Each new demographic shift and economic or social change bring seemingly new issues into popular and political focus--questions, debates, and policies about the role of language in education and society and the recent claims that transnational migrations and globalization are resulting in unprecedented forms of ethnolinguisic "super-diversity." This chapter addresses issues related to language diversity, policy, and politics within the U.S. context and notes recent trends and future projections. The first section takes as a point of departure a seemingly simple question from a popular television game show to illustrate some of the complexity in posing seemingly simple historical questions. The second major section considers how ethno-racial labeling and linguistic diversity have been constructed through time in U.S. Census data and considers their implications for claims regarding the allegedly unprecedented superdiversity of the present. The third part addresses how English became dominant during the colonial period, thereby establishing its position as the common language prior to the American Revolutions. The fourth section revisits issues and themes addressed in some of my work on the history of language policy, politics, rights, and ideologies (Ovando & Wiley, 2007; Wiley, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2013a, 2013b; Wiley & Lukes, 1996). In particular, it focuses on the evolution of English-only ideology and how it became hegemonic during the World War I era. This final section is largely based on Wiley (2000) as it looks in relation to language policies in the United States at the differential impact of language policies on various ethnolinguistic groups in the United States.