Talk:Culture of the United States

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Military

Another thing this is missing a mention of the military, its hard to believe that an government organization as big as the American military (one of the biggest in the world in fact, easily the largest navy, infact larger than #2-#18 put together) has no effect on its culture. British military sure has an effect on its culture, especially its navy in the Colonial period. Even the Canadian military (all 5 guys) has an effect on their culture, with the peacekeepers and what not. Also a note, if you find a change I add to be OR, then delete it or it, do not revert to other OR and certainly do not delete s unless you actually get sources, the burden of proof lies on the defensive side. I realize some of this comes off somewhat negative, I don't mean it to be, at least not unrealistically so (every culture has its faults), but I also don't think its right to say what a great place America is without anything backing that up (which is whats happening when you say how great and better off you are because your diverse and equal and always have been when you still aren't 100%). It sounds like Einstein before he actually got there, when he only knew what the propaganda told him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.137.207.191 (talk) 03:32, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Race relations

I have tagged the section Race relations (African Americans) with the unbalanced and expand tags due to the fact that it only deals with one race, African Americans, with only very brief mentions of race relations of other sizable populations such as Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Without covering, these race relations, or Interracial marriage in the United States, it serves as an unbalanced representation of the subject, even if the section header specifies a single race.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:27, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Examples to address and issues to fix

This article is quite poorly written and gives undue weight to some topics. Some problems are the examples being given in the cuisine, race/gender relations, national holidays sections, and the undue weight being given to deaths and funerals, organizations, and volunteerism. The examples being given in many sections are not the most common ones and may be deviant from mainstream culture. I don't see any good examples for the literature/architecture/buildings (such as the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, Fallingwater, etc.), nor do I see any good examples for other forms of art. Examples from User:ProfDEH/Icons of American Culture may help give editors an example of what to put in this article, as well as the previous section comments. One would think an article like this would be a featured article, but it looks like no one really cares or knows enough about American history/literature/culture to add good content into the article. Hopefully it can be improved. - M0rphzone (talk) 23:48, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I completely and single-handedly overhauled this article about three years ago. I don't mean to brag, but it was a gem. I haven't touched it since then. I can still see a few faint traces of my work but most of this article has been butchered, mutilated, and sown back together like Frankenstein. It is, for lack of a better term, a monstrosity. I really don't have the time to mess with it these days but a good place to start would be cutting out all the fluff. It's way too long, it bulges into a lot of niche areas, and the thumbnails need to be standardized in size. I believe some of the statistics are probably outdated, and the sources need to be checked too. I would do it again if I had time, but I just don't. 72.198.72.102 (talk) 05:52, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree on your point regarding the picture sizes. I have a very wide monitor so the pictures often ended up in the incorrect sections. For example the picture of "blue jeans" was pushed down almost into the sports section. Stu18401 (talk) 13:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

72.198.72.102, do you know which revision that was? I could try restoring it back to that revision and update the statistics. - M0rphzone (talk) 23:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

History?

Like a lot of topics, this one includes "history" sometimes at the expense, or distraction from, describing the actual culture today. But there is already a Cultural history of the United States, where most of this belongs. Why not move it there and barely reference it here? There is too much history IMO. Student7 (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Culture of the United States

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Culture of the United States's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "b02001":

• From Americans: "B02001. RACE – Universe: TOTAL POPULATION". 2008 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved February 28, 2010.
• From White American: U.S. Census Bureau; 2008 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. Retrieved 2009-11-07

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 08:49, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

•  Done - replaced uncited refname with the first citation from Americans and renamed refname to "b02001 2008". - M0rphzone (talk) 05:36, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Cocking's Theory?

Where does the subject heading "Cocking's Theory" come from? There's also a reference to Cocking in the text of that section, but with no referent to who this person is. A cursory search revealed no hits related to "Cocking's Theory."

I'm thinking this part needs to be re-headed and the content changed.

SweetLou33 (talk) 20:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Recent vandalism. I reverted. Student7 (talk) 19:48, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Fischer's Theory

This single book gets an exposition that is almost twice as long as the main body of the section on regional variation itself (of which Fischer's theory is a subsection). There are quite literally thousands of books discussing regional culture variation in the United States, and hundreds that are much more recent than 1989. I've never read the book and know little about the subject, but I must ask: is this guy's theory (which sounds kind of facile anyway) really that important? And if it is, there should at least be some explanation of why it deserves special attention and an exposition of such great length. Is his idea a now a general consensus among U.S. ethnographers/ social historians? Also, the name Paul Berinde appears at the very start of this subsection but is never mentioned again. Who is he? Someone who knows about the topic could maybe clean it up or add some explanation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.108.226.51 (talk) 20:07, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistencies.

Cut and pasted form article:

White Americans (non-Hispanic/Latino and Hispanic/Latino) are the racial majority, with a 72% share of the U.S. population, according to the 2010 US Census.[81] Hispanic and Latino Americans comprise 15% of the population, making up the largest ethnic minority.[82] Black Americans are the largest racial minority, comprising nearly 13% of the population.[81][83] The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population comprises 63% of the nation's total.[82]

71 per cent minus 15 Hispanics equals 57 per cent of non-Hispanic whites, not 63 per cent. Unfortunately Wiki is full of this type of errors that destroy its credibility!

Pipo.