After reading chapter 7, I can’t help but wonder why many politicians and leaders we have had in this country have said that the diversity of the people in the United States is the reason why we are the most unique country in the world. But diversity means that we have people that come from all different races, religions and other cultures, so if this is the case, then why did the United States government try to break these cultural ties and make all immigrants more “American”? This sounds to me like we don’t know what is going on with our country. I am a firm believer in the fact that cultural diversity is something that is extremely important in order for a society to grow and to prosper. Without cultural diversity, we would not be able to understand the points of views of other people, and the United States government of the late 19th and early 20th century was doing, was basically destroying cultural diversity as we know it. It tried to make all immigrants more “American”. But what does that even mean? Does anybody know what it means to be an “American”? I can tell you that I am completely sure what that means. The government should have embraced these immigrants and recognized that they could bring a whole new view point and new ideas to help make the United States grow and prosper, but that was not the case.
Another thing from the chapter that I thought was really interesting, because I don’t think I have ever heard of it before was how the African American community made its own schools, and the white people were not aware of them. I think that this is incredible. This shows an enormous sense of pride and cooperation by the black community to show care and value to a child’s education and the fact that they would go through the whole process of formulating these secret schools is astonishing to me. It really makes me think, what if there were other races that had their own private schools, will we ever find out about them? What were they taught? How do they compare to white schools?
