexican.
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I wonder if the US could really be said to have a concept of "charter groups" or founding peoples the way Canada does with the English and French. Even though the land which later became the US had non-Anglo, non-native peoples since colonial times such as the Dutch of New Amsterdam, Germans, Cajuns, Spanish speakers in the Southwest, many of these groups assimilated to English eventually, so in that sense Anglos were still the "mainstream".
If a charter group implies a group present during the pioneering or early settlement stage of a country's history, a group with a culture that influences or assimilates other groups rather than their own culture being the one to assimilate away, then African Americans could be considered one too (after all, African American culture, such as music, is successful not just in the US but worldwide). However, with the history of slavery, ancestral languages African Americans spoke and many cultural elements from Africa would have long been forcibly assimilated away since colonial times. So, AA culture was created and became rooted in the New World, though some African aspects from the Old World still survive.
Hispanics such as Mexicans could also arguably be considered a "charter group" having been on what later became US soil for centuries too. Spanish in theory could have been to the US what French is to Canada but many English-speaking Americans still have a tendency to think of it as an "immigrant" language brought recently from another country rather than a language with long continuity to colonial times.
So, it's kind of hard to compare Anglo vs. French in Canada with Anglo vs. (various non-Anglo groups) in the US.
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