Multiculturalist view

Multiculturalists typically support loose immigration controls and programs such as bilingual education and affirmative action, which offer certain privileges to minority and/or immigrant groups.

Multiculturalists claim that assimilation can hurt minority cultures by stripping away their distinctive features. They point to situations where institutions of the dominant culture initiate programs to assimilate or integrate minority cultures.

Although some multiculturalists admit that assimilation may result in a relatively homogeneous society, with a strong sense of nationalism, they warn however, that where minorities are strongly urged to assimilate, there may arise groups which fiercely oppose integration. With assimilation, immigrants lose their original cultural (and often linguistic) identity and so do their children. Immigrants who fled persecution or a country devastated by war were historically resilient to abandoning their heritage once they had settled in a new country.

Multiculturalists note that assimilation, in practice, has often been forced, and has caused immigrants to have severed ties with family abroad. In the United States, the use of languages other than English in a classroom setting has traditionally been discouraged. Decades of this policy may have contributed to the fact—lamented by multiculturalists—that more than 80 percent of Americans speak only English at home. While an estimated 60 million U.S. citizens are of German descent, forming the largest ethnic group of American citizens, barely one million of them reported speaking German in their homes in the 2000 Census.

According to 2003 United States Census Bureau estimates, a little over one third of the 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States live in three states: California at 413,382, Arizona at 294,137 and Oklahoma at 279,559.^[131]

Native American struggles amid poverty to maintain life on the reservation or in larger society have resulted in a variety of health issues, some related to nutrition and health practices. The community suffers a vulnerability to and disproportionately high rate of alcoholism.^[132] Numerous tribal governments have long prohibited the sale of alcohol on reservations, but generally it is readily for sale in nearby border towns. In addition to increasing numbers of American Indians entering the fields of community health and medicine, agencies working with Native American communities have sought partnerships, representatives of policy and program boards, and other ways to learn and respect their traditions and integrate the benefits of Western medicine within their own cultural practices.

"It has long been recognized that Native Americans are dying of diabetes, alcoholism, tuberculosis, suicide, and other health conditions at shocking rates. Beyond disturbingly high mortality rates, Native Americans also suffer a significantly lower health status and disproportionate rates of disease compared with all other Americans."

— The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, September 2004^[133]

In the early 21st century, Native American communities have exhibited continuing growth and revival, playing a larger role in the American economy, and in the lives of Native Americans. Communities have consistently formed governments that administer services such as firefighting, natural resource management, social programs, housing and law enforcement. Most Native American communities have established court systems to adjudicate matters related to local ordinances, and most also look to various forms of moral and social authority, such as forms of restorative justice, vested in the traditional culture of the tribal nation. To address the housing needs of Native Americans, Congress passed the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHASDA) in 1996. This legislation replaced public housing built by the BIA, and other 1937 Housing Act programs directed towards Indian Housing Authorities, with a block-grant program providing funds to be administered by the Tribes to develop their own housing.

Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2010, 45% of Africa-Americans owned their homes, compared to 67% of all Americans.^[42] The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 26.5% in 1998 to 24.7% in 2004, compared to 12.7% for all Americans.^[43] African Americans have a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012.^[44][45] In 2002, African American-owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses.^[46] As of 2011 African American-owned business account for approximately 2 million US businesses.^[47] Black-owned businesses experienced the largest growth in number of businesses among minorities from 2002 to 2011.^[47]

Oprah Winfrey, the wealthiest African American of the 20th century. A pair of economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama delivered one million votes for him in the close 2008 Democratic primaries.^[51]