Talk:American Australian

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[edit] Tagged

I've tagged this article for neutrality based on a couple things. The first is that either the population of Australia, and by extension American Australians, consists of solely English speaking Anglo-Saxon protestants, or the infobox is woefully incomplete. No American Australia speaks Spanish, or French, or Hebrew, or Japanese, or...? No American Australian is Jewish? Or Roman Catholic? Or Buddhist? Or Islamic? Or... the list is endless and the demographics are misrepresented in the infobox right now. Perhaps part of that lies in what could be the use of "Anglophone" in the descriptor. For example, while English is the official language of the US, it isn't the only official language of Canada, part of that North American country speaks French: some Inuit people who qualify as American born speak Inuit or an Aleut language as a first language, and Native Americans would fit in this group. I'm not picking on this article, but it was glaring to me when I downloaded the page. On the other hand, I just tagged the Australian American article for the same issues. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Good point - part of the 'place' of this and some other articles is being considered at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Demographics_of_Australia - as well SatuSuro 02:07, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

  • English is of course the official language of Australia and I believe it is probably a reasonable assumption that any immigrants to Australia from north America would speak English. Religion has two links protestantism and Christianity - I agree it is hard to see. The majority of people in Australia are protestants and Christians - see ABS data What you seem to be picking on is the info box encourages generalizations. Generalizations do work in their own terms but if we can find one Japanese speaking Muslim from north America now living in Australia does that mean that the info box doesn't hold? What I think we need are some cite tags requesting verification. I don't think you have established that neutrality is breached unless you have some reason to believe (other than a hunch) that the info box misrepresents the situation.--Matilda talk 02:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The infobox material is supposed to be representational and the infobox is flexible enough to cover what exists, not just what the majority is. And the infobox instructions do not suggest choosing the official or primary language or religion. The template instructions state "List of languages spoken by group" and "List of group's religious affiliations." It wouldn't be as bothersome were other articles as general as this one, but they aren't. I've looked at nearly every article for (blank) Australian on [[Category:Immigration to Australia]] (I apologize, I never can remember how to do that) and virtually every one lists the language and religious affiliations for those groups. So my issue isn't with the infoboxes encouraging generalizations, it is with the infoboxes being used to generalize. And to me that is bias.

The Australia article cites a statistic that nearly 2 out of every 7 Australians were born overseas. The United States is a very culturally diverse country, and it is reasonable to extrapolate that emigrants would have cultural diversity as well, inclusive of religion and to a lesser degree, language. There is no de facto official language in the United States, and some states actually do designate multiple state languages. Canada is quite similar in make-up, with more cohesive indigenous First Nation groups, two national languages and a plethora of regional dialects. The 2006 Census findings available through the American Embassy cite English, Spanish and Mandarin as the main languages spoken at home by Americans living in Australia, with 6.7% of those speaking English poorly or not at all.

Meanwhile, the infobox offers two seemingly different religions, which actually are part of the same general religious grouping (Protestants are Christians). Sure, 68% of Australians are Christian, but nearly 7% designate another religion, inclusive of Judaism, Buddhism, Hindu and Islam, with nearly a third of those in general "other" categories. These numbers are from the link you provided. The CIA book of facts [1] cites Australian Christian denominations 67.4%, Buddhist 1.9%, Muslim 1.5%, other 1.2%, unspecified 12.7%. It's not reasonable to assume that no American emigrants would fit in another category besides a Christian denomination. This [2] ABS document at least alludes to other religions present in Americans in Australia.

My problem with this particular article is that it asserts English and Christianity as all that is represented in the US-Australian population, based on no sources that these are the religious and language demographics for "Americans." It isn't a matter of not including the lone Japanese speaking Muslim from North American. It's a matter of ignoring, for one, the religious choice of slightly under 10% of Americans living in Australia and the language differences noted above. It's sufficient for inclusion in articles about persons from other countries in Australia. The WP article on the United States addresses languages and religion at roughly the same dispersement as Australia. English may be the official language of Australia, but that does not preclude that a variety of other languages are spoken there. Christianity may be the predominant religion but the same logic applies. Since that information has been included for almost every other group in Australia, and I found this cursory information in about an hour for this response, it's there for inclusion on this article. Again, in my view, to dismiss it as trivial is bias, which is why I tagged it as such. Wildhartlivie (talk) 06:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

  • I agree the lack of sourcing is an issue. It may also be that the article coould say more on the diversity of languages and religions of American Austrlaians. However for the moment I have removed the information from the info box. I have escalated the issue to Template talk:Infobox Ethnic group#Generalisations about languages or religions not appropriate - parameters optional? because it seems to me that there is some info that maybe we just don't want to go down to the level of detail. I don't think it is worth putting in Buddhist 1.9%, Muslim 1.5%, ... or even unspecified 12.7%. I believe that the very great majority (68% were covered by the info box and there was no other group even coming up for 2nd ranking worth listing. However I also suspect that religionis not actually a feature of this ethnic group - it isn't a defining characteristic. Similarly languages, haven't seen teh figures but I suspect that it is few in relation to overall who speak languages other than English at home even if it is a greater percentage than the average Australian of British descent. The article covers ancestry numbers and people can go to those articles to find that Hispanics probably speak Spanish at home (but not necessarily if they have migrated to Australia). Certainly the article can include more information, with references, but I do not find that it is failing WP:NPOV --Matilda talk 07:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for directing the issue where it can be best addressed. I appreciate your giving serious attention to my viewpoint on this. The truth is probably that there is no ethnic group to identify in the US, nor a particular set of defining characteristics. Wildhartlivie (talk) 09:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)