In 1790, the English made up about 60% of the total US population, more than 70% of the European American population. The overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers of the United States were English, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
In 2009, according to American Community Survey data, Americans reporting English ancestry made up only 9% of the total U.S. population, and are only the third largest European group in the US, after Germans and Irish Americans.
English Americans have lost their demographic dominance in the US.
Why?
There are two important reasons:
1.
Nineteenth-century American intellectuals thought that immigrants to America would literally be assimilated to the English "race" (as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it). They believed that the English people could remain English even after absorbing other races and ethnic groups. These liberal intellectuals thought that immigrants of all strains would become Anglo-Saxons, they even believed that blacks would become white with more education.
The basic problem was that these thinkers were Lamarckians - that is, they believed that people could inherit traits that their ancestors had acqired during their lifetimes.
In the hands of Anglo-Saxon assimilationists, Lamarckism was part of the optimistic spirit of elite 19th-century liberal intellectuals who envisioned a future America to be people just like themselves, no matter what their origins.
This assimilationism has utterly failed, and the influx of millions of non-English immigrants over the last 200 years has turned the English into a minority in America.
English Americans' promotion of their own displacement is the ultimate foolishness. After all, it is difficult to come up with an historical example of a nation with a solid ethnic majority (America was at least 60% English in the 19th century) that has voluntarily decided to cede political and cultural power. Such transformations are typically accomplished by military invasions, great battles, and untold suffering.
2.
The vast majority of English Americans are unaware of or do not value their own ethnic interests. This extreme individualism is a tragic mistake. Other ethnic groups are aware of English individualism, and see it as a sign of weakness. For instance, Horace Kallen, the Jewish philosopher of cultural pluralism, commented in 1915 on the effects of the individualism of English American intellectuals of the period: "The older America, whose voice and spirit were New England, has... gone beyond recall. Americans of British stock still are prevailingly the artists and thinkers of the land, but they work, each for himself, without common vision or ideals. They have no ethos any more. The older tradition has passed from a life into a memory."
A huge problem for the English is lack of confidence. Many groups have created political and educational associations to promote racial and ethnic consciousness and to enhance cultural awareness. Blacks have the NAACP and Jews have the ADL. On campuses nationwide, students have offices of minority affairs, etc.
If the English in America should remain unconscious of who they are as a people, they will almost certainly be victimized by the higher cohesion and consciousness of non-English ethnic groups whose ethnic identity, family ties, and cultural motivations are more powerful than theirs.
This is why English Americans need to study English history.
Simply stated, the study of English history strengthens our ethnic identity and pride, knowing that we are but a link on a mighty chain strengthened through many centuries.
The English, and in particular the young, would gain greater self-respect and self-confidence if they had a better appreciation and understanding of their unique culture and heritage.
