Looking at Language

I've decided to take a break from what Americans typically eat, so I can get at least one source form each of the cultural aspects I want to cover in my quest of defining the, "modern American" (language, technology exposure/usage, income[?] attire, food and ethnicities [?]), and take a look at the languages spoken by Americans. So far the data I’ve found at: https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf, which comes from the US Census Bureau, takes a look at a study conducted in 2011 by an organization of some sort called the American Community Survey (ACS) who is essentially the primary source of language data. The best site to reach the ACS is a web page on the census’ website found here: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/. Upon deeper inspection it can be found that there is a tab for a “library” which presumably can lead me to where more information on the surveys they’ve takes in past years and I can hopefully find something more recent (even if it’s just by one year) in terms of what language is spoken at home. I’m starting to worry all the data I’m collecting is going to come from +5 years ago and/or from the census website.

About what I’ve collected so far, it’s no surprise that the other language spoken by most people at home is Spanish, because they are our poorer next door neighbors so most immigrants come from there. Also, following Spanish by a wide margin is Chinese. In addition to that, most of the languages spoken at home by families are from the Indo-European language family (pretty sure it’s a language family) most likely reflecting the fact that many European immigrants have come here in the past and present (though not as many today as before I think) and they continue to speak their native languages.

Hopefully I’ll be able to find another source to use and learn more about the languages spoken in American, but for now, what I’ve got will have to suffice and I’ll try to find more cultural traits of one of the other things I want to research.

Feeling Dubious

I seem to have run into a few, well a lot actually, or problems. For starts, I am severely unmotivated to do this genius hour. Yes, genetics, heritage, the cultural identity and all that are wonderfully fascinating, but there seem to be so much other interesting stuff going on no to mention I keep prioritizing other thing over genius hour and I don’t get around to working on this. This might be obvious based on what my blog entries have said in the past, because if you’ve paid attention but out of the past six or so, only one (probably) has been about stuff I’ve learned. I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to finish this project, or, even worse, finish the project but it not be up to my standards or what I originally envisioned.

Other than a lack of motivation, I feel like I’ve almost lost the direction of where I’m going with this project. When telling one of my friends what I was doing for my genius hour they responded by saying it sounded really complicated, confusing, impossible and unnecessary (something along those lines). Maybe they’re right, I mean come on, the point of ethnicities is to label people based on their lifestyle and heritage, so why combine a group of such different people and identify them under one label? Even more so, you can already do that by identifying with nationality instead of ethnicity, because in that case it doesn’t matter what you do or how your ancestors were but rather what state one is loyal to. Why make an ethnicity for the, “modern American?” I guess the excuse I’ve been using this whole time is that Americans are a different type of people. They want different things, act different ways, and think differently than other people. Yes people immigrate here all the time so the population is constantly changing, but then you have those who immigrated generations ago and have assimilated with the many other cultures that have come here too and created a unique culture. Guess that’s what a modern American is.

Discovering American Culture: The American Diet

Today, I began research on the food aspect of modern American culture. I spent some time looking into what types of food the Average American eats because we are what we eat, and food is a huge part of culture and tradition. A source I found for this information was: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-availability-and-consumption.aspx#.U44CfJRdVor which is the Unite States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. The page is over a study conducted in 2014 (good because that was only 3 years ago unlike the census which if I use it will be form seven years ago)of the availability of food and food consumption. Not that it is very important (at least, I can’t see how it’s relevant to my research), but the average American diet is way off from Federal recommendations. From my research I was able to conclude that Americans eat meats, eggs, nuts and grains in abundance while vegetables, dairy and fruit are eaten in lesser portions.

While some may say that’s only the average American and I have to take in consideration how many people are vegetarians (perhaps I should found out) and/or don’t eat lots of meat like myself, but I am only looking for the average American because and ethnicity is based on common traits and I can’t have too many differences. Might as well go with the average/majority each time to keep things consistent.

Now that I know what American’s diets typically consist of, I’ll need to research how American cook their food (or rather have other people cook their food for them) because that is another important component of food culture. I believe I may have already found a good source for that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639863/ which is some research conducted in 2008 (sad it wasn’t conducted closer to this year) about how Americans prepare their food.

Rethinking the Process

I’ve been thinking about my previous plan for my genius hour, and came to the conclusion that I would be unable to conduct enough research to achieve my goal. I then had a epiphany, I would look for distinct cultural characteristics of Americans to find similarities as well as differences (but mostly focusing on similarities) and use that to create my definition of the “modern American.” Now I’ll still try to find something on the immigration patterns to make an assumption for what ethnicities reside in American (I may have already found a good site with this information but I have my doubts of its credibility: http://lewishistoricalsociety.com/wiki2011/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=29, but then again I can maybe use my APHG textbook) but I will be looking at a number of other things too such as, but not limited to:

·         Language

·         Technology exposure/wealth (help to reveal how people exposed to a diversity so have similarities)

·         Morals/beliefs

·         Lifestyle (but maybe not because it’s s vague)

·         Eating habits

·         Fashion/appearance

By looking at the significant cultural traits I’ll be able to create my definition of a “modern American.” Some may have realized that it seems as though my project is focusing on defining the “modern American” rather than actually creating an ethnicity for them but the way I see it there is no way I can create an ethnicity if I don’t know how to define the modern American so the majority of my project will be focusing on the research aspect and the product will (hopefully) take not that much time.

On a somewhat related note, I have the idea of maybe keeping a journal on my observations of the behaviors/cultural traits of those surrounding, but what good would that research do? While the school is very diverse it’s not the most diverse place one can be. I’ll have to sleep on that though tonight (if I remember/care).

Getting Ahead of Myself

When I asked some of my friends about what they though the modern American was, one answer that stood out was something along the lines of, “being of mixed heritage,” with heritage meaning, different ethnic backgrounds. The problem I have with that definition is that it is purely based on genetic information and doesn’t say anything about the culture of Americans. Being based on genetics that means a person would have to get their DNA tested which might be too expensive and not available for some people who want to know if they’re a “modern American.” There’s also the problem of people immigrating into the country of mixed heritage. By that definition wouldn’t those people also be considered “modern Americans” to? For my definition, I’d like for people to be determined a modern American without any testing needing to be done. Currently I’ve been thinking for a person to have had family they’ve directly descended from live in the country for four generations on at least one side (mother’s or father’s). That sounds slightly confusing when I try to type it out and is somewhat a mouthful to say so I guess I’ll polish it up later and add on more.

Also, while I have yet to finish step 1 of my plans (define the “modern American”) I decided to go on ahead and look for some possible sources. I started looking for ways to find out about immigration records and I sure am glad I did. One site I came across that was extremely insightful was the National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration), which contain information on where to find immigration records and some specific waves of immigration that were documented. What I noticed however is that most of the records seem to only be accessible after paying money to see them or special ordering them (which costs money). They are also only available for certain time periods and I have yet to see anything go as far back as 1607, which is troublesome. I may need to rethink how I’m going to go about completing this if Ican’t see immigration records.

The Action Plan

With my genius hour time on the day I started typing this, I decided to take a break from brainstorming on what the “modern American” is and decided to write down a plan for how I want to go forward in this project, which is as follows:

1.      Define the “modern American.”

2.      Research immigration and emigration patterns for the US to make an assumption on what the ethnic population is.

3.      See what the US census bureau says ethnicity (even though it’s referred to as race there) is and what people identified themselves as in the 2010 survey.

4.      Find statistics based on testing for what people’s ethnicity is and compare that to the 2010 census bureau (be sure to use 2010 data).

5.      Seeing what people identify themselves as and what they really are you can make an assumption on what people are looking for in an ethnicity.

6.      Research prefixes, suffixes, and other stuff like that to create a meaningful new term to identify the “modern American” as.

Originally, part of my plan was to take a survey from the entire student body about what they identified themselves as and then comparing it to actual school public records (which I can somehow access apparently but don’t know how), yet Mrs. Peel pointed out that I could never get the entire student body to participate because there are people who wouldn’t want to do something like that. It’s fine that I won’t be able to do that because I didn’t know how to tie it into my project, but I’m still very worried about where I’m going to get my six different sources from.

I might have found one source I’d like to use for the project which is the 2010 census report found here: https://www.census.gov/2010census/data/. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some history books on immigration patterns or reports on immigration patters for my other sources so fingers crossed.

Defining the "Modern American"

It seems as though I’ve encountered a bit of a problem with my project and if I don’t overcome it things won’t get anywhere. Because I hope to create a new ethnicity for the modern American I first have to define what a modern American is. Ethnicity by definition (from dictionary.com) is, and I quote, “an ethnic group; a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.” The most problematic part of that definition is, “shares a common and distinctive culture,” because America is such a diverse country. Is it even possible to group together so many different people?

The basic idea I have for the definition of a modern American so far is that it is someone whose ancestors had four (or so) generations of ancestors who were citizens of the country and lived here. I don’t know if someone should still be considered a “modern American” if they meet this requirement on one side of the family only because the parent and/or parent’s family immigrated recently, but like I said, this is only a basic idea. While that definition may seems fine and good, I worry it’s not enough similarities to justify creating a new ethnicity. I could arguable add, “speaks English,” to the list of requirements, but the country doesn’t have an official language and that could discriminate against people.

To try to overcome this problem I think I’ll start by clarify my draft definition and then asking my friends and family how they would define the modern American. By getting some input from others I’ll be able to get a different perspective on what the “modern American” is and be able to create a more accurate definition soon.

Ready to Set Sail

Today I go my idea approved by Mrs. Peel so everything is set, I plan to create an ethnic identity for the modern American! It may seem like a challenging and unnecessary task, but I feel that being a citizen of a nation of people who are the descendants of immigrants or just immigrated here (because they recently emigrated from their home countries) it’s impossible to have a single ethnic background. I do have a slight concern about my primary source though, for my current plan of testing my own DNA to see what my ethnic background is seems too basic and I don’t know how to connect it with the rest of my project.

Other sources I plan on using include records of immigration patterns for the US, for if people of one ethnicity immigrate here they (supposedly) have descendants here, the US census report from 2010 to see what people identified themselves as, and possibly a record of people’s actual ethnicities as well as a survey conducted to see what people at Clear Brook identify themselves as. The last two are possibilities because not everyone in the country has been tested for their ethnicity (I know because I have not been tested) so such records might not exist, and the survey is a possibility because the paper work involved in it is a lot and I’d have to find a way to reach out to the students.

I hope I’ve explained enough of my plans here so I can look back and see what I need to do. This could truly be something revolutionary, for so many Americans have an identity crisis that they may not be aware of, don’t care about, or are struggling with. By creating this ethnicity, the country could be united in a whole new way, and it could bring some peace and understanding between people as well as solve the identity crisis problem.