The Story Of All America's Cultures By Luch Ji-Yeon

Cultural diversity flourishes in the United States even though the golden door are no longer as open as they once were. Americans’ doors have rusted shut through disuse. It doesn’t matter how many people come to the United States looking for freedom and opportunity there will always be groups of people who voluntarily discredit immigrants. Despite Emma Lazarus’s optimistic view, immigrants have and will almost always be looked upon with a predisposition of judgement and shame. With this they will most likely have a harder time reaching the freedom they aspired for.

In James W. Loewen’s “Handicapped by History,” the author exposes the broken nature of what we are taught in history classes in the Cultural Memory vs. Historical Reality framework. Students only hear of Helen Keller’s struggle to learn to read and write and are never taught of her strong humanitarian and socialist beliefs. In the case of Woodrow Wilson, history books often let his efforts during WWI overshadow his white supremacist beliefs and his schemes to overthrow governments in South American countries. Loewen explains why history books tend to create fairytale-like images of American heroes: “We seem to feel that a person like Helen Keller can be an inspiration only so long as she remains uncontroversial, one-dimensional. We don 't want complicated icons” (Loewen 35). He states that textbooks want to keep it simple and do not want their citizens to lose their sense of patriotism by finding out that a past president wasn’t the ideal human being. Thus, students are taught to characterize the lifetime of a figure by only a few of their actions and thus, this minimized version of history wrongly becomes the truth.

The way we perceive history are through the eyes of those who write it, but we also have no knowledge if they’re being biased or not. In Frances G. Couvares’ work Interpretations of American History, he talks about historiography and how historians write history. This essay will talk about the providential, the rationalist, the nationalist, and the the professional, the four stages that helped shape how we write American history and the importance it has to historiography.

“Coming of Age in Mississippi” is an autobiography about the life of African America civil rights activist Anne Moody (Essie Mae). Moody narrates her childhood in Mississippi through her college years in New Orleans and her involvements in the major historical civil right movements. The autobiography details the challenges and the injustices faced by African Americans particularly in the southern states. In this historical autobiography, Moody jeopardize her and her family 's life to end the oppression of African Americans. She also presents her participation in the most important civil right movement like famous the Woolworth 's sit-in and other demonstrations. Anne Moody got the opportunity to work besides black empowerment leaders such

Frances Fitzgerald, in her analytical essay “Rewriting American History” (1979), asserts that over the course of time, content in history books has evolved to “such an extent that even an adult would find the unrecognizable.” She supports her assertion by intermitting robust diction, utilizing convoluted syntax, and capitalizing on cogent anecdotal evidence. Fitzgerald’s purpose is to reveal the consequence of rewriting history and how it creates a “certain level of unpleasantness” to history schoolbook writers and publishers, teachers, and school districts in order to expound the struggle students must endure with the inconsistencies. She embraces an astute tone (“Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the texts has broken.”) to accentuate to history textbook publishers and writers, teachers, and school districts that history textbooks need to be as objective, candid, and free from superfluous additions as possible with the production and teaching of them.

Sojourner Truth was a very strong speaker who had a very strong opinion on women's rights and equality among races. She was born into slavery but fought her way out. She spread the truth about slavery around the nation. In the 1850, slavery was a very important subject in America. The African Americans were solded in the south to plantations to help with farming. Many slaves were mistreated and through time a war arose from it. Many people disagreed with slavery and thought it was wrong. There was many individuals that stood up and fought for their freedom. Many individuals went to different states preaching and spilling the truth about slavery.

Censorship is an extremely debated topic in America, with people saying it contradicts with what the Bill of Rights has allowed the American people and how it may deny people use the Freedom of Speech. Yet, the censorship of books in American public schools is one of the most controversial topics today because of the use of racial slurs in classic literature, this is the case with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Opinions on this topic vary, with some of them being: schools should have the right to censor books because they have racial slurs in them, schools should have teachers open up a conversation about race and the use of racial slurs with these books, or schools should not have the right to censor any book. I firmly believe that schools

In the film Coming to America describing the two cultures in the film are the African and American cultures from Africa and Queens New York. The African and American cultures in the movie are different in some ways but similar in other ways by the way the characters in the movie are all family oriented with the respect they show their parents and the way the parents only want what is best for their children. Then there are subcultures in the film that go a little further with style of living. The culture in Africa is that people are to wait on the royal family for everything they do, but in America, the family cares for themselves without the help of servants. The rites of passage are a cultural norm in Africa for the Royal family by having arranged marriages. For example, the family of the Prince is following the traditions set forth by his ancestors by having arranged marriages. In America, they do not have arranged marriages they have the custom of asking the father for his daughter's hand in marriage. As Darryl does in the film at a party at the home of the McDowell’s. Which angers Lisa because she feels Darryl and her father is trying to plan her life for her.

Culture is an umbrella term that covers almost every aspects of life. It includes different concepts when viewed from various perspectives. It can be described in individual level as well as communal level, though they are mutually dependent. An individual defines culture at the level of the community he or she follows the patterns of the society in which he or she lives. The culture of a community is defined by the living patterns of the members of the society. Culture has an important place in one’s identity. Identity is a process of becoming, constructing from the matrix of similarities and difference. Culture is a source of reviving the cultural identity. The culture enables us to locate our identity in a cultural space.

Part I: In these two lecture sessions, Dr. Jendian talked about the invisibility of racism in the United States and how we have not been trained to recognize racism. To give an example of this, Dr. Jendian showed us a few minutes of the movie Dumbo. Although this movie seems to be innocent, it shows racism against black people. For example, the people who are putting the tents are black people, and they do not have a face. The song that the “workers” are singing, only has racist phrases such as “harry apes.” On the other hand, textbooks also hide facts about the United States history. According to Loewen, the authors write how slavery affected African Americans; however, they minimize white complicity in this cruelty. For example, Loewen (146) explains that, “[Textbooks] they present slavery virtually as uncaused, a tragedy, rather than a wrong perpetrated by some people on others.” In fact, Dr. Jendian and Dr. Cornel West explained that textbooks try to justify and not recognize that slavery was a crime against humanity. For example, Loewen mentions that nine of eighteen books do list racism, racial discrimination, or race prejudice in their indexes. However, Dr. Jendian explained that in several books these concepts never appear in their text. As Loewen explains, we have molded our concepts on African Americans to justify our actions. Inclusively, Dr. Cornel West explains

The lecture on African Americans in the 1920s by Professor David Canton is very disturbing. His lecture was on the different unjust treatment that African Americans endured. The professor, to me, was trying to make the listener feel the anguish that African Americans did in the 1920s. In some sense he appeared passionate and at times angry about the treatment of African Americans. The government supported this hostile treatment because they believed African Americans were being subversive if they stood up and defended themselves. In listening to the lecture it is evident that there was unfair treatment with fatal outcome at times of African Americans. Throughout history I have seen the changes made by society and government. African Americans have been heard and continue to be heard as issues occur.

Sojourner Truth, formerly known as Isabella Baumfree, was a famous women’s rights activist, most commonly known for her speech in 1851. Taking place in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner stood up in front of the Women’s Convention and delivered an impressive rebuttal to white men’s claim of denying the rights of both women and slaves, all done extemporaneously. The speech not only points out the sexism and racism present during those times, but also the strong hypocrisy between men’s view of how to treat a lady, versus how black women were treated – and of that, the title “Ain’t I a woman?” came to be.

History does not always convey the absolute truth. It offers only one side of the story. The strong and powerful voices always drown out the sounds of the weak and beaten. The winner’s word will always be taken over the loser’s. The content that lies within the textbooks was not written by the defeated. To understand the history of past cultures, it is imperative that both sides are heard. Many novels continually showcase this new outlook on history. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, demonstrates the New Historicism perspective with subjective accounts, reflections of the time it is written, and lack of the opposing side’s outlook.

Isabella Baumfree, also known as Sojourner Truth, had similar achievements and dreams as Frederick Douglass. Both sought to abolish slavery and inequality towards African American people in their time period. Slavery plagued our country until it was abolished in 1865. Even after slavery was abolished, Sojourner Truth had to save her son who had been sold into slavery. Even though she wasn’t able to read or write, she was the first black women to win a case and restore her son’s freedom. She not only fought for her own family, she fought the battle for all colored women. In her speech to address the first annual meeting of the American equal rights association, she sought to educate people on the importance of equality for all.

In the article Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Morris Fiorina addresses the issue of the illusion of political polarization. Political polarization is the separation of political beliefs into two separate extremes. The main illustration Fiorina uses is the use the electoral map. The electoral map is used to gauge which party won an election or polling. This is depicted when the states turns red if a state votes for the majority Republican, or the turns blue if the state votes primarily Democratic despite if there is a close margin. Fiorina discusses the uses the illustration to present the false illusion of political division and the influence media has on the public.