Pluralism In America

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The United States is pluralistic society in which many cultures exist together and have become a part of larger American identity. America can no longer be considered a country of uniform faces that the writers of the Constitution had sought it out to be. Young America became a nation that contained many people of different ethnicities who gave up their cultural identity to become part of the American culture. After that it turned into a “melting pot” of all sorts of cultures and races and thus America became a multi-cultural nation. In more recent times, immigrants that arrived in America, did not “shed” their culture or heritage rather they incorporated it into the area where they live through the construction of religious institutions, restaurants and neighborhoods. This paper will probe how pluralism exists in the United States through the analyzation of the ethnic groups the Chinese and the Latino communities of Corona, in Queens, New York. The Chinese came to America in the late 1800’s, however due to the Chinese Exclusion Acts (1882-1943), immigrants from China halted. After 1943, the Chinese immigration picked up again. Many of the immigrants from China that arrived in America came as refugees. In 1946, The War Brides Act was passed allowing Chinese Americans who fought in the war to bring their wives to America. Slowly, these immigrants began to create ethnic communities in which they could feel comfortable to live in, hence the creation of China Town. These immigrants have introduced their culture into American culture through the creation of restaurants, religious institutions, and holidays such as Chinese New Year. The creations of these institutions prove that this immigrant group is able to sustain the cultural practices from their country of origin. The Latino’s that immigrated to Queens from their respective Latin American
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