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How to approach 2020 census data (ethnicity and race)

I had posted the most recent census data before seeing my edits removed for the time being due to uncertainty in changed methodology in the most recent census. While I can concede discussion is worthwhile, ultimately to have a more accurate page there should be some consensus formed so the new data can be posted at some point. My specific edits at the time only counted people who identified as one racial group (say only white or only black for example) in the appropriate category, while those who identified with 2 or more races (white and black, white and Asian, white and another race for example) lumped into the multiracial/ other count, and that is the stance I’d continue to hold. If anyone else thinks otherwise, I’d be more than happy to hear other opinions. Supreme6646 (talk) 05:07, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I started a discussion about this above. The Census Bureau has cautioned against comparing 2020 data to that of previous censuses, due to differing results, some of which were unexpected. In addition, multiple media outlets were already warning about possible inaccuracies even before the release of this data. That being said, I think there needs to be a consensus reached about whether or not we should continue to present demographic data in the same means as we have done with results from the 2010 and 2000 censuses, as well as the American Community Survey, before reinstating the data (at least in the same form that has been traditionally used). I personally prefer a table format, as opposed to the paragraph form that has been traditionally used. I admit I am baffled as to why the results were so much different than that of recent ACS's, as one would expect to see more of a trend over the past ten years, but we may find out more about this soon. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:39, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Update - I would like to suggest that for each race category we list both the percentage overall and the percentage of each category only, instead of lumping everyone who selected two or more categories into one category. Bneu2013 (talk) 00:35, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

I guess I second that suggestion. I've worked on several of the individual U.S. state articles, and was also surprised that the numbers released in August looked so different from those in the ACS just the year prior. But the answer has to do with Americans picking multiple categories and the big jump in the "Two or More" and "Some other" groups. So yes, I think every state (and this U.S. article too) will need a two column ethnicity percent table for "alone" and "in combination". Other thoughts?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 13:07, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

No to junk charts.....only prose WP:Prose. Tables are best dumped in main demographic articles. One of the biggest problems state-level articles have is chart and table spam making the flow of the article impossible to read.Moxy- 15:03, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

This seems to regard the infobox? I think it works as I see it currently: the 2020 data with a little footnote about accuracy/methodology. The footnote could be expanded a bit, perhaps with a link to the Census' explanation on the matter. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 01:31, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Moxy: Every U.S. state article (save Massachusetts, who has languages instead, and Vermont and Wyoming who just have live births by race) currently has some form of race/ethnicity table in their Demographics section, usually with the census data back to 1990. Now whether these are better on the subarticles, that's secondary discussion, but the issue here that the Census Bureau specifically says that comparisons to these other censuses are problematic. I think Bneu2013 is bringing that up, asking what the consensus is, tables or not? My own interpretation is that readers want and expect tables for this sort of data. At Virginia#Ethnicity and Demographics of Virginia#Race and ethnicity I've tried two methods, on the main article just presenting the current 2020 data with "Alone" and "In Combo" headings, and on the subarticle adding an asterisk to note below that 2020 categories may not line up. That's just two ideas I'm putting out in the wild for how to resolve this issue, but I would love if there was a Wikipedia consensus I could fall back on here.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 12:55, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Patrickneil: Wow.....what you have done looks great in both deaktop and mobile view. 100% percent turnaround on my view on this....Support table in article section...as example seen below. Thought we were talking about something like this.--Moxy- 22:36, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Patrickneil, Wowza, agree that this is a super well put together table. I endorse the use on all state articles. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 22:52, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Ethnicity (2020) Alone In Combo Largest ancestries by county Ancestry (2019 est.) Non-Hispanic white 60.3% 67.8% American Community Survey five-year estimate German 10.6% Black or African American 18.6% 20.9% Irish or Scotch-Irish 10.5% Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 10.5% American 9.7% Asian 7.1% 8.8% English 9.2% Other 5.2% 9.1% N/A Italian 3.9% American Indian and Alaska Native 0.5% 2.1% Subsaharan African 2.3%

Wow, thanks guys! We do have a similar one at New York (state)#Race and ethnicity. Creating the maps of ancestry by plurality is just very time consuming, something I bet a machine might do better than me.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 02:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for my late response. I also endorse the table on the Virginia article. I would also support keeping the historic demographic tables that currently exist, but not including 2020 data directly within them so as not to confuse readers. Bneu2013 (talk) 03:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment - I've added a similar table at Tennessee#ethnicity. Bneu2013 (talk) 05:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

East Asia vs Pacific Ocean

"In 1941, the United States formally entered the Second World War as a member of the Allied powers after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Its armed forces fought simultaneously in two military theaters, Western Europe and East Asia."

Emphasis mine. I believe the bolded part is inaccurate. When I think of East Asia, I think of, in addition to the Pacific Ocean, Indochina, China, Mongolia, etc. The U.S., as far as I know, did no fighting in the Asian mainland. I believe that this should be changed to state

"Western Europe and the Pacific Ocean"

as this is far more accurate to the actual American conflicts against the Japanese Empire during the Second World War. BurritoQuesadilla (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

True, and I don't see why it has to say "surprise attack". That's a relatively minor detail.--Jack Upland (talk) 17:34, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Agree that Pacific is more accurate. Very much disagree that "surprise" is a minor detail. Roosevelt had had to face the intense isolationism of U.S. public opinion for years. Pearl Harbor was a brazen attack, out of the blue, on U.S. territory in the Pacific. It galvanized public opinion—and changed U.S. policy—just as completely as two other surprise events in U.S. history: Fort Sumter and 9/11. Mason.Jones (talk) 14:31, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the "surprise" (better "sneak") nature of the attack colored the American attitude towards the war in general and Japan in particular. --Khajidha (talk) 23:18, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Music photo/audio sample

It'd be nice to get a photo of an actual musician or band for the music section, rather than just the entrance to the Grammy Museum, a pretty generic building. Any thoughts on what the best image would be? Ideally, we're looking for a very high-quality image (QI or FI) of someone famous and who performs in a genre that's uniquely American. I tried searching on Commons but unfortunately the tool may be down.

I also added an audio sample, since, well, it's the music section. If anyone has thoughts on something better, though, there might be a better option. Most songs aren't public domain yet, though, so our options are limited. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Since it's the music section, I don't know that we need too many photographs; and the Grammy Museum photo might be suitably even-handed. If we showcase an actual band, whom do we favor. Of American music, do we choose Country or Western? There will be complaints if we favor either kind. Dhtwiki (talk) 19:31, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I would rather we pick something that's more interesting for readers, even if it leads to talk page complaints (we can always add a hidden comment if needed along the lines of "this image was chosen because it's a featured image of an iconic band. Do not swap out without discussing at talk"). We don't want to starve ourselves trying to stay precisely in the middle. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:53, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

You don't know that the picture of the Grammy Museum is generally uninteresting. If we have photos, they should tell of what constitutes American music and how it arose. A photo of a fiddle, the most widely used instrument, of Bob Dylan, representing the British solo-balladeer tradition, or of Aretha Franklin, representing the more choral West African tradition (although Franklin often performed as a soloist), are candidates that might, with appropriate commentary, better tell that history than what we have now. The popularity of the fiddle and the two tributary traditions are according to Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

The current photo

I think it's extremely safe to say that the Grammy Museum photo (right) is uninteresting. We have all of American music to choose from, so we're not exactly lacking in options, and what we currently go with is a generic contemporary building entrance, which doesn't connote anything musical unless you read the sign and know what the Grammy's are. It's not like it's even a music hall with some visually interesting architecture. We can do so much better. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:30, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

What about an image of an actual gramophone and text on its important role in disseminating music? I don't see much on the history of that at subsidiary music articles. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:53, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

We have talked about this section a few times. It needs real info over name dropping....that said File:USmusicmap.png was an image that was suggested in the past. It lacks sources so the current image was chosen. Would love to see a map with regional varieties. Not sure this is the article for a sound file though ..... in the past a few quote sound files have been added and removed like... Martin Luther King... Lincoln etc. Going to be hard to find one sound file that represents the whole country in a summary article .Moxy- 23:30, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

We could easily have multiple audio files in the section if needed, just like we have multiple sports photos in that section, but I think to have none would be to succumb to a very limited conception of what knowledge is. The #1 thing that the section should do is to help someone with no knowledge of American music understand what it is. And it's kinda hard to understand music without listening to it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:49, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I guess we could jam the section with files instead of any images. The sports photo in my view is why we have a gallery rule. It's undue to have 4 images...size is to small per image to meet accessibility standards and the format is different from all other sections. Simply should be an image of the national pastime in the sports section. That said I do see these being added to many C class articles of this nature.Moxy- 23:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

There are many sound files at supplementary/subsidiary/etc. articles. Trying to place representative samples here would be difficult to decide on, take up a fair amount of space, and no doubt be a duplication of effort. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:40, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

USmusicmap has drawbacks in that it's hard to read the text, especially when there's no hi-rez version. Also, it would be helpful to have the various genres linked (most seem to have articles). I didn't find any better maps. There's not much out there. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:26, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

There's also the fact that the map is at the Music of the United States article. So, placing it here would be something of a duplication of effort. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:29, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Unincorporated vs. self-governing

Some parts of the article, including the lead, mention the U.S. territories as unincorporated. While this is technically true, it may not be relevant to the article. What is relevant is that they are populated and have governments (which distinguishes them from the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands).

"Unincorporated" is a legal status. What may be more important may be not whether they are incorporated or unincorporated, but whether they are under U.S. sovereignty, whether they have a permanent population, and whether they have governments.

The term "self-governing" was used in the lead of the article for a long time, and it might be worth considering re-adding it. What could be done is to refer to the territories as "populated", without mentioning their incorporation status or their self-governance status.

With regard to the phrase "self-governing", the Harvard Law Review mentions their self-governance ([1]). LumaP15 (talk) 17:48, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Consensus here is that "unincorporated" is a meaningless legal distinction, and has far less meaning to the lay reader than self-governing, so I agree. --Golbez (talk) 04:39, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

The term "unincorporated" is explained in the link: U.S. territories are not sovereign (among other limitations). The term "self-governing" implies quite the opposite: "home rule," or at least a range of powers that these territories simply don't legally possess. Yet this is never defined or linked. In fact, the U.S. territories are not sovereign entities but dependencies; they are not allowed to set their own foreign policy, among other constraints. The UN sees them as having a potentially colonial status, and has pronounced three of them as categorically not self-governing: Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands ([2]). Replacing one fuzzy term with a far more disputable one is problematic. Mason.Jones (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Also fair enough. Maybe best to just say "populated". --Golbez (talk) 15:53, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

I would avoid the term self-governing as confusing because three of the five territories remain on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories at the request of the U.S. government. Also, these territories are subject to U.S. laws, federal departments operate in the territories and U.S. federal courts have jurisdiction. It's not like saying that member states of the (British) Commonwealth are self-governing. TFD (talk) 17:09, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

There's a confusion of two different meanings of self-governing here. US territories are "self-governing" in that the residents thereof are responsible for selecting members of their local government, as opposed to having territorial governors and legislators and judges appointed from Washington, DC. They are not self-governing in the sense of being independent countries. --Khajidha (talk) 18:34, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Edit reverted, would like to dispute

User:Dhtwiki, you reverted my edit in the lede.

My version: The U.S. ranks high in international measures of economic freedom, quality of life, education, human rights, and perceived corruption. Your version: The U.S. ranks high in international measures of economic freedom, quality of life, education, and human rights; it has low levels of perceived corruption.

You said, "you've changed the meaning from low to high, when the US is a shade of green at linked article, where red is bad."

If the U.S. ranks high in the Corruption Perceptions Index (which is the article "perceived corruption" links to), as it does, it has low levels of perceived corruption due to how the index is structured. Therefore, by saying it ranks high in an international measure of perceived corruption (namely, the Corruption Perceptions Index), as my version does, the article does indeed say that the U.S. has low levels of perceived corruption. I have not changed the meaning from low levels of perceived corruption to high levels of perceived corruption; rather, I have changed it from low levels of perceived corruption to a high ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index, which indicates that it has low levels of perceived corruption and is therefore not altering the meaning of the sentence. Mrytzkalmyr (talk) 21:59, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mrytzkalmyr: Your version makes sense now that you've explained it, while at the same time is still potentially confusing, in that high rankings imply more of the other attributes but only a high ranking with regard to perceived corruption implies that there is less of it. I think "my" version (i.e. the version that has stood for some time) avoids that confusion at the expense of some extra wordiness. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:19, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: I see your point. It could definitely be confusing to readers. Plus, it's not like the extra verbiage makes the sentence excessively convoluted. Mrytzkalmyr (talk) 00:47, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Religion cutoff in the infobox

Hi Yankees999! I noticed you added Judaism and Islam to the religion list in the infobox. I'm kinda torn about whether or not we should be including those—on the one hand, it feels like the right thing to do to acknowledge them, but on the other, we really need to be consolidating the infobox (I just made a big edit that at least gets it so that it ends before the end of the TOC) and religion presently takes up a lot of room. There's also a slippery slope aspect, since Mormonism/Hinduism/Buddhism are about as prominent as Judaism/Islam. What are your/other's thoughts about where to draw the line? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:53, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I agree with your choice to consolidate the infobox, but I do think Judaism and Islam are prominent enough in the United States to warrant inclusion. However, if there is consensus against this I can certainly understand why. Yankees999 (talk) 05:53, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

The part about "low levels of perceived corruption"

I'd like to discuss about this sentence on the lead: "The U.S. ranks high in international measures of economic freedom, quality of life, education, and human rights, and has low levels of perceived corruption". With "perceived corruption" being hyperlinked to the Corruption Perceptions Index, it is clearly showing that the U.S. has been on a steady decline on the index every passing year. At 25th place and being only 67/100, it is quite disingenuous to assume that "low levels of perceived corruption" could still be considered as one of the positive aspects of the country, when it should probably be limited to just the top 10 or at the most 15 countries. Not to mention that most of the 24 countries above the U.S. don't even mention the low corruption aspect in their lead. Canzeelia (talk) 18:17, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

The source shows that while the U.S. is perceived to be more corrupt than almost every other developed nation, it is less corrupt than almost all developing nations. The same could be said for these other attributes. 25 out of 175 is a high ranking. TFD (talk) 18:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Does it really reflect well on the U.S. to consider itself the "best" in having the lowest amount of corruption among the "developing countries" while being the worst among "developed" ones? Because if we're basing this on the Human Development Index (HDI), we have countries such as Bhutan, Chile, Estonia, the UAE and Uruguay having a lower HDI than the U.S. while simultaneously also being less corrupt. So I don't really think it holds much water to position aspects of corruption with the developmental status of a country. I'm just saying that 25th place really shouldn't be considered "good", and if we're going to say well "25 out of 175" is "pretty good actually", then it really does show how much the U.S. has declined at least corruption-wise, because our expectations has been lowered. Canzeelia (talk) 18:56, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that being among the worst developed countries in terms of perceived corruption is not good (quite sad IMO), but we have to use the same scale for all nations. From a worldwide perspective, which is the default scope of such statements, the U.S.'s perceived corruption index really is low, being in the least perceptively corrupt 15% of all nations. The U.S.'s corruption ranking is the worst among developed countries in the same sense that an Olympic bronze medalist is the worst among the medalists in an Olympic event. To frame such statements in a way that is designed to make the U.S. look bad is non-neutral. The wording is fine the way it is.  Mysterymanblue  07:25, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

While it is true that the US is not as corrupt as the global average, looking at the many countries which rank higher than it, they also do not have "low levels of perceived corruption" included in the lede. While it is factually true that the US has lower levels of corruption, it is not notable enough to be in the lede (as its a middling attribute). It becomes WP:UNDUE and should be removed. The rest of the attributes were actually discussed in a previous RfC, but this was not. Whether or not the other attributes "economic freedom, quality of life, education, and human rights" are to be included or not is not relevant to this discussion. HaudenosauneeC (talk) 03:10, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

There's no consensus to remove this, while there was consensus to retain the line about it; I'm adding it back. -- Rockstone^{[Send me a message!]} 05:54, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The US's score is 67%. That is not 'low levels of perceived corrption'. I agree that stating this fact is misleading at best - doesn't matter that its better than a lot of other countries, stating outright that its corruption is 'low' is misrepresenting the index results. The line is outdated; in 2017 the score was 75% but it's dropped fast, according to the CPI page, (for reasons that aren't too hard to figure out). At least add the word 'relatively' before 'low'.  Nixinova   T   C   03:02, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Use of "Indian" to describe the indigenous people of the US

An anonymous user proposed a change of all instances of "Indian" to describe indigenous people to "Native American". Personally I think this makes sense, since "Indian" is an erroneous term. What are the other opinions? PtolemyXV (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The term "Indian" is still preferred by many; "Native" remains controversial among some U.S. indigenous. There has been no push to rename entities like Indian reservations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, or the George Gustav Heye Center. This article reflects current usage. Mason.Jones (talk) 16:24, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

The two terms are not synonymous so are not always interchangeable. The indigenous people of Alaska for example were never called Native Indians. There are also as Mason Jones points out problems with all the terms, so no agreement on which should be used. Which term is preferable will depend on context and we are best to follow the usage in modern reliable sources. I don't mind for example using the term "Indian reservation" in this article, since that is what it is called. If you have any specific examples you wanted changed, you should discuss them on a case by case basis. TFD (talk) 17:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I would object on the basis of the increased wordiness involved. Plus, "Native American" is no more accurate a designation than "Indian" (i.e. "native" usually referring to someone born in a certain place). Dhtwiki (talk) 03:27, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Beware of well motivated simple rules creating unexpected problems. “Native American” is the modern preferred term. “Indian” was dominant historically. “American Indian” disambiguates the historical term. I think it is enough to acknowledge the modern preference and use it preferentially, but don’t hypercorrect historical names quotes or even expressions. Don’t rewrite history, but otherwise use modern preferred language. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:00, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I've no objections to such changes. GoodDay (talk) 07:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Addition to government section

Addition to government section seems somewhat on point but all sourced to junk media. I think some can be intergrated - not sure "Snowden" or "Qasem Soleimani" needs a mention in this summary article - but academic sources should be found and an inclusion talk take placeMoxy- 22:13, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

I disagree that any of the information belongs in the article in the first place as its scope is too specific and nature too arbitrary. To the extent that it should go in the article all of the information can be incorporated into the other sections of the article. There is no need for an independent section for this which runs the risk of exhibiting fork-like issues (wp:fork) and was indeed originally written in the same vein as an attack page (this entire section appears to be tit-for-tat response to a corresponding section on the China article. [3] Estnot (talk) 23:17, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Certainly there is excess information in the proposed edits. Assuming that the U.S. conducts mass surveillance on its population should be in the article, why do we need to know that the information was disclosed by Edward Snowden in June 2013, that it was the biggest leak in U.S. history, that Snowden was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, that his passport was revoked, he fled to Russia and that some people think he is being politically persecuted? If anyone is interested in how this information was uncovered, that's which links are for. TFD (talk) 00:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Sociopolitical issues and human rights

The United States conducted at least 14,040 drone strikes in Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, resulting in an estimated 10,888–20,823 civilian deaths. In 2020, Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions said that the US government's killing of Qasem Soleimani was a violation of the UN Charter, as it targeted a state actor located in a foreign state.

United States authorities have been criticized by human rights activists for widespread human rights abuses, including institutional racism and police brutality against minorities, and torture of prisoners

The United States government is known to conduct mass surveillance on its population. Many details about the surveillance activities conducted in the United States were revealed in a disclosure by whistleblower Edward Snowden in June 2013. Regarded as one of the biggest media leaks in the United States, it presented extensive details about the surveillance programs of the NSA such as PRISM, that involved interception of Internet data and telephonic calls from over a billion users, across various countries. After the leak, the United States Department of Justice revoked Snowden's passport and unsealed charges against him of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, prompting criticism of political persecution. He later fled and obtained asylum from Russia

References

Nebulous sentence vis-avis inequality

A sentence in the lead reads "However, the country has received criticism concerning inequality related to race, wealth and income, the use of capital punishment, high incarceration rates, and lack of universal health care." As I recall the sentence here previously stated in objective terms the country's relatively high level of income inequality. This seems more ideal as it talks objectively. Issues such as race, capital punishment and dare I say the healthcare system in my opinion lack sufficient weight to be featured in the lead as key aspects of the country. Thanks, thorpewilliam (talk) 11:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't support removing the race inequality/capital punishment stuff, but if you want to talk more about income inequality I would support that. PtolemyXV (talk) 17:24, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Lead change

User:C.J. Griffin The information within the related “see also”/“further” articles listed at the top of the relevant sections makes it very clear that there have been attempts by the US government, society, individuals, etc to address the problems enumerated in the lead. When I said the balancing material was well-documented [4], that was what I was referring to, not the rest of the information in the relevant sections. The article on Income inequality in the United States has a long section that documents all the different sorts of the policy responses to ameliorating the issue. Similarly the article on Police brutality in the United States has four sections that documents the different parts of the national response to the issue. I think it is important to point out and not get confused over the fact that the term United States in this article does not refer to just the government/state but the people/society as well. As compromise I can modify the wording to highlight the unfinished, piecemeal and tenuous nature of the solution to the problem. Here is the text I propose and have boldly added per wp:brd Estnot (talk) 00:14, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

These criticisms have prompted various responses from various stakeholders and attempts at their redress remain ongoing

I can't think of any other country's article that has such a bizarre statement in its lead which basically says of the criticisms "yeah, we're working on it!" Might want to find consensus here to include such a statement. Oh, and see WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 00:47, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

“I can't think of any other country's article that has such a buzzard statement in its lead which basically says of the criticisms "yeah, we're working on it!"” - it’s only weird if you think the USA is weird enough to not work on its problems. As i have said the information within the related “see also”/“further” articles listed at the top of multiple sections throughout the body of the article makes it very clear that there have been attempts by the US government, society, individuals, etc to address the problems enumerated in the lead. So the lead with the addition of my text would be “following the body.” Once again may I remind you that the term United States in this article does not refer to just the government/state but the people/society as well. It’s clear you have no interest in discussing this issue seriously so I’ve asked for outside help with this. Estnot (talk) 02:41, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Oppose including sentence adds zero information or link to any info.Moxy- 03:24, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

User:Moxy your reasoning as far as I can make it out to be hardly makes any sense. The proposed material tells the reader that the United States is attempting to address the problems enumerated in the lead section and this is important information both in and of itself (the problems are bad and need rectification) and in virtue of other reasons (leaving the material out would give readers the view that the United States is doing nothing to alleviate those concerns, which is absurd and unsupported by the reality of the content in the rest of the article). If the proposed material sounds too anodyne then that is because it was my attempt at compromise with CJ Griffin’s objection to the initial version of the proposed text which used more forceful language. [5] However, the user decided to respond with trolling when I asked him to explain his reasoning for his removing my material so maybe I will have an easier time discussing this issue with you Estnot (talk) 00:02, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Sources? Because incarceration rates still very high (United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world ) ......Capital punishment rates 3x times higher then in the 70s (In 2019, the country had the sixth-highest number of executions in the world, )....In September 2019, the Census Bureau reported that income inequality in the United States had reached its highest level in 50 years (a 2018 study by the OECD, the United States has a larger percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed nation)....United States remains the only developed nation without a system of universal health care.........and as for race relations that problem is self evident. The reason the US is criticized for these things is that its not getting better.Moxy- 11:02, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

the information and their respective sources are within the “see also”/“further” articles listed at the top of the different sections which correspond to and further explicate the different problems which are first enumerated in the lead. To use just two examples the article on Income inequality in the United States has a long section that documents all the different sorts of the policy responses to ameliorating the issue while the article on Police brutality in the United States has four sections that documents the different parts of the national response to the issue. Once again I think it is important to point out that the term United States in this article does not refer to just the government/state but the people/society as well. I think it is also important to point out that the phenomenon of redress is a process not a fixed state and one which is multivalent and not monovalent given the inherent variegatedness of American political society. It is entirely compatible to highlight the significant shortcomings of the United States in addressing the problems that you point out and simultaneously to also highlight the equally significant (and different) responses put forward by not just the government, but also corporations, civil society and private individuals to address those same problems Estnot (talk) 13:38, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Moxy makes a good point. It seems ridiculous to include a statement in the lead about attempts to redress the problems when the problems are either not improving or in some cases getting worse. And it is inappropriate to include material in the lead which is not reflected in the body of the article. Just because the article includes links to other articles which discuss attempts at redress does not justify shoehorning that statement into the lead of this article. Pointing this out is hardly trolling.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:05, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

that doesn’t negate my argument that there had been and continue to be attempts at addressing those problems. Whether these attempts actually fail or succeed (which is always debatable as it is a matter of subjective interpretation) is a separate question from whether attempts have been made at all. Every piece of evidence that you put forward to support your position can be countered with a piece of opposing evidence (which can easily be found in the “see also”/“further” articles embedded at the top of the multiple sections throughout the article) that supports mine. The election of Barack Obama advanced racial inequality. The ACA narrowed health inequalities as will the Build Back Better Act that is currently making its way through Congress. The Black Lives Matter movement pushbacked against police brutality. And this is assuming that there is only one way which these examples manifest that most appropriately responds to the problems enumerated. None of these forms of redress solve their related problem but they don’t have to in order for my argument to be validated (and for my proposed content to be reinserted into the article)Estnot (talk) 02:15, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I would argue that much of what you list there amounts to window dressing. The BBB Act, now thoroughly neutered by corporate interests, won't significantly ameliorate any of the issues listed in the lead or those mentioned by Moxy above, and the ACA is not even close to universal healthcare. Nevertheless, I must reiterate that “see also”/“further” sections do not satisfy WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, and the material as it exists now reflects the current consensus per a request for comment from earlier in the year. Perhaps you should look into starting another if you feel so strongly about this.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:37, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I would argue that much of what you list there amounts to window dressing. The BBB Act, now thoroughly neutered by corporate interests, won't significantly ameliorate any of the issues listed in the lead — this is the sort of partisan trolling that belongs in the cave. It does nothing to advance the discussion and doesn’t address a single thing I have repeatedly raised. Yes there are issues but that does not mean things are not being done to address them. To reiterate: it is important to point out that the term United States in this article does not refer to just the government/state but the people/society as well. It is also important to point out that the phenomenon of redress is a process not a fixed state and one which is multivalent and not monovalent given the inherent variegatedness of American political society. It is entirely compatible to highlight the significant shortcomings of the United States in addressing the problems that have been pointed out in this discussion section and simultaneously to also highlight the equally significant (and different) responses put forward by not just the government, but also corporations, civil society (including academia) and private individuals to address those same problems Estnot (talk) 10:39, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Norse landing at L'Anse Aux Meadows ca. 1000 AD -- still "disputed"?

Long time reader, first time talker.

The section European settlement states:

"Claims of very early colonization of coastal New England by the Norse are disputed and controversial. The first documented arrival of Europeans in the continental United States is that of Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, who made his first expedition to Florida in 1513."

As per this recently published article in the journal Radiocarbon, it seems there's quite a bit more certainty that the Norse were in North America ca. AD 1000. Referring to the disputed Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada: "The present paper concludes that charcoal from the site demonstrated no greater errors than normal from other settlement sites. With an assumed total systematic error of 30 ± 20 years, as a mean for various tree rings, the calibrated age range of L'Anse aux Meadows is AD 975–1020."

I won't try to edit the wikipage, but I thought I'd be the first to mention it here. - Kilroy

Jfriesen10 (talk) 06:04, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

References

You are certainly welcome to propose a specific changes to this article, but these events predated the United States by about seven centuries. This content is far more relevant to Norse colonization of North America and its related articles. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

The sentence in this WP article says "early colonization of coastal New England," referring to the present-day U.S. region. New England shouldn't be conflated with Newfoundland, which is to the north, in Atlantic Canada. Newly published reports simply confirmed that the Norse came to L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada, earlier than previously thought. The statement we have in this WP article in no way contradicts that, nor does it "dispute" that the Norse were in Newfoundland. What was, and still is, disputed is any Norse settlement on current U.S. territory. Mason.Jones (talk) 15:01, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Recent discoveries indicate that while there is no evidence of Norse settlement in what is now the US, there is more certainty that the Norse did explore the eastern coast of the US in the New England area and may have explored as far south as what is today North Carolina. Also what people are referring to as a settlement in New Foundland appears to be more likely to be either a trading post or a base camp for explorers or hunters rather than an actual permanent settlement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C50:5C7F:CFAB:95C0:B9E5:5F6C:7726 (talk) 22:35, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Dear Anonymous: it remains mostly speculation. There is no documentation for Norse visits that far south, and in the absence of artefacts, one has to have other proof. There is none, and many historians don't believe the Norse made it south of Newfoundland. The U.S. angle wasn't even mentioned in recent media reports on L'Anse aux Meadows. Including it here would be pseudohistory, and the current sentence is appropriately sober. Mason.Jones (talk) 01:19, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Acknowledging indigenous Americans in the infobox

At WikiConference North America earlier today, Carwil gave a fantastic keynote presentation on "New Maps for an Inclusive Wikipedia: Strategies to Counter Systemic Bias". One of the examples they used was the fact that most countries with Western predecessor states acknowledge this in their infoboxes, whereas countries whose territory was previously inhabited by indigenous peoples, such as the United States, tend to have no mention. Following up on that, I'd like to open a discussion here about whether/how we might want to add something to the infobox about Native Americans in the United States. I think the tricky aspect is that we don't want to just have it listed as "preceded by", because that erases the fact that contemporary Native Americans continue to live (and, to a limited extent, hold territory) in the United States. There are many complex "former country" parameters at {{Infobox country}}, some of which may need modification themselves (so I'll put an invite there). Thoughts? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:52, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Your link is to 5 hours and 20 minutes of presentation. Could you narrow it down? Could you link to example infoboxes? Dhtwiki (talk) 00:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki, apologies, it wasn't possible to give a timestamped link while the video was being streamed live. It is now; see here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:42, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The country infobox isn't designed to carry former states. The former country parameter is meant to show the preceding states, but even that I think is not designed for this particular use case desire. Some country articles misuse the |established_event1 = and similar fields to load on former states which lack a direct connection to the article focus, but that is a problem, not something to emulate. CMD (talk) 01:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The immediate predecessor states of the U.S. were the 13 states that had become sovereign nations and united to form a new nation. The place to consider aboriginal predecessor states is in articles about the original colonies. But it's not clear that colonies have predecessor states, since they are not sovereign states. TFD (talk) 01:55, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I can see LOTS of problems with this idea: Did the indigenous population conceive of "nations" in the way that we are discussing? Do we know what native nations existed in the area before colonization? Are we discussing only the native nations that preceded the original 13 states or to any native nation anywhere in the current territory of the US? Etc., etc., etc. --Khajidha (talk) 12:27, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The term Native American is linked in the infobox. That said we had a similar talk years ago about Canada and how we can represent the old divide per say.....outcome was to use language family map in first section on history File:Langs N.Amer.svg.--Moxy- 12:34, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

How we treat(ed) the indigenous peoples is a continuing debate in the United States (today is Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples' Day). However, this article is about a nation-state. To list Native peoples as "predecessor nations" in the infobox is to promote one lecturer's political narrative. Mason.Jones (talk) 15:52, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Dropping in here because my talk was mentioned. Yes, the United States is a complicated case for this kind of predecessor nation situation, perhaps even an order of magnitude more complex than Soviet Union, Ottoman Empire, and Roman Republic, all of which have long predecessor nation lists. However, the first obvious lesson from those three cases is that all of the territory involved, not just the space controlled at time of formation/independence should be considered here.

Notable indigenous predecessors, already included as territorial entities, include: the Hawaiian Kingdom, the Cherokee Nation (1794–1907)—relocated by force and treaty in the 1830s, Iroquois Confederacy, and inadequately on Wikipedia, Comancheria. Diplomatic relations with the United States preceded all of these acquisitions. They should appear alongside entities like Spanish Florida, northern Mexico via Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, etc. Given the scale, the infobox probably needs to have a summary (around the length of the lists mentioned above) and a link to a separate list. Wikipedians have put extensive effort into Territorial_evolution_of_the_United_States, and this effort would require a similar kind of detailed attention.

Were these indigenous polities "nations"? Let me put an authoritative source on the table:

"The United States has engaged with Indigenous nations on a government-to-government basis via federal treaties representing substantial international commitments since the origins of the republic. The first treaties sent to the Senate for ratification under the Constitution of 1789 were treaties with Indigenous nations. Treaties with Indigenous nations provided the means by which approximately one billion acres of land entered the national domain of the United States prior to 1900…"

Parmenter, Jon. “Indigenous Nations and US Foreign Relations.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2020.

For what it's worth, the United States government printed an Index and Schedule of Indian Land Cessions, including public domain maps for each state in 1897. Given the complexity, it may often be best to list these kinds of relationships for the state and/or the earliest United States territorial entity (e.g., Northwest Territory, Dakota Territory) rather than include them here. See also, this guide to the Library of Congress's cartographic collection. Private efforts include this interactive map.--Carwil (talk) 16:00, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Former country infoboxes are set up with some differences from current country infoboxes, which is why there is predecessor lists on Ottoman Empire and all the other examples given above, but not here on United States. Historical and current subdivisions (eg. Dakota Territory vs North Dakota) have the same difference. On former territories, general practice is indeed to as noted look at all of the territory involved, however FWIW a recent RfC at Talk:Nazi Germany went the other way. CMD (talk) 16:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

There were many Native peoples (so-called "tribes" and their sub-groups) who lived on current U.S. territory—often highly competitive among themselves, who fought with one another, took slaves, sometimes decimated other indigenous peoples and disputed the boundaries of their claimed "lands" with other Native peoples, not just white settlers. These are not the same as empires like the Ottomans, who conquered defined areas of European nations and even won control of modern European administrations. It would be not just unwieldy to attempt a similar narrative in the infobox of the modern nation-state "United States," it would be just that: a narrative. It clearly violates WP protocols on POV and "original research." This is one WP editor's sociopolitical construct, nothing more. Mason.Jones (talk) 16:45, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The Soviet Union, Ottoman Empire, and Roman Republic articles have "preceded by" lists that are misleading (S.U. mentions Finland, Germany, and Japan as precursor nations) or incomplete (Roman Republic one omits the numerous conquests on the Italian peninsula after 509 BC, as well as that of Carthage). Those articles are unwieldy (all are larger than this one) and none is exemplary (presently no good article or featured article status). Our present infobox only mentions the 1783 treaty with Britain, but, other than that, not what are usually considered the main cessions, via treaties with major European powers (the Louisiana Purchase, for example). If we were to list Native nations as precursors here, it would be unwieldy for sure; and our infobox is long enough as it is. The interactive map pointed to falls short of coming from a neutral point-of-view, as its title "Invasion of America" makes clear. If Europeans brought new sins to the New World, hegemonic rapaciousness was not among them. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:12, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The reply by Chipmunkdavis highlights a helpful distinction between types of infoboxes: current countries vs past governments. In the talk, I highlight Massachusetts Bay Colony as another example where there is no indigenous predecessor. Several other colonial and territorial pages either have no indigenous prior (Dakota Territory) or have general links to American Indians (Province of Georgia)) or Indigenous peoples of the Americas (New Netherland). In the eastern hemisphere one can walk backward and forward in time using infoboxes (e.g., Turkey->Ottoman Empire->Arab Kingdom of Syria->Syria Vilayet->Damascus Eyalet->Mamluk Sultanate), but this is made quite difficult throughout the Western hemisphere by two things: the lack of indigenous predecessor links for Euro-American entities, and the tendency to write "X people" but not "X territory/nation/polity" articles for Native Americans.

At the moment, Tsenacommacah—listed under "preceded by" at Colony of Virginia—is the exception rather than the rule, that's the failure of Wikipedia/Wikipedians. Contrast with the detailed work on much more ephemeral ex-territories created by non-Indigenous Americans such as Republic of Winston and the State of Deseret. While the follow-up conversations belong on numerous other pages, there are a lot of places where a historical territory with a "preceded by" slot could and should reference prior indigenous polities, starting with the colonies and territories. Perhaps that conversation can be taken up at WP:WikiProject United States.

Dhtwiki: My view is that an abbreviated, chronological list of predecessor societies is probably ideal, along the lines of the Soviet Union article. (The Soviet Union did indeed acquire territory from Germany (Kaliningrad) and Japan (Kuril Islands) in 1945.) However, since present-day nations have a history section (and not a "preceded by" section, probably the most concise form to modify the infobox would be to add a line under history that reads:

• Territorial expansion via American Indian Wars and US–Native American treaties 1778–1904.

It goes far afield of this conversation, but (IMHO) the Louisiana Purchase, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo/Mexican–American War, and Union victory/American Civil War probably all belong in the list as crucial moments when the extent of sovereignty dramatically changed.

And, yes, of course, people have created instruments (including the best ArcGIS map on this topic) about this driven by their POV. Arguably both "land cessions" (which downplays frequent coercion) and "invasion" are POVs of their own kind. However, the existence of prior Native claims is well attested to across sources—governmental, academic, and advocacy—over more than a century. There's a lot to be done to bring those to Wikipedia.--Carwil (talk) 02:23, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure those belong or can be adequately covered in an infobox (it should of course be covered in the article, but that's not the question here). This all has a big smell of WP:RGW. Predecessors in infoboxes, whether in the |p1= (and so on) series of parameters or in a chronological listing, should usually be those that are most relevant for the article topic: so either legal/[regime changes] (such as Weimar Germany being the predecessor of Nazi Germany; or the Russian Empire being the predecessor of the Soviet Union, which in turn was the predecessor of modern Russia) or broad historic subdivisions (so the Frankish kingdoms are predecessors of medieval and eventually modern France, and listed as such inus the infobox: but the [Western] Roman Empire is not, even though it did hold the territory of pretty much the whole of modern France; nor are the Gauls, even though, yes, they also occupied the same territory).

While it may suck, and we can certainly lament the unfortunate consequences, the existing Native-American population was not a predecessor, from either of these two viewpoints, to either the early British colonies or the modern USA. It shared the territory, and was displaced from it, but its prior presence did not materially impact the formation of the new colonies, which were distinctly European. So, this is far too much detail to be covered accurately or with appropriate nuance in an infobox. Even the proposed line ("Territorial expansion via American Indian Wars and US–Native American treaties 1778–1904.") is quite too long for an infobox. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:00, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

This type of addition is why certain parameters are excluded in modern country templates.Moxy- 03:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

RandomCanadian spells it out: this reeks of RGW: "righting great wrongs." One or two WP editors wish to compile a list of (according to whose criteria?) "Native lands"—fairly often disputed by other Natives—as distinct "predecessor" nations to the U.S. It's ethnic studies for your general encyclopedia, and a political project. Mason.Jones (talk) 17:08, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mason.Jones, I guess "correcting systemic bias" to one editor is "righting great wrongs" to another. Carwil has done a very thorough job above laying out the scholarly research. Is your argument that, because popular history has erased Native American history, we ought to defer to it over the scholarly research, since anything else would be RGW? If not, what scholarly sources do you wish to put forward for us to consider? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb -- There are plenty of ways to foster inclusion of Native peoples and their histories in Wikipedia. As some suggest, this could perhaps be done on the Oklahoma Territory level, but the idea of baptizing imprecise, overlapping Native territories as "predecessor nations" of the nation-state United States, in a concise Wikipedia country infobox, is pure politics. Mason.Jones (talk) 18:33, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• The better question is what should be listed in the infoboxes of various states. There's nothing short enough to put in this infobox. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:46, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Note diff. If we had Native Americans in the United States as a predecessor in the infobox, we would need a dozen links, and that's too much. It should go from Soviet Union as well. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:52, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The concept of predecessor nations has to do with state continuity, which does not exist in this case. The U.S. for example did not take on the international obligations of the Indian nations and in fact they continue to exist. Indian nations ceded territory to the U.S. in the same way that Britain, Spain, France, Russia and Mexico have. TFD (talk) 20:07, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb, Mason.Jones it is absolutely not my point to ignore the scholarly literature, but rather to listen to it. I'm well aware of the advice at WP:RGW, "We can record the righting of great wrongs, but we can't ride the crest of the wave because we can only report that which is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion." Moreover, my current proposal (which I shorten here, given length concerns) is:

• Territorial expansion via American Indian Wars 1778–1904

This is in many ways comparable to Re-establishment (1945) in Czechoslovakia, the changes in country membership in United Kingdom, and the merger in Tanzania. (It also clearly parallels multinational states like the Russian Empire, Spanish Empire, and Soviet Union, but both on Wikipedia and in historical scholarship, talk of empire and the United States is both serious and controversial.) In any case, territorial expansion is a topline concern of nearly all treatments of United States history. Representatively, it appears as the topic of numerous AP US History segments (which also lists American Indians 41 times, far more than the Bill of Rights at 4, and the Articles of Confederation at 8).

On this issue, consider these statements in the scholarly literature, chosen from historical reference works:

• "Following the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the first treaties sent to the Senate for ratification (representing the initial exercise of the treaty-making clause specified in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution) were Indian treaties. Second, most of the territory and natural resources held by the United States today came into its control as the result of a complex, often violent, century-long engagement with hundreds of tribal polities. This was no mere sideshow: an attempt in the 1890 federal census to quantify expenditures relating to American Indians after 1789 (the sum of costs of military actions, diplomacy, treaty provisions, and bureaucratic infrastructure) revealed that they comprised 9 to 12 percent of all federal outlays during the first century of US history." (emphasis mine) Parmenter, Jon. “Indigenous Nations and US Foreign Relations.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2020.
• The authoritative Cambridge Histories compendiums, effectively summaries by experts on current historical scholarship, will address American and the World in 2021. The volumes situate the United States as "how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded." (Volume I) Volume II "places the United States, Indigenous nations, and their peoples in the context of a rapidly integrating world. Specific topics addressed in the volume include nation and empire building, inter-Indigenous relations, settler colonialism, slavery and statecraft, the Mexican-American War, global integration, the antislavery international, the global dimensions of the Civil War, overseas empire-building, state formation, international law, global capitalism, border-crossing movement politics, technology, health, the environment, immigration policy, missionary endeavors, mobility, tourism, expatriation, cultural production, colonial intimacies, borderlands, the liberal North Atlantic, US-African relations, Islamic world encounters, the US island empire, the greater Caribbean world, and transimperial entanglements."
• While there was indeed a substantial past period of erasure, as early as 1998, Reviews in American History could point to the "explosion" of historical scholarship focusing on Native Americans in the colonial era and afterwards: "Currently, one of the most explosive and transformative new subfields of early American history is Amerindian history. … Armed with a growing appreciation of Amerindian cultures, scholars are rewriting the history of colonial warfare and diplomacy." Steele, Ian Kenneth. “Exploding Colonial American History: Amerindian, Atlantic, and Global Perspectives.” Reviews in American History 26, no. 1 (1998): 70–95. https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.1998.0016.

I'm hearing two other objections:

• "There's no room." — Wikipedia isn't paper, but a swap with Bill of Rights and Last Amendment seems reasonable.
• Why prioritize this? First, because broad extensions of sovereignty are in fact key historical facts for countries; in this case we are discussing the majority of US territory. Second, because a principal fact of any historical entity is what was there before.

--Carwil (talk) 17:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

P.S. re length: "Territorial expansion via American Indian Wars" is 46 characters; "Federal presidential constitutional republic" is 44 characters. Both would reside on one side of the vertical divide of the infobox.--Carwil (talk) 18:22, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

There is certainly room in the article; the topic is already discussed in the lead section and in the body of the article. The infobox is supposed to be short and to include simple facts that do not require explanation. "Cars drive on the right" is in the infobox because there is nothing more to say. "Natives lived here before" is a tautology that is meaningless without explanation, and "These 23 major Native American polities were displaced" can't possibly fit. Just because it isn't paper doesn't mean we can have an unlimited amount of content. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 17:55, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Not to be too reactive, but "Confederation" and "Declaration" (as well as "Gini" and "HDI") are also meaningless without explanation. The explanation comes with clicking the Wiki link. A sensible general policy is probably to have two kinds of history-directed links for colonial societies, one linking the colonial "mother" country and the other to "indigenous population(s)". I think very little astonishment would attend a link to Indigenous peoples in the United States. However, I acknowledge that would restructure Infobox:Country (a worthwhile discussion that I'm not starting today), so I'm advancing a simple proposal working within the existing framework.--Carwil (talk) 18:17, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Carwil -- This is a general encyclopedia where you verbosely, and pedantically, seek something beyond "inclusion of Native peoples' cultural history" in U.S.-related WP articles. Rather than place those cultural details within an article about a specific Native people or about a former U.S. territory once dominated by them, or using links or footnotes, you seek to redefine concise country infoboxes to fit an ideological concept: that the Shawnee or the Cherokee were "predecessor nations" of the United States—a modern nation-state based on English common law (Napoleonic in Louisiana), with German-influenced universities and other institutions having European antecedents. The same as a Native council of elders it most certainly isn't. You are patently overreaching in order to promote a specific polemical "cause," and it must be called out as such. Mason.Jones (talk) 18:49, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I would accept linking to Territorial evolution of the United States (which is already linked in the lead) from the "Last state admitted" infobox entry and linking from that article to List_of_United_States_treaties#U.S.–Native_American_treaties, since there doesn't seem to be mention of Native cessions at the former article. The latter article only cryptically indicates such cessions, and separate articles on the treaties that led to such cessions have fairly crude maps in some instances. That might be improved.

I dont see the need to link to American Indian Wars, as it possibly overemphasizes the grudging acceptance of white administration, as well as including Canadian tribes and wars.

Otherwise, I don't think this article is derelict in providing pointers to articles on Native American affairs, nor are such articles lacking in detail: Native Americans in the United States, linked to by hatnote under "Indigenous peoples and pre-Columbian history", is enormous, with the largest word count—over 19,000—of any referenced in this discussion. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:25, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I've followed my own advice and changed the "Last state admitted" infobox linking, to the comprehensive "territorial evolution" article, where I've added links to the US state admission process, which we'll lose by not linking it here, as well as adding the list of U.S.–Native_American_treaties to its "See also" section, as I outlined above, thus making it even more comprehensive. I've left it linked (somewhat obscurely, as a piped link) in the lead. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:11, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate your constructive engagement with this issue, Dhtwiki. After reviewing Territorial evolution of the United States, I am even more insistent that the issues that Sdkb and have raised here are not addressed without a link to eithe American Indian Wars or US–Native American treaties. The Territorial evolution… article makes an editorial decision to silence almost all mention of US-American Indian treaties (technically, three are there) or recognized territories, while coding American Indian territory recognized by treaty as "unorganized territory." While this is one way to constrain the scope of a very long article, it has a missing counterpart. Currently, there is no article that corresponds to the 1897 an Index and Schedule of Indian Land Cessions review produced by the US government or Sam B. Hilliard's American Indian Land Cessions map. The United States expanded by claiming, invading, and negotiating American Indian land from 1784 through the early 1900s, but territorially reorganized long after then, so if we want to include the tighter chronology (as I think we should, given its historical importance), a second link is warranted.

(Apologies for taking a while to respond; I've been offline.)--Carwil (talk) 14:36, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

In "Territorial evolution of the United States", I don't see a concerted attempt to silence mention of Native cessions as much as it would take an exceptional amount of map making to include them on an equal basis, as well as that the article is somewhat tediously detailed as it is. And I think that the first "overlay" has to be concerning the major acquisitions via treaties/purchases with/from other colonizing powers and organizing those acquisitions into states and territories. I've pointed out the problem with linking to "American Indian Wars", as it somewhat confusingly mentions Canadian belligerents in the infobox, while the text seems mostly to involve US fights. If there were a link to an article on Native cessions in the infobox, it should be separate from that to the evolution article. Your attempt to combine both links in one entry (e.g. "Territorial expansion via American Indian Wars 1778–1904") too much emphasized "American Indian Wars" in the text. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:10, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Acknowledging indigenous language Wikipedias

Before this discussion started, I was aware that there were some native language Wikipedias. This discussion prompted my to look up what they had to say about this country, especially the Navajo, Cherokee, and Cree articles, each of which has very little. But they exist, often maintained by non-native students of what are usually regarded as unusually difficult languages to master. Dhtwiki (talk) 09:32, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Disputed tag

Is there actually any real dispute that the country has been criticized for inequality related to race, wealth, and income; use of capital punishment; high incarceration rates; and lack of universal health care? I feel the tag is being added because of the consensus against the changes proposed above. This is made clear by the fact that the proposed text is about responses to the criticisms. How can criticisms that are being responded to at the same time be disputed? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:35, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

the dispute I am referring to isn’t with the validity of the statement, but the disproportionate weight given to statement due to the lack of a balancing statement. That is precisely why I added an undue weight tag [6] but you reverted it on the spurious grounds that only I thought the criticism was undue which is why I was forced to use the more ambiguous “dispute” tag. [7]Estnot (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

So there are two people (I think) who have an issue, and eight that disagree. There is already active discussion, and no reason to insert a tag. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:24, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

There’s not eight people who disagree that there is an undue weight issue. There’s eight people who disagree with my request for comment for reasons which don’t even touch on the issue of due weight. The fact that there is an active discussion about this undue weight issue in this talk page section is precisely the reason why the tag should be inserted (it would not make procedural sense to do so otherwise) Estnot (talk) 21:10, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia (being Wikipedia) entertains discussions on the silliest of ideas.

You can start a discussion on Talk:Homeopathy about how it is not a pseudoscience and you will be entertained by many editors. However that does not entitle you to insert a disputed tag. Tags need a consensus in their favor. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

my ideas are silly only to jokers who clown around with the hounding buffoonery. (wp:hounding) We’re talking about justifying the tag addition on the basis of the text itself, not on the basis of its evaluation by editors. Nobody is talking about needing a consensus for adding tags except for those who are reading these comments with a red nose Estnot (talk) 10:04, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Straw Poll

Is there a need for an NPOVundue or disputed tag in the lead, as seen here and here?

• No, there are no NPOV issues, and certainly no dispute to the accuracy of the statement. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:24, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Comment — the second edit placed an undue weight tag, not an NPOV one. Please do not misrepresent my position and modify the prompt accordingly Estnot (talk) 22:05, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:20, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

• Yes for the reasons provided above (lack of a balancing statement in the lead section of a prominent article) Estnot (talk) 22:05, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
• No - See my above comments. These bad faith edits are also a certain way to get sanctioned. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Comment - how convenient of you to show up here AFTER I have voted and while we are in the middle of a debate on another article. [8] (wp:following)Estnot (talk) 10:04, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• No Dispute over a single sentence does not merit flagging the entire article for NPOV concerns. Dimadick (talk) 10:51, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposed photo for religion section

Christmas Eve services at St. James' Church in Manhattan

The religion section of this article is currently lacking any photo. This seems like a meaningful omission, as it would aid reader understanding to be able to see what the practice of religion in the U.S. actually looks like. I went searching for candidates on Commons, and despite the good pictures tool being broken and some major categorization issues (e.g. [9] fixed), I was able to find a promising option, File:Christmas Eve2.jpg (right). I think it meets a number of criteria that make it a good candidate:

• It's a high-quality photograph taken with a DSLR camera, with good lighting and composition.
• It depicts Protestantism, the most widely practiced religious tradition in the U.S.
• It depicts a church that's prominent enough to have an article (nice for the caption) but still generic enough that it feels typical and representative of the norm.
• It depicts a service rather than an empty building or an exterior, again showing religion as it's actually generally encountered.

The section currently has a hidden comment about not having any image in order to avoid disputes, which I think is a cop-out. We shouldn't be omitting useful information just because some people might edit war over it, and I propose that we include a hidden comment requiring that any changes be discussed on talk, which (combined with semi-protection) should ensure minimal disruption. Thoughts? Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:44, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not representative. TFD (talk) 07:56, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I feel that this image is more about how religion is practiced in general, or more specific, how Christianity is practiced, less than it is about religion in the United States of America. Lolitart (talk) 08:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I would agree. It represents only one religion out of the many practiced in the US. If someone wants to make a photo "collage" of different religion-related photos, perhaps including the one proposed as well as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism photos, that might be more advisable. PtolemyXV (talk) 20:27, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

As someone who has zero connection to Protestantism and as someone who's worked on more than a few collages (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and many more), I think I'm fairly well-placed to speak neutrally on both. Collages can be nice in many circumstances, but they have the drawbacks of taking up more space (which we don't have a lot of here) and reducing image size. So when it's possible to use only one image, it's generally better to do so. And I think this is one of those times. You're interpreting "representative" to mean "covers every facet of the thing", whereas what I meant by it is just "depicts a typical instance of the thing". And the typical instance definition is the one that actually needs to be met—readers are smart enough to know that just since we chose this image doesn't mean that it's the only way American religion looks. And if we're going to choose one religion to depict, the clear sensible thing to do is to go with the most common one. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:38, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Anything but a collage of photos giving undue weigh to the section that would be full of tiny images that aren't accessible. Something education would be preferred.... over decoration. A map like this would be educational over 4 or 5 images of white people in buildings Moxy- 01:07, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

What's representative about U.S. Protestantism is congregationalism, Calvinism, factionalism and evangelism, not a high Anglican church originally built for wealthy elites in early New York state. TFD (talk) 14:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Do you have a suggested alternative? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:16, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

It's a pretty photo (and the Episcopal church is historically important, if not demographically representative of Protestantism), but on my wide screen the chart sits beside most of the text. An added photo would impinge on the following, "Health", section and push its image down. Dhtwiki (talk) 02:30, 29 October 2021 (UTC) (edited 05:51, 29 October 2021 (UTC))

- i don't agree, that map doesn't show how religion is practiced, it's inpersonal and non specific, an image of a church for a popular faith allows non americans to see what american christianity looks like. Balaga Xx Balaga Xx (talk) 06:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:CANVASSING by Estnot

Harassment, IP blocked (yet again). El_C 14:42, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I feel like the constant gish galloping by Estnot merits a sanction or a topic ban – especially after they have decided to engage in canvassing with another editor as a "Plan B" despite the fact that all of their proposals to this article has been against widespread consensus. 49.228.19.151 (talk) 15:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC) please stop following (wp:following) my edits Estnot (talk) 17:10, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Awkward wording

"At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million square kilometers), it is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area."

Emphasis mine. The bolded part is awkward wording and doesn't look very good. I believe this should be changed to note that this depends on measurements.BurritoQuesadilla (talk) 16:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree that without some explanation the present wording looks like we're just uncertain. Dhtwiki (talk) 20:03, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Note that there is a footnote that explains the situation. I don't know that some part of it needs to be incorporated into the main text. Dhtwiki (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

It is totally absurd to include coastal waters in calculating a country's area. Where will this end? Area = length x breadth: what is unclear about that? Surely this wording would do for any nit-picker: "..., it is the third-largest country in the world by land mass". If the footnote needs to remain (why?), leave it in but don't incorporate any part of it into the text. Regards, Billsmith60 (talk) 23:40, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Additionally, why is the area given in million square miles first and million square kilometres second, when it's the other way around for every other country page on Wikipedia? Does nobody care about consistency? 15:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.161.23.67 (talk)

Probably because "square miles" is the more usual measurement for most Americans. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:39, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Length

This article is 300KB Long, with the average readers attention span being around 50KB. Considering this is literally the world superpower, it's article should be easier to read. This article is in desperate need of shortage, and I think this article should be shortened down to a Good Article, maybe even a featured article. Lallint (talk) 19:58, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Editors, quite a few from outside the U.S., have opinions about the United States, as this is the most-read country article in English Wikipedia (and often second in other languages). Editors add new maps, photos, and pointers about how the U.S. relates to their country historically or politically. An administrative directive (or editorial intervention) from WP is necessary. It's hopeless otherwise. Mason.Jones (talk) 22:03, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

The word size of the article is about 13,400. That's about a third more than the article on India, which is a featured article on a country of comparable size (which, IIRC, has recently undergone some trimming of its own). But mere quantities doesn't really tell us how readable an article is or where to cut if it isn't. If anyone thinks that they see where some trimming can be done, then make specific recommendations and take some interest in continuing curation of this article. Dhtwiki (talk) 10:29, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

USA = 33425 words.--Moxy- 11:46, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 December 2021

Elreibabys (talk) 08:58, 3 December 2021 (UTC) 71% Whites

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ClaudineChionh (talk – contribs) 09:22, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

There is no racial inequality in this country

Racial Inequality in the USA is a total myth. There is no such thing as racial inequality in this country, it's just another tool to divide us all. If there was any real racial inequality, Barack Obama would never have become President of the United States. Remove that false section from the lead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BurritoQuesadilla (talk • contribs)

Do you have any evidence of this? (And no "Obama was the President" is not an argument, just a faulty generalization). (CC) Tbhotch^™ 19:50, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that it does? There is no racial inequality in this country. It is a myth. Black people have just as much opportunities as White people do. Black people aren't excluded from anything. White people and Black people can travel through all paths of life equally.BurritoQuesadilla (talk) 19:54, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm assuming you haven't read through Racial inequality in the United States, but it's well sourced and provides the evidence you're asking for. - Aoidh (talk) 19:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

That is made by biased sources. I have my doubts about them. Due to collaboration within scientists and the minority communities on releasing materials "harmful" to the common woke agenda, it is impossible to challenge this.BurritoQuesadilla (talk) 02:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is built on consensus and reliable sources, and all reliable sources say that racial inequality is a problem in the United States (it's also a problem in other countries). -- Rockstone^{[Send me a message!]} 05:03, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm about as white as you can get and I can't believe that you could possibly be serious when you made this statement.--Khajidha (talk) 15:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Why you lying? Racial Inequality isn't real. I am being completely serious.BurritoQuesadilla (talk) 02:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I think there's some sort of miscommunication due to your age. I don't know how old are you (nor do I need to know it), but there's this specific problem that you can't give proper arguments. First, you arrived with "Racial Inequality in the USA is a total myth" with no credible source saying that, later you moved to "Barack Obama would never have become President of the United States", which is a faulty generalization, later you asked me if I "have any evidence that it does" despite the fact we have an article at Racial inequality in the United States discussing it with credible academic sources (and in itself your question is an argument from ignorance). Now you are calling the sources "biased" without any kind of demonstration that they are actually biased or unreliable. At the top of your talk page when you were unblocked the following message appears: "I was wrong because I wasted the time of both regular users and administrators of Wikipedia [...] I was bored and because I was feeling hyperactive". If you're feeling bored and hyperactive again, take note that this website is not therapy. This was discussed months ago and unless you have to offer something new and relevant, you are wasting our time with circular discussions. (CC) Tbhotch^™ 02:58, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

In this sense .

Does that even make sense?

 Discuss . Ala a quasi political argument. The topic. About the possibilities. Organize mass riots or civil confusion. On a racial basis. If so . What are the NEW opportunities? Redirect. Reorient. The US citizens. That, possibly. Not everyone and not always are happy.195.244.180.59 (talk) 14:28, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I am hispanic and I can confirm this is 100% true. Dankluxuries (talk) 11:13, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 December 2021

Elreibabys (talk) 14:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

71 % White

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:53, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Labor history link due for see also section?

I added a link to the article Labor history of the United States to the see also section of the Further immigration, expansion, and industrialization sub-section of the article. It was subsequently deleted by User:Estnot with the argument being it was somehow giving "undue weight to a topic that is discussed only tangentially in the section". If anything, discussion of labor is underrepresented in the article given its significance during this time period. Thoughts? EDIT: I propose these additions to fifth sentence of the last paragraph of that sub-section: "These dramatic changes were accompanied by growing inequality and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements." (this updated material is covered in the cited source)--C.J. Griffin (talk) 04:45, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Ethnicity

71% White Elreibabys (talk) 11:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Elreibabys If you are proposing a change to this article, please tell exactly what portion you want changed and offer a reliable source to support it. 331dot (talk) 11:11, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 11 December 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. This clearly isn't going to pass. (closed by non-admin page mover) Calidum 20:43, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

---

United States → United States of America – The United States of America is the formal name of the country, and I don't really think that this is going to create any issues with respect to disambiguation or the ability of a user to find the page. In other words, I don't see much at all lost by moving the page while seeing it moved would gain the use of the formal name while maintaining equal recognizably. — Mhawk10 (talk) 07:14, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• OpposeOneTwo Two previous no consensus discussions. ALso see WP:COMMONNAME Signed, I Am Chaos (talk) 08:19, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Nothing has changed under the reasons cited in the FAQ box that is also displayed at the top of this talk page, or on Talk:United States/Name and Talk:United States/Requested move sub-discussion, or those two previous discussions linked by User:I Am Chaos, or other such RMs in May 2010, January 2015, March 2016 and October 2018. The WP:COMMONNAME policy expresses a preference for the commonly used name for the subject (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources), NOT the official or formal name. "United States" is the most commonly used name for the country in television programs (particularly news), newspapers, magazines, books, and legal documents (including the Constitution of the United States), and various well-established encyclopedias in the English-language. Furthermore, the WP:CONCISE policy expresses a preference for a concise title that is sufficient to identify the topic to a person familiar with the general subject area; "United States" is more concise than "United States of America". Zzyzx11 (talk) 09:09, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. We don't necessarily use formal or legal names, see WP:COMMONNAME. 331dot (talk) 09:54, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose "United States" is simpler and more common. Super Ψ Dro 10:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• Weaker than average oppose - while I will concede that the country's official name is used more commonly than that of other countries, such as United Kingdom, "United States" is still by far the most commonly used name. I would also like to discourage users who oppose this move from simply invoking wp:LASTTIME as their justification. Bneu2013 (talk) 11:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• I would personally expect it to be at "United States of America" but as noted Britannica uses just "United States" but indeed the UK's longer name is almost never used. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:40, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Support. It is the name of the country. There is no loss and the gain is significant, particularly for global audiences who may not necessarily be as frequently confronted by the shortened form and expect to find the longer one. Walrasiad (talk) 12:02, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:BROKE. Both titles are accurate, and I don't see any advantage to moving everything. 162 etc. (talk) 17:19, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per WP:COMMONNAME. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:23, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. "United States" is rather wordy to begin with. The Online Britannica has that version, but my 14th edition print Britannica has "United States of America". However, I see no reason to change this article's name. Others have given the reasons that are in accordance with Wikipedia guidelines. Dhtwiki (talk) 19:54, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. "United States" is the standard term across the world (notable exceptions: the Olympics and international summits). We should also seek general consensus to keep the current lead sentence: "United States of America, commonly known as the United States." Editors often replace this with "United States, officially the United States of America." It should be discussed, too. Mason.Jones (talk) 20:03, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

most Americans who report to pollsters that they have no religion are, in fact, Christian

most Americans who report to pollsters that they have no religion are, in fact, Christian. What they mean is that that they are not Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, etc. Many of them regularly attend unaffiliated Christian churches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:701:C002:FD40:F075:3543:21DE:D9C8 (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Please offer independent reliable sources that support your claim. 331dot (talk) 19:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Especially as most of the people I know that attend such churches are rather emphatic about being Christian. Even to the point of calling themselves "real Christians" or saying that other groups (particularly Catholics and Mormons) are not "real Christians".--Khajidha (talk) 18:00, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Currently the infobox says that 28% of Americans have "no religion." The source (Pew research) uses the term "religiously unaffiiated."[10] This breaks down to 5% atheist, 6% agnostic and 18% "nothing in particular." It would be more accurate to says "No religious affiliation," since as the IP says, most of these people may be religious, but do not identify with a church. TFD (talk) 19:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Where do "spiritual" people who believe in some sort of creator being/force but do not apply a personification to it fall? They are the ones I would think would be in the "nothing in particular" group. On the other hand, I know many people who consider themselves Christian but do not identify with (or even attend) a church, but I wouldn't think of them as falling into that classification. --Khajidha (talk) 19:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

What reason is there to support the IP assertion that they are "Christian"? They could be Jewish, Hindu, or a multitude of other things just going by "I'm religious but not affiliated with a specific church/synagogue/mosque/temple." --OuroborosCobra (talk) 19:49, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

When people were asked "What is your religious preference?" the number of Christians increased by 5% on average. while the number of people who said none declined to 20% (Gallop poll).[11] This might be a better source to add. Since the Pew Research poll says that 11% are agnostic or atheist, that would mean that 9% have religious beliefs but do not identify with Christianity or other organized religion. This might be a better source for the info-box.

So the IP is partly right: one third of the people who said "no religion," identified a religious preference, one third identified no preference and one third had no religious belief. Although not in the polls, there are also cultural Christians, people who are not believers but celebrate Christmas and Easter, etc.

TFD (talk) 21:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

United States of America. Origin name

The first who named the thirteen colonies You are united of America was Luis de Unzaga 2A0C:5A84:350C:8500:69F0:E6CE:B63F:7FD0 (talk) 10:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

So this was interesting, yeah: According to Luis de Unzaga, he is credited by George Washington as coming up with the term "United States". But, while the sourcing in that article does point out that Unzaga wrote it, there's no source for saying it was that influential. We'll need that before adding, but I feel like that might be an interesting tidbit, maybe not here but perhaps on more detailed history pages. --Golbez (talk) 14:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think he came up with the name. The Declaration of Independence had already referred to the "the thirteen united States of America." De Unzaga referred to Washington as "General of the united states of America" (General de los estados unidos Americanos.) It was not the name of the country, but short for a list of the states that each declared independence. TFD (talk) 15:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Is “Constitutional Republic” somewhat redundant?

I made an edit of this and it got reverted which is fair enough, I probably should have brought it here first.

But yeah, I find the above label somewhat redundant because by nature a republic is constitutional. You don’t need to point out that it does unlike a constitutional monarchy. plus constitutional republic just redirects to the republic page, so it really doesn’t have a reason to be labeled as such. ICommandeth 10:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

There have been states that were known as republics (e.g. Rome, Venice) whose governance wasn't organized according to an overarching and explicit set of rules that were drawn up in a relatively short period of time, such as modern constitutions tend to be (absent their amendments, perhaps). So, I don't see "constitutional republic" as redundant. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess that’s fair. I’m just thinking about how most others pages for countries don’t say constitutional republic, and I think it would be a little odd to have this page stand out and stuff. I generally like consistency across the site with this stuff and when things stand out it bugs me. ICommandeth 03:11, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't know of any other republic that gives as much careful attention to its constitution. Rjensen (talk) 03:16, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I concur with User:Dhtwiki. Because there have been several republics which did not have constitutions in the modern sense, the term "constitutional republic" is necessary to distinguish the United States from those earlier governments. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:07, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Umm... YOU have been removing those words from many articles, so this one only "stands out" to you because you made it do so. --Khajidha (talk) 14:10, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, guilty as charged.

Maybe it would be better if every republics page had the constitutional label under its government section ICommandeth 17:26, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I cannot find the term constitutional republic in reliable sources and even in Wikipedia it's a redirect to "republic." Contrary to what Dhtwiki said, there was a Constitution of the Roman Republic. TFD (talk) 15:06, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Google Books returns plenty of books that use the term in their title. It's true that most of them probably aren't reliable sources. But the very first one is written by a law professor at Yale Law School (the most prestigious and exclusive law school in America) who would not use that phrase in his book's title unless he really meant it. --Coolcaesar (talk) 20:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

What I said was "...overarching and explicit set of rules that were drawn up in a relatively short period of time...." The article on Rome that you link to says "...a set of uncodified norms and customs which, together with various written laws, guided the procedural governance of the Roman Republic." Those are two different types of constitution, even if each is labeled as such; and I did label my type as "modern". Dhtwiki (talk) 05:41, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

One reliable sources that uses the term "constitutional republic" doesn't outweigh millions of reliable sources that call it a republic. In fact that's part of the name of the book and isn't used inside the book. The full title is The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic. It's a book about the constitution of the republic. A Yale professor of anthropology might describe the U.S. as a "multi-racial republic." That doesn't mean that is the type of republic it is.

The comparison with Rome doesn't work. The UK has a set of uncodified norms and customs which, together with various written laws, guide the procedural governance of the kingdom. That's why it is called a constitutional monarchy. In fact the U.S. states also have uncodified norms and customs, in particular the common law which is based on precedent and therefore uncodified.

I don't see any reason to use an undefined and rarely used term in the lead.

TFD (talk) 06:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Coolcaesar's list shows that more than one reliable source uses "constitutional republic". So, it should be accepted as a term of art, even though "republic under a written constitution" would be more accurate, especially given that "constitutional" has various meanings. With regard to Rome, as well as the United Kingdom, it means "the way things are done", as opposed to how they are specified by a written constitution or statute law (e.g., in the UK the sovereign is supreme in law, constitutionally parliament is supreme). Consequently, Rome shouldn't have an article title "Constitution of the Roman Republic" and is not a "constitutional republic" as that term is applied here, even though the UK is often properly termed a "constitutional monarchy". So, confusion reigns, but that doesn't mean that "constitutional" is redundant to "republic". Dhtwiki (talk) 06:21, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Racial percentages

WHITES ARE 61.6% ACCORDING TO THE U.S. CENSUS — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.62.45.147 (talk) 12:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Only if you look at percentages that include reporting in combination with some other race. That will also lead to a situation where more than 100% is reported as a total, so the 58-ish percent figure is the better one. See the NPR source for a good breakdown.[12] —C.Fred (talk) 14:19, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

In combination, it is 72% Whites according to the US Census. Hispanic is not a race.--88.12.248.187 (talk) 01:10, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Nor is white, according to Wikipedia. Race (human categorization) tells us "race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning." HiLo48 (talk) 01:18, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

We had a discussion about this a while back. There seems to be a consensus not to present results from the 2020 census in the same manner as past censuses, due primarily to the fact that the 2020 census saw an unexpected surge in the number of people identifying with more than one racial category. Therefore, 2020 data is not directly comparable to previous data. The Census Bureau actually advised against this. There seems to be a broad agreement to present each the shares of each racial category both alone and total, instead of grouping the multiracial category into one figure. Examples of where this is done are Virginia#Ethnicity and Tennessee#Ethnicity. While the latter adds up to more than 100%, it can still be useful in providing readers with a more clear understanding of the racial and ethnic composition of a particular place. For example, the vast majority of people who identify as Native American also identify with at least one other category. Bneu2013 (talk) 01:36, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Hispanic or latino population

Sassy Frassy writes false data without source about it. Some supervisor must stop this vandalism. YMVD (talk) 12:45, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

"EE UU" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect EE UU and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 January 2#EE UU until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Rubbish computer Ping me or leave a message on my talk page 23:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)