For Americans, who are (politically correctly) fed the pablum of equality for every being imaginable, and on and on about everybody's rights, it's rather shocking to look at the rest of the world and see how many places have wars and disagreements over the very ethnic and religious differences that we pretend to sweep under the rug.
It sometimes seems to totally escape people that human beings have a natural tendency to congregate among those most like themselves. Many large cities have pockets of people of various national and ethnic origins. Huge surprise, especially for immigrants who may be pretty well innocent of the English language - one of the sore points here in California.
On my mother's side, my grandparents came from Germany, and not as children, either. Mom was the youngest of nine, and I grew up being around all of them often enough to be more than familiar with them. But I never recall any of them using such a term as "German-American". Everybody knew what their roots were, and so what???
Again, I tend to blame the news media for a lot of this stuff. They aren't happy unless they have elections all predicted before they even take place, nor are they happy unless they keep all this crap in everybody's minds. Small wander that they say that lawyers, journalists, and psychologists should all take a long walk on a short pier.