There have been a whole lot of people who were grossly discriminated against when they first arrived in the USA. The Irish were a prime example of that...they were often depicted as brutish apelike subhumans in the popular press of the mid-1800's. So too the Italians and many other southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans were looked down on. They were definitely seen as "less white" than the more monied classes of white people in America when they arrived...and the prejudice was based partly on the poverty of the new arrivals, partly on ideas of Anglo-Saxon and northern European racial and cultural supremacy.

Now it is Blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims who are often getting treated as second or third class citizens...as well as Native Americans who have been having a rough time of it ever since Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.

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Michaelr, I think you have it right. The central and most outstanding feature of the American Way is massive consumption, combined with Jingoistic patriotism. The old motto was: "Give me liberty or give me death!" The new motto is: "Give me convenience or give me death."

But that's just looking at the bad side.

On the good side, America is a place of boldness, exuberance, optimism, vitality, and adventurous frontier spirit, and that is its great strength. That exuberance and vitality can easily be seen in the wonderful history of American popular music over the past hundred years, and in the writing of its greatest authors, people like Walt Whitman and Mark Twain to name two of the best.