Except your opinion does not actually follow from the facts.
African Americans weren’t just “hyphenated subgroups” earlier. They weren’t even allowed to be in the same places as white male americans. Similarly, Chinese Americans formthe most part lived a separate life, and Japanese Americans were considered so different they were placed in internment camps during WW2.
Even the Irish and Italians were treated differently when they arrived, and had entire sub cultures.
The idea that the US is more hyphenated today just doesn’t seem to follow from what was actually happening in the 20th century.
Early America was so hyphenated that people only occupied regions with people of the same original nationality. We still see places with lots of French street names, or a place with lots of German street names. To some degree this might have been self-selecting, but there are documented cases of people being denied mortgages in particular areas based on their ethnicity into the twentieth century.
We are in a place in American history where ethnicity has the least amount of impact on someone's life. It's illegal to discriminate on job applications, mortgage applications, or school applications based on ethnicity.
We have a lot further to go, and sometimes we take a step backwards. I think we'll continue to see an increase in diversity in all public spaces.
It's quite possible that the US is at an inflection point. Now those hyphenated groups are spread so thin that they lost all their meaning. Now you can't find comfort in sameness, because yes, you share some common history, but you are also very different in other ways.
And thus people can't seem to find their place, can't seem to find friends, and the default fallback of going back to your people is no more.
African Americans weren’t just “hyphenated subgroups” earlier. They weren’t even allowed to be in the same places as white male americans. Similarly, Chinese Americans formthe most part lived a separate life, and Japanese Americans were considered so different they were placed in internment camps during WW2.
Even the Irish and Italians were treated differently when they arrived, and had entire sub cultures.
The idea that the US is more hyphenated today just doesn’t seem to follow from what was actually happening in the 20th century.