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PART ONE

INTRODUCTION TO THE GEOGRAPHY OF

THE UNITED STATES

I. REGIONS AND DIVISIONS OF THE U.S. [DOC 1, DOC 2, DOC 3]

1) NORTHEAST.

The Northeastern United States, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, covers nine states and is

divided into two divisions: [DOC 2]

(1) New England which consists of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode

Island and Connecticut.

(2) The Middle States: New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

All were among the original thirteen colonies settled in the seventeenth century and joined the

U.S.A. upon independence in 1776 [DOC 10]. The first Europeans to settle New England landed in

present-day Massachusetts. These settlers were primarily non-conformists (later called Pilgrims) and

Puritans from England seeking religious freedom. Massachusetts was also one of the key colonies in

the events that led up to the break away from the British Empire.

Its largest city, New York City, is also the largest city and metropolitan area in the United States.

The Northeast is also the richest region of the United States. While the Northeastern states rank high

in income, they are predominantly small in overall population and area, with only New York, New

Jersey, and Pennsylvania ranking in the top ten states in population and no state ranking in the top

ten in size.

GEOGRAPHY – The Northeast is the smallest Census Bureau-defined region in the country. The

landscape varies from the rocky coast of New England to the fertile farmland of the Ohio

River Valley. Between Cape Cod in Massachusetts and Cape May in New Jersey are a series of large

islands, including Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten

Island. [DOC 3]

The mouths of four major rivers pierce the coastline to empty into the Atlantic: the Delaware River,

forming the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey; The Hudson River empties into New

York Harbor at the New York-New Jersey border The Connecticut River runs along the border of

New Hampshire and Vermont between the Green Mountains and White Mountains; The Kennebec

River and the Susquehanna River. To the north and west of the Susquehanna are the Finger Lakes of

New York, so called because they resemble human fingers, Lake Ontario in New York and Lake

Erie in both Pennsylvania and New York. On an isthmus between the two Great Lakes on the New

York-Ontario border, near Buffalo, New York, is one of the most famous waterfalls in the world,

Niagara Falls. [DOC 3]

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire is Mount Washington, the tallest mountain in the

Northeast and the windiest location in the United States.

To the south, the Ohio River flows from the Allegheny Plateau through Pittsburgh and on into the

Midwest, where it merges with the Mississippi River. The Ohio was one of the main routes of travel

west in early American history.

NEW ENGLAND – The cluster of top-ranking universities and colleges in New England—including

four of the eight schools of the Ivy League, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT), Tufts University, and numerous other elite colleges and universities—is

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unequaled by any other region. America's first college, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge,

Massachusetts, in 1636 as a church school. Many of the graduates from these schools end up settling

in the region, providing the area with a well-educated populace.

MID-ATLANTIC – This area provided the young United States with heavy industry and served as

the "melting pot" of new immigrants from Europe. Cities grew along major shipping routes and

waterways, including NYC on and Philadelphia. With two of America's largest cities, New York and

Philadelphia, the region is a major center of business, media, education, the arts, and cuisine. Though

initially settled by Europeans, the region now boasts large Asian and Hispanic populations.

African immigrants have many strongholds in urban areas.

Today, the coastal Northeast is said to resemble a megalopolis, or megacity, an interdependent

network of cities and suburbs that blend into each other. Economically, the region provides many of

the financial and government services the rest of the country and much of the world depends on,

from New York's Wall Street to Boston's academia. Suburbs of Boston as far north as New

Hampshire and even Maine, as well as Washington, D.C.'s suburbs in Virginia are arguably all part

of this megacity. Despite the heavy urban/suburban characteristics of the region, many rural

characteristics survive. Much of Upstate New York has decidedly rural characteristics. Southern

New Jersey as well as the northwestern part of the state are known as retreats from the urban areas of

the Northeast. New York is a heavily agricultural state, and even New York City's boroughs of

Queens and Staten Island had some sort of farm production well into the late twentieth century.

Small towns and cities dot western Massachusetts' Berkshire region, as well as Vermont,

Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. While formerly important rural industries like farming and

mining have decreased in importance in recent decades, they persist.

Until World War II, the Northeast's economy was largely driven by industry. In the second half of

the twentieth century, most of New England's traditional industries have relocated to states or foreign

countries where goods can be made more cheaply. In more than a few factory towns, skilled workers

have been left without jobs. The gap has been partly filled by the microelectronics, computer, and

biotechnology industries, fed by talent from the region's prestigious educational institutions.

2) MIDWEST.

The Midwestern United States (or Midwest) refers to the north-central states of the U.S.A.:

Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska, North and South

Dakota, and Wisconsin. Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit and

Indianapolis. Other important cities in the region include: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Des

Moines, Kansas City, Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, St. Louis, and Wichita. [DOC 2]

GEOGRAPHY – These states are generally perceived as being relatively flat. That is true of several

areas, but there is a measure of geographical variation. Prairies cover most of the states west of

the Mississippi River with the exception of eastern Minnesota, the Ozark Mountains of southern

Missouri, and the southern tip of Illinois. Two waterways have been important to the Midwest's

development. The first and foremost was the Ohio River which flowed into the Mississippi River.

The second waterway is the network of routes within the Great Lakes.

CULTURE / POPULATION – European settlement of the area began in the seventeenth century

following French exploration of the region. The French established a network of fur trading posts

and Jesuit missions along the Mississippi River system and the upper Great Lakes. French control

over the area ended in 1763, with the conclusion of the French and Indian War. British colonists

began to expand into the Ohio country during the 1750s.

The Midwest was predominantly rural at the time of the Civil War, dotted with small farms across

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, but industrialization, immigration, and urbanization fed the Industrial

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Revolution, and the heart of industrial progress became the Great Lakes states of the Midwest.

German, Scandinavian, Slavic, and African-American immigration into the Midwest continued to

bolster the population there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In the twentieth century, African-American migration from the Southern United States into the

Midwestern states changed Chicago, St. Louis, Gary, Detroit, and many other cities dramatically, as

factories and schools enticed families by the thousands to new opportunities.

3) SOUTH.

The South constitutes a large distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United

States. Because of the region's unique cultural and historic heritage, including early European

colonial settlements, the doctrine of states' rights, the institution of slavery, and the legacy of

the Confederacy during the American Civil War, the South has developed its own customs,

literature, musical styles, and varied cuisines. As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, the southern

region includes 16 states and is split into three smaller units: [DOC 2]

(1) The South Atlantic States: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West

Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.

(2) The East South Central States: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

(3) The West South Central States: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.

HISTORY – The popular definition of the "South" is more informal and is generally associated with

those states that seceded during the Civil War to form the Confederate States of America. Those

states share commonalities of history and culture.

After 1700, large groups of African slaves were brought in to work on the plantations that dominated

export agriculture, growing tobacco, rice, and indigo. Cotton became dominant after 1800. The

explosion of cotton cultivation made slavery an integral part of the South's early nineteenth century

economy.

One of the major political issues that strengthened the identities of North and South as distinct

regions with certain strongly opposed interests was slavery, primarily the question of whether slavery

would be permitted in the states newly admitted into the Union. The issue was initially avoided by

political compromises designed to balance the number of "free" and "slave" states. The issue

resurfaced in more virulent form, however, around the time of the Mexican War, which raised the

stakes by adding new territories primarily on the southern side of the imaginary geographic divide. It

culminated in secession of the Southern states and the American Civil War. (1861-1865)

The Union (so-called because they fought for the United States of America) eventually defeated the

Confederate States of America. The South suffered much more than the North, primarily because the

war was fought almost entirely in the South. After the Civil War, the South was largely devastated in

terms of its population, infrastructure, and economy. The republic also found itself under

Reconstruction, with military troops in direct political control of the South. White southerners who

had actively supported the Confederacy lost many of the basic rights of citizenship (such as voting).

With passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (outlawing

slavery), the Fourteenth Amendment (granting full U.S. citizenship to African-Americans), and the

Fifteenth Amendment (extending the right to vote to African-American males), blacks began to

enjoy more rights than they ever had in the South.

By the 1890s, though, a political backlash against these rights had developed in the South.

Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan—a clandestine organization sworn to perpetuate white

supremacy—used lynchings and other forms of violence and intimidation to keep African Americans

from exercising their political rights, while Jim Crow laws were created to legally do the same thing.

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It would not be until the late 1960s that these phenomena would be undermined by the American

Civil Rights Movement.

Nearly all southerners, black and white, suffered as a result of the Civil War. With the region

devastated by its loss and the destruction of its civil infrastructure, much of the South was generally

unable to recover economically until after World War II. During World War II, new industries and

military bases sprang up across the region, providing badly need capital and infrastructure. Farming

shifted from cotton and tobacco to include soybeans, corn, and other foods. This growth accelerated

in the 1980s and 1990s. Large urban areas rose in Texas, Georgia and Florida. Rapid expansion in

industries such as automobiles, telecommunications, textiles, technology, banking and aviation gave

some states an industrial strength that rivaled large states elsewhere. By the 2000 census, the South

(along with the West) was leading the nation in population growth.

GEOGRAPHY AND CULTURE – The South is a vast, diverse region, having numerous climatic

zones, including temperate, sub-tropical, tropical, and arid. Many crops grow easily in its soils and

can be grown without frost for at least six months of the year. Another common environment is the

bayous and swampland of the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana.

Southern culture has been and remains generally more socially conservative than the rest of the

country. Because of the central role of agriculture in the economy, society remained stratified

according to land ownership. Rural communities often developed strong attachment to their churches

as the primary community institution.

Southerners are often viewed as more relaxed and the southern lifestyle as slower paced. Southerners

are also stereotyped as being resistant to change. Largest cities in the South include Houston TX, San

Antonio, TX, Dallas, TX, Jacksonville, FL, and Memphis, TN.

4) WEST.

The "West" played an important part in American history and is embedded in America's folklore.

In its most expansive definition, the Western United States is the largest region, covering more than

half the nation's land area [DOC 2]. It is also the most geographically diverse, incorporating regions

such as the Pacific Coast, the temperate rainforests of the Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, the Great

Plains, most of the tall-grass prairie eastward to Illinois, the western Ozark plateau, the western

portions of the southern forests, the Gulf Coast, and all of the desert areas located in the United

States.

As defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Western region includes thirteen states and is

split into two smaller units:

(1) The Mountain States: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona,

and Nevada

(2) The Pacific States: Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii

The West is still one of the most sparsely settled areas in the United States Only Texas, Washington,

and California exceed the national average.

As the largest region in the United States there is variation to such an extent that the West is often

broken down into regions.

MOUNTAINS – [DOC 3] Along the Pacific coast lie the Coast Ranges, which, while not

approaching the scale of the Rockies, are formidable. Beyond the valleys lie the Sierra Nevada in the

south and the Cascade Range in the north. These mountains are some of the highest in the United

States. Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 meters) the tallest peak in the contiguous 48 states, is in

the Sierra Nevada. The tallest in the U.S. is Mount McKinly in Alaska. The Cascades are

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also volcanic. Mount Rainier, a volcano in Washington, is 14,410 feet (4,392 m). Mount Saint

Helens, a volcano in the Cascades, erupted explosively in 1980.

To the East lie vast stretches of arid land. These dry areas encompass much of Nevada, Utah, and

Arizona. The Mojave Desert and Sonoran Desert, along with other deserts, are found here. Beyond

the deserts lie the Rocky Mountains. In the north, they run immediately east of the Cascade Range,

so that the desert region does not reach all the way to the Canadian border. The Rockies are hundreds

of miles wide and run uninterrupted from New Mexico to Alaska. The tallest peaks of the Rockies,

some of which are over 14,000 feet (c. 4,250 meters), are found in central Colorado.

RIVERS – The West has several long rivers that empty into the Pacific Ocean. The Mississippi

River forms the easternmost boundary for the West today. The Missouri River, a tributary of the

Mississippi, flows from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains eastward across the Great Plains, a

vast grassy plateau, before sloping gradually down to the forests and then the Mississippi.

The Colorado River snakes through the Mountain states, forming the Grand Canyon. The Colorado is

a major source of water in the Southwest and many dams, such as the Hoover Dam, form reservoirs

along it. The Columbia River, the largest river in volume flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North

America, and its tributary, the Snake River, water the Pacific Northwest. The Platte runs through

Nebraska and is a mile (2 km) wide but only a half-inch (1 cm) deep. The Rio Grande River forms

the border between Texas and Mexico before turning north and splitting New Mexico in half.

CULTURE / POPULATION – The entire Western region has been strongly influenced by Asian,

Native and Latino culture; it contains the largest number of minorities in the United States and

encompasses the only four American states where all racial groups including Caucasians are a

minority (California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas).

The largest city in the region is Los Angeles, located on the West Coast. Other West Coast cities

include San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Prominent cities in the Mountain

States include Denver, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake

City.

Facing both the Pacific Ocean and the Mexican border, the West has been shaped by a variety of

ethnic groups. Hawaii is the only state in the union in which Asian Americans outnumber European

Americans. Asians from many countries have settled in California and other coastal states in several

waves of immigration since the 1800s, contributing to the Gold Rush, the building of the

transcontinental railroad, agriculture, and more recently, high technology.

The southwestern Border States, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, all have large

Mexican-American populations, and the many Spanish place names attest to their history as former

Mexican territories.

The West also contains much of the Native American population, particularly in the large

reservations in the mountain and desert states.

II. THE U.S. POPULATION.

Americans have been uplifted and burdened by myths since the continent’s settlement. “The City

on the Hill” is what early English settlers imagined they were creating on these shores; they almost

starved to death during those harsh early winters. “The Golden Mountain” is what Chinese arrivals

imagined they were sailing to; thousands instead worked as indentured laborers laying rails through

rugged mountain passes. Still more immigrants came, seeking “The Land of Opportunity,” its

“streets paved with gold,” “The American Dream”; once here, many of them toiled in sweatshops

and steel mills, or ploughed hardscrabble farms. More recently, people arriving from Somalia, India,

Senegal, Guatemala, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have been attracted to promises of “freedom,”

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though they have found, in post-9/11 America, that it helps to tape an American flag on their home,

shop or taxi cab window to ward off fellow-Americans’ hostility.

Of course, many arrived in the U.S. harboring no illusions. Early African newcomers to these shores

struggled to survive The Middle Passage and were “welcomed” with chains and the auction block.

And for the First Peoples of America, the arrival of waves of immigrants brought disease,

displacement and death.

At the same time, the United States has been – and remains – a land of social mobility, economic

energy, and individual freedom to an extent found in few other countries. If there is a single

conclusion about the U.S., it is that it presents a perplexing mix of contradictions and contrasts. This

course explores the push and pull between the myths and the realities as they are being lived by

Americans in the 21st century.

In the United States, as elsewhere, it matters where you live. Healthcare is not the same in

Massachusetts and Texas. The prevalence of guns in everyday life may seem a nationwide

phenomenon to an outside observer, but in fact, Americans’ relationship to guns differ markedly if

they live in Arizona rather than New York.

1) WHO ARE THE AMERICANS?

According to the numbers, the “typical American” is a white woman born in the United States

and of German ancestry. She is in her late thirties, living in a household with one or more family

members (most likely she’s married). Her household has at least one car, quite likely two. She thinks

of herself as middle class. She lives in an urban area, quite possibly in the Southern region (one that

stretches roughly from Maryland to Texas). She doesn’t own a passport, she most likely voted in the

last presidential election, and holds a waged job but earns less than her male counterparts. She lives

in a neighborhood that is racially segregated, where almost all her neighbors are white. This portrait

of “averageness,” derived from the US Census, gives us a snapshot of who the Americans are, or

who they think they are. Now let’s build outwards to capture the diversity that are the real United

States.

POPULATION DISTRIBUTION – More than 330 million people live in the United States, but that

doesn’t mean the population is distributed evenly. Far from it. Using census data, we can see that just

nine states – California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia and

Florida – account for half of the entire U.S. population. States like California and New York have

high average densities of 251 and 420 people per square mile because of the millions of people

crammed into major cities. That’s even taking into account both states’ many suburbs, where people

are more spread out. States without heavily-populated cities have very different numbers. Alaska, the

largest state by area, ranks 50th in population density, with only 1.3 people per square mile.

URBAN POPULATION – America has grown more urban. 80.7% of the U.S. population lived in

urban areas as of the 2010 Census. That brings the country’s total urban population to 249,253,271, a

number attained via a growth rate of 12.1% between 2000 and 2010, outpacing the nation as a whole,

which grew at 9.7%. Overall, these numbers are not surprising. The New York-Newark metro area is

still the nation’s most populous, with 17,351,295 residents. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim is

still the second, with 12,150,996; and the Chicago area is still the third, with 8,608,208.

There are officially two types of urban areas: (1) “urbanized areas” of 50,000 people or more, and (2)

“urban clusters” of between 2,500 and 50,000 people. For the 2010 count, the Census Bureau has

defined 486 urbanized areas, accounting for 71.2% of the U.S. population; and 3,087 urban clusters

accounting for 9.5%. Though these smaller urban clusters account for a relatively small portion of

the U.S. population, they make up the vast majority of the roughly 3,500 “urban” areas. So,

according to the Census Bureau, a place is “urban” if it is a big, modest or even very small collection

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of people living near each other. That includes Houston, Texas, with its 4.9 million people, and

Bellevue, Iowa; with its 5,543 inhabitants.

Of the 3,573 urban areas in the U.S. (both urbanized areas and urban clusters), 2,706 ate small towns

of 20,000 residents or less, that’s 75.7%. So approximately 80% of urban areas are actually small

towns. By contrast, the top 48 urbanized areas account for more than half of the entire urban

population.

POPULATION CHANGES – The U.S. population is getting older and more racially diverse

according to the estimates from the Census Bureau. White people remain the majority in the U.S.,

but new data from the Census Bureau shows that they were the only group that didn’t grow from

2016 to 2017. Whites declined by .02% to a total of around 198 million people. Among other racial

groups, Asians were found to be growing at the fastest pace, 3.1% and numbered 22.2 million in

2017. The second fastest growing group is people who identify as two or more races. That group rose

by 2.9% in 2017. The U.S. population is also getting older. Census Bureau estimates show that since

2010, the median age in the U.S. jumped from just over 37 to 38. In 2017, Florida had the highest

percentage of seniors (age 65 or older), with 20.1%. Maine and West Virginia followed, each with

more that 19% seniors. The smallest number of seniors were in Utah (10.8%), which also had the

lowest median age (30.9 years). The next smallest percentages of seniors were in Alaska (11.2%) and

the District of Columbia (12.1%). The Applied Population Lab (University of Wisconsin) identified

two trends that are accelerating the incidence of white natural decrease. The first is a big drop in U.S.

fertility that hit the country as it went through the Great Recession. The second trend is an increasing

mortality rate among whites from 30 to 59 years old. Deaths are found to be from causes such as

suicide, accidental drug overdose and alcohol.

The United States is more diverse than ever, but still segregated. Since 1990, more than 90% of U.S.

metropolitan areas have seen a decline in racial stratification, signaling a trend toward a more

integrated country. Yet, cities like Detroit and Chicago still have large areas dominated by a single

racial group. Over the past 30 years suburbs have increasingly become the most racial and ethnically

diverse areas in the country. For example, the D.C. metro area saw the Hispanic American

population increase by almost 300% from 1990 to 2016. The Asian American population increased

by 200% within the same period. Rental and purchase prices in the suburbs tend to be lower than in

cities, offering more opportunities for a diverse population, both in race and income level to move in.

Houston is another city that has seen large growth in its Asian and Hispanic American populations

from 1990 to 2016. Persistent and deep segregation is somewhat unique to African Americans for

several reasons: le legacy of segregated neighborhoods created during the era of Reconstruction and

Jim Crow; enduring racial preferences among whites who choose to live near other white people; and

significant Latino and Asian immigration after fair housing laws were in place. This deep

segregation is noticeable in cities with large African American populations. Chicago for example,

shows how persistent segregation can be, even for a city with a diverse population. The South and

West sides of Chicago are starkly African America,, while other areas remain starkly Hispanic or

white. The Chicago metropolitan area has remained one of the mist segregated regions in the U.S.

since 1990. Detroit, another largely African American city, has remained the most segregated

metropolitan area since 1990.

Of the 28.7 million black Americans living in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, nearly one-

quarter reside in segregated neighborhoods — where at least 80% of residents are black. People

living in urban areas are even more likely to be isolated, with 44.4% living in homogeneous

neighborhoods, where the vast majority of residents have the same skin color or ethnicity. Detroit is

the most segregated metro area in the United States. Among the city’s 962,000 black residents,

57.7% live in predominately black neighborhoods. The United States has a long and troubling history

of race-based housing segregation. Until the fair housing act was passed in 1968, municipalities and

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private realtors were able to legally force African Americans to live in separate neighborhoods. The

long-term consequences of these policies, coupled with the continuing trend of white flight, has

entrenched segregation and the resulting inequalities in U.S. metropolitan areas.

One of the most serious and observable long-term consequences of residential segregation can be

seen in the public school system. School funding is largely determined by property tax revenues. In

metropolitan areas characterized by wealthy white neighborhoods and low-income black

neighborhoods, therefore, schools in white neighborhoods are much better funded. Consequently,

white children are much more likely to succeed than black children in a nearby neighborhood, even

as they are attending classes often just a mile or two away.

The U.S. 5 most segregated metro areas:1

Metro area Black

population

Black ppl. in

black

neighborhoods

Black

poverty

rate

White

poverty

rate

Cleveland,

OH

19.6% 44.9% 33% 10.1%

Memphis,

TN

45.8% 47.2% 28.9% 9.7%

Jackson,

MS

48.4% 47.7% 29.8% 9.9%

Chicago, IL 16.8% 50.3% 29.4% 9.3%

Detroit, MI 22.4% 57.7% 33.3% 11.4%

POVERTY IN THE U.S.A. – In 2016, 40.6 million people lived in poverty in the U.S.A. That means

the poverty rate for 2016 was 12.7%. The U.S. citizens living in poverty are all those who make less

that the Federal Government’s official poverty threshold (or poverty line), which for a family of four

is about $24,000: people working at minimum wage, even holding down several jobs; seniors living

on fixed incomes; wage earners suddenly out of work; millions of families everywhere from cities to

rural communities. The poverty line for an individual was $12,228; for two people, the weighted

average threshold was $15,569. What’s worse, 6.7% of the population (or 21.3 million people) live

in deep poverty, with incomes below 50% of their poverty threshold. And 29.8% of the population

(or 95 million) live close to poverty, with incomes less than two times that of their poverty

thresholds.

Poverty does not strike all demographics equally. For example, in 2016, 13.8% of men, and 16.3% of

women lived in poverty. Along the same lines, the poverty rate for married couples in 2016 was only

5.1% - but the poverty rate for single-parent families with no wife present was 13.1%, and for single-

parent families with no husband present was 26.6%. In 2016, 21.2% of all children (15.3 million

kids) lived in poverty – that’s almost 1 in every 5 children. In 2014, the National Center on Family

Homelessness analyzed state-level date and found that nationwide, 2.5 million children experience

homelessness in a year. The official census data gives seniors a 2016 poverty rate of only 9%.

According to 2016 Census Date, the highest poverty rate by race us found among Native Americans

(27.6%), with Blacks (26.2%) having the second highest poverty rate, and Hispanics (of any race)

having the third highest poverty rate (23.4%). Whites has a poverty rate of 12.4%, while Asians had

a poverty rate at 12.3%.

2) INDIAN COUNTRY.

Native Americans and Alaska Natives – counting everyone of sole and mixed ancestry –

together comprise only 1.3% of the U.S. population today. However, their cultural, environmental

1 Source : https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/americas-most-segregated-cities_us_57d2c19ae4b0f831f7071b3d?guccounter=1

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and political significance looms large. Their history, their activism, and their impoverished material

conditions remind other Americans that this country was founded not only on high ideals, but on

theft [DOC 4]. Most Europeans don’t think they stole indigenous peoples’ lands: they imagine that

those lands were “empty,” were fairly “bought,” or that the indigenous peoples were “uncivilized”

and didn’t deserve or make good use of these rich natural resources.

Yet, accounts of the slaughter and displacement of Indigenous peoples make it harder to hold on to

those old narratives. And, since the 1960s, the political activism of some Native Americans, Alaska

Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders has upset myths of the disappearing Indian, the

happy first thanksgiving, and images of cartoon Indians favored as sports teams’ logo. At the same

time, Native Americans’ spiritual beliefs, artistic creativity, and stewardship of the land offer other

Americans an appealing alternative set of values.

Between 1620 and 1900, Native American tribes lost virtually all of their land to Europeans. Today,

Indian reservations are scattered across the U.S., and the federal government’s Bureau of Indian

Affairs determines who qualifies as an American Indian and what tribes are officially recognized

(there are 564). Treaties between individual tribes and the federal government recognize tribes as

sovereign nations, though that sovereignty is partial, and constantly vulnerable to dilution.

World War II marked a turning point, with 25,000 American Indians serving in the US military, and

many more leaving rural areas for jobs in defense industries. Political organizing has been spurred by

a new sense of shared American Indian and Indigenous identity. Activists have challenged claims on

Native lands made by the US military, state governments, mining companies and private developers.

3) AMERICAN EMPIRE.

In the late 19th century, when colonial empires were at their height, the United States was not

considered one of the great imperial powers, but at the beginning of the 21st century, more than 4

million people are colonized subjects of an American empire that stretches from the Caribbean to the

Pacific. In addition to five territories with sizable populations, the US claims another 12 uninhabited

small atolls or islands, and several small countries are in an ambiguous legal and sovereign

relationship to it. Many are places most Americans know little about. Several have proved of

significant value as military bases and, in the 1950s and 1960s, as nuclear test sites. Some are now

designated National Wildlife Refuges (NWR).

The US gained some of its territories in the treaty settlements of 1898 after the Spanish-American

War, and some were placed in its trust by the UN in 1947. Others were “acquired” following the

Guano Act of 1856. Guano deposits (bird droppings) are an effective fertilizer, and huge amounts,

built up over millennia on uninhabited islands, were “mined” and traded around the world. The Act

stated that if a US citizen discovered deposits of guano on an island, rock, or key not already within

the lawful jurisdiction of any other government and took “peaceable possession thereof,” the land

subsequently “appertained” to the United States.

Until 1900 all U.S. territories were located on the North Americans continent, just like the States of

the Union. As the American people moved west new territories populated mostly by U.S. citizens

were formed. The U.S. territories that became states, like Ohio and Louisiana, were incorporated into

the U.S. under the Constitution, with temporary territorial government until admitted by Congress as

states.

Then in 1900 the U.S. acquired new territories from Spain that were islands, including Puerto Rico.

These new islands were called “insular” territories because islands are geographically insulated from

other larger land masses by water. They are also called non-contiguous territories. Today, the U.S.

has five non-contiguous / insular territories: American Samoa, Guam and The Northern Mariana

Islands in the Pacific Ocean; Puerto Rico and The U.S. Virgin Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. [DOC

6]

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Unlike continental territories, the new insular territories were not inhabited by U.S. citizens. So the

rights of the people in these islands were defined by federal territorial law passed by Congress. When

application of territorial law was challenged in the U.S. courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1901

that insular territories would not be incorporated into the U.S. until the Congress conferred U.S.

citizenship. That meant the U.S. Constitution would not apply to define the rights of the people in

such unincorporated territories, unless Congress conferred citizenship at a later time. [DOC 5, DOC

7]

Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901), was a case in which the US Supreme Court decided

whether US territories were subject to the provisions and protections of the US Constitution. This

issue is sometimes stated as whether the Constitution follows the flag. The case concerned a

merchant, Samuel Downes, whose company had imported oranges into the port of New York from

the newly acquired territory of Puerto Rico and had been forced to pay import duties on them. He

sued George R. Bidwell, United States customs inspector for the port of New York, claiming that

because Puerto Rico was U.S. territory, he shouldn’t have to pay import duties.The resulting decision

narrowly held that the Constitution did not necessarily apply to territories. Instead, the US

Congress had jurisdiction to create law within territories in certain circumstances, particularly in

those dealing with revenue, which would not be allowed by the Constitution for proper states within

the Union. It has become known as one of the "Insular Cases".

I. IMMIGRATION.

1) IMMIGRATION PAST AND PRESENT.

The United States is a nation of diverse peoples, formed not through a common genealogy.

Instead, America’s diverse peoples have come from every corner of the globe. They have been

brought together by a number of historical processes: conquest, colonialism, a slave trade, territorial

acquisition, and voluntary international migrations. These processes involve profound differences of

volition and hardly amount to a common experience. Of these processes, none looms larger in the

American imagination than voluntary immigration, upon which one especially resonant myth of

American origins has been based. That myth established that Americans did not become a nation by

accident. Instead, they exercised a choice, even if one frequently conceived within crushing poverty,

based on their appraisal of the superior form of government and of the American creed.

Since its founding in 1789, the United States has experienced almost constant immigration, but

especially noteworthy have been three massive waves of voluntary international migration that

reconfigured the population: (1) In the 1840s and 1850s, (2) from the late 1890s to World War One,

and (3) in recent decades, dating from changes in American immigration law in 1965. Throughout its

history, immigrants have been understood primarily as an economic asset. Not only did immigrant

farmers help populate the interior, but the economy has also had a voracious appetite for immigrant

wage labor. Immigrant labor has many advantages as a reserve source of workers: it may fill the need

for specialized workers for proscribed periods of time; it may be repatriated or repatriate itself when

times are bad; the costs of training and education have been assumed in the immigrant’s homeland;

and there are not necessarily any social welfare obligations, such as compensation for injury, on the

part of the employer or the state. In addition, hiring friends and family of low-wage immigrant labor,

as opposed to expensive formal recruiting of workers, has enabled employers easily to reproduce a

cheap, expendable workforce.

Approximately 35 million of 50 million Europeans who emigrated from their homelands in search of

opportunity and material security between 1820 and 1920 came to the United States. Added to that

immense number during the same century must be at least another million, even harder to count

accurately, from Asia and Mexico, Canada and elsewhere in the Western hemisphere. The first two

waves of immigration came amid the transition of the United States from a rural, agrarian society to

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an urban, industrial one. Immigrants supplied the reserves of cheap labor that enabled this transition

to take place. From that century images of the Irish ditch digger, Polish steelworker, Slovak coal

miner, Jewish garment worker, and Italian construction worker are enshrined in American memory.

Less well represented in the imagination, but significant, especially in the American West, are the

Mexican agricultural worker, the Japanese market farmer and the Chinese railroad construction

laborer, though the numbers of people never equaled the numbers of Europeans in the historic past.

Changes in the immigration laws in 1965 opened the United States on an equal, regulated basis to the

non-European world, bringing a third massive wave of international migration, for the first time in

American history overwhelmingly from outside Europe. Now the immigrants come from Asia, Latin

America, and elsewhere in the developing world. Today’s immigrants are in search of security and

opportunity, as were immigrants of the past. For at least three reasons, however, the trajectories of

their histories may be different.

(1) First, a significant number of today's immigrants have entered the country illegally, and thus,

their position is insecure.

(2) Second, today’s immigrants are largely non-white. Race has formed a principal line of

fragmentation within American society, and, as such, it threads its way insistently throughout

the story of immigration. Race separated the experiences of voluntary immigrants in the

distant past, for such minority immigrant peoples as the Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese

were perceived as inferior, menacing and inassimilable, and they suffered significant

political, economic and social discrimination.

(3) Third, the opportunity structure of American society has greatly changed in recent decades,

with possible negative consequences. Contemporary immigrants come to an increasingly de-

industrialized country, where there are fewer well-paying, secure factory jobs in mass

production industries of the sort that once helped propel past immigrants into the middle

class. Lower-paid, less stable service, health care, light manufacturing, and information-

processing jobs make up a relatively large sector of the workforce. In contrast to the earlier

century of immigration when the United States was a rising economic giant, the US economy

is being severely challenged to maintain its competitive advantage by the European Union

and such emerging industrial giants as China, India and Brazil. American workers are often

competing with lower-wage workers, and American businesses and industries with more

efficient as well as lower-cost operations abroad. The symbolic representations of today’s

immigrants reflect these changes. They consist of the Chinese family selling ethnic fast food

at the local shopping mall, the veiled Somali woman who cleans guestrooms at the Holiday

Inn, the Jamaican nurse, the Mexican landscape gardener, and the South Asian computer

repairman.

Although the actual socioeconomic profile of today’s immigrants is far more complicated, these

immigrants nonetheless appear to fit more tentatively into American society than past immigrants.

2) A SOURCE OF DEBATE AND CONFLICT. [DOC 9]

Mass immigration has been a source of division among Americans, but the intensity of that division

waxes and wanes over time. Because so many Americans have their origins somewhere else, they

might applaud the melting pot society that immigration assisted in creating. Yet, amid a vast tide of

newcomers, they have been deeply divided on whether mass immigration is a benign development,

or a necessary one, or an evil to be eradicated. Indeed, the effects of immigration upon employment

and wage scales; political alignments and the workings of government; schools and other public

institutions; the language spoken in the streets, in the shops, and in government offices; public orality

and crime; resource allocation and depletion; and population growth itself, all constitute ongoing

points of public argument, with nativists and pluralists repeatedly squaring off against each other.

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Both sides display little understanding that these issues have been debated many times before in

much the same terms.

Immigration and immigrants have continually been criticized by those nativists abhorring the

culturally and socially disorganizing presence of so many foreigners. Workers, native and ethnic

alike, and often their labor unions, lament the depressing effect on wages and living standards that

they argue results from the entrance into the country of so many low-wage foreign workers.

Immigration and immigrants have continually been defended by those pluralists valuing diversity for

its own sake, and as the benign essence of Americanism, or honoring the memories of their

immigrant ancestors, or seeking to find a place in the United States for their own foreign kinfolk.

They have been allied with employers, who have little concern for diversity per se, but are eager to

employ cheap labor. Thus, unlikely political coalitions have historically formed around immigration.

Social conservatives and labor unions on the one hand; and democratic idealists, ethnics and

conservative capitalists, on the other hand, have squared off against each other continually in debates

about policy and law.

The popular debate stirs a nagging, core issue, beyond perennial policy questions such as the

language of instruction in the public schools or the effect of immigrants on wages and living

standards, which appear and are temporarily resolved or forgotten, and then reappear when new

immigrants arrive. The debate is a forum in which Americans have struggled collectively to define

themselves. For one side, the core of American culture, descended through the centuries, is and must

remain Anglo-American. For the others the culture continually evolves, with a vast variety of

peoples leaving their mark and the accommodation of difference itself generating creativity. The

United States is a relatively young society, with a population continually reconfigured by massive

immigrations from without and ceaseless movement within its borders. Many cannot accept the

answer “We are everyone.”

So, the debate continues. It is reflected in the shifting character of immigration law and policy. At

first, there was little effort to regulate the flow of immigrants into the country, and only non-white

people – white itself not closely defined – were barred from becoming naturalized citizens.

Increasingly, over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Asians of a variety

of origins were barred from entrance because of race, and some Europeans were excluded because of

health, disability, political belief, criminal record, literacy or poverty, and finally, in 1921 and 1924

restricted through quotas on the basis of national origin. Then, in 1965, the gates were opened to all

peoples, with limits only on the absolute numbers from each hemisphere, in part to appease a guilty

national conscience made vulnerable in the midst of Cold War ideological struggles by the racism of

past immigration law. Thereafter, legislation was passed to confront the controversy swirling around

the vast tide of immigration, legal and illegal alike, the 1965 law produced.

3) MYTHS AND REALITIES ABOUT THE RECEPTION OF STRANGERS.

Although immigration is a common ancestral experience among ten millions of Americans, it does

not really serve to unite them. It is not for want of powerful, potentially unifying symbols of

immigration:

(1) The Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus, written for the statue’s

dedication in 1886. Both provide an emotionally compelling immigration myth celebrating

the redemptive powers of American democracy. It is the narrative of Lazarus’s “huddled

masses yearning to breathe free.” They arrive poor and exhausted, as “wretched refuse.”

Emma Lazarus is the descendent of Portuguese Jewish immigrants. [DOC 8]

(2) Ellis Island, not too far away in New York Harbor, the nation’s largest immigration station

for many decades, a site made into a powerfully evocative legend through the popularization

of historical photographs and the skillful marketing tactics of those who saved it from ruin

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after it fell into disuse in the mid-twentieth century. Here, Europeans, the vast majority of

immigrants historically, were processed before their journeys to the mainland. In the

photographs taken at Ellis Island, most of the subjects look unprepared for their American

lives, but as popular oral tradition has it, they were hardworking and aspiring, and without

assistance from government, aided only by family and through their own efforts to build

community solidarity, they took advantage of the gift of American liberty to improve

themselves. While they were less welcomed than simply admitted to the United States and

they encountered many difficulties in resettling and establishing permanence, they ultimately

prevailed in the struggle for material security and prosperity. In the process, it is said, they

became Americans, with a powerful feeling of belonging to their new country.

The myth may contain some truth for understanding the majority of white European immigrants and

their ethnic descendants. It does not help us to understand those not considered white, for their

naturalization was hindered at the very birth of the country by legislation that limited citizenship to

white people, though that principle was unevenly applied over tie, and their immigration was

proscribed in later decades. Chinese immigration was largely halted by law after 1882, and law and

policy thereafter badly disrupted Chinese American culture by hindering family formation and

withholding opportunity. Angel Island in San Francisco harbor, where Chinese and other Asian

immigrants disembarked and were subject to all manner of official harassment, has symbolic

implications very different from those of Ellis Island.

Nor might it assist us in understanding the lives of those many thousands of Mexicans or Filipinos

who were coerced into returning to their countries during the Great Depression of the 1930s because

local and state government preferred to support the white unemployed, or of the 110,000 Japanese,

most of the Japanese American population and 62% of them American citizens, forced into

internment camps during World War II. Though all these non-European groups found tan integral

place in American society after 1945, their struggles to do so were especially intense because of

racism.

Yet, even for the massive number of Europeans, the story of American immigration is much more

complex than any self-congratulatory, patriotic narrative would have us believe. European

immigrants were rarely greeted with open arms by immigration officials and by Americans in

general when they arrived. If they were regarded as white, even if often grudgingly, they were often

conceived by Americans as if they were members of different races. Race in this historical context

often implied not color, but what we today might call nationality. Used in this way, race often carried

the idea that peoples who did not look much different from Americans might nonetheless bear inner,

ineradicable, mostly negative traits to which culture and small points of physiognomy were a clue.