Contradictions

The United States is one of the few countries that has no "official" national language, or languages at the federal level.

English is the de facto national language, but some laws – such as U.S. naturalization service requirements – standardize English. About 216 million Americans (81%) speak English at home. Spanish is the second most common language (12 %.)

About 30 million Americans speak a language other than English at home. A so-called foreign accent does not necessarily mean that an individual is (or even was) a foreigner.

Looking at religion in the US, we are once more faced with a typically American contradiction. From its very beginnings as a nation, Americans have been extremely careful to separate church and state, religion and government.

The Constitution, specifically the First Amendment, forbids the government to give special favors to any religion or to hinder the free practice of any religion.

As a result, there are no church taxes in the United States, nor is there an official state church or a state-supported religion. There are no legal or official religious holidays. Christmas, for example, is an important religious holiday for Christians. However, Congress cannot proclaim it, or any other religious observance, to be an official or legal holiday. To do so would violate the Constitution. There are no political parties in the United States that have "Christian" in their names.

While 58% of Americans feel that religion is "very important" in their own lives, it is hard to say to what extent religious beliefs affect their everyday lives. However, a study done by Gallup International in 1986 seems to show that attention to religion, at least, is increasing in the United States.

Since Americans are free to form and follow any religious belief or religion they wish, there are a great many beliefs, denominations and churches in the United States. The Roman Catholic Church is by far the single largest, with about 52 million members.

Although there are approximately 78 million Americans who might call themselves "Protestants", they are distributed among many different, independent churches. There is no one church or church group that speaks for all Protestants or would be listened to by all.

Each group, rather, supports itself. It employs its own ministers, builds its own buildings, and follows its own beliefs. But the influence of religion on public and political institutions in the United States is minimal.

Yet surveys show that religion continues to be quite important for many Americans, especially when compared with people in other countries.

The terms: the "host" society and the "strangers" mean how closely the ethnic group approximates the culture of the dominant society.

Acceptance may loosen the bonds of ethnic identity ( the case of Scottish and German immigrants to America); rejection and subordination may strengthen them (Mexican-Americans or African-Americans).

The term minority has been used by sociologists to refer to those groups whose members share certain racial or ethnic similarities that are considered to be different from or inferior to the traits of the dominant group - the majority.

In a society made up of many cultural groups, like the United States, the intensity of ethnic identity or ethnicity is apt to be determined by the attitude of the members of the "host" society toward the "strangers" in their midst.

This attitude, in turn, is often dependent upon how closely the ethnic group approximates the culture of the dominant society.