There's several factors in these titles.
Do the terms refer to your ethnicity, nationality, religion, tribe, continent, or what?
Being called an African-American can still mean that you're white if you're from South Africa. These labels are almost useless as the largest growing population in America is the "mixed" category.
The reason these things are important to our society has to do primarily with money. The Census is used by Congress to allocate money, and it is deemed important in our society to pay attention to how equitable different groups are treated. This has to do with our history of slavery, near genocide of the indiginous people, and that our country is a country of immigration. Strangely enough, in Canada it is illegal to ask questions about ethnicity on their Census.
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We need to drop the hyphens and focus on being Americans. But that means that we celebrate, and more importantly, share our cultural heritage.
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I think the problem with this is that the "melting pot" idea of America has been proven to not be as accurate as we think. Most minority groups, particularly non-English speaking, live in enclaves and have a very different experience of America from a cultural standpoint. The American heritage of someone from the Chinook tribe is a lot different than the American heritage of someone who has roots from those who came over on the Mayflower, which is also a lot different than someone who's heritage is that of coming from a slave family.
These titles indicate how diverse and fragmented America is.
I remember a workshop that I went to where a man stood in front of a large room of pre-service teachers like myself and asked, "what is the first thing you noticed about me?" Well, he was black, and I raised my hand to say that. He called on about 12 other people first commenting on his smile, his red shirt, his shoes, his height, and on the 12th person someone said "you're black." The fear of making an issue out of race caused us to look stupid. Now, I find African-American to be a stupid phrase for black people who have roots in America going back several hundred years. I do think it is important to note these differences because attempting to ignore them is impossible.
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They don't learn english, they don't experiance our culture, and we don't do much to encourage them otherwise.
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This assumes that they should assimilate. I understand that there are lots of reasons that small minority groups in the US do not want to assimlate. For instance, when meeting with some old native Americans in Warm Springs about 10 years ago they were talking about how unfortunate it was that they felt they were losing their children to American capitalism. Rather than embracing the old traditions, their languages, etc. - everything was getting lost. I remember one of them saying, "Given a choice between buying headphones and Nintendo or learning our traditions, it seems the Nintendo is winning."
This has been called cultural imperialism, and I think that there is something to it. However, I also understand the need to be a part of a larger society. Globalization is putting us all in a position to be consumers/laborers before anything else, and I personally think that it is unfortunate and making our cultural landscape less and less rich.
I understand why someone would hold on to their ethnic titles and their national titles... they feel that they have something that the US at large doesn't have and they want to hold on to that at all costs. I'm certainly not one to judge them for that.