One element that I found stayed constant throughout the United States Government’s tyranny over the native and non-native races present in America was the mentality that there was something wrong with their species. Almost like Hitler dehumanized the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Asian, Black and Native American populations were seen as sub-human. Incapable of learning and therefore shut out from society. Told to change, to somehow adopt our culture but not be a part of America’s educational. Of course this happened over a number of years.
What is stunning to me is how rampant racism was in this time period. Why, when the foundation of the constitution was based upon the equality of every man, was there so much racism? This does not make sense to me. How such a free society, could hate so easily without thought. The bigoted attitudes toward new and developing cultures was harsh and not open-minded. This practice was defined in the book at “deculturalization” and I think that this paints a picture of America’s approach to their neighbors and those arriving on ships from overseas. There was a sense of elitism, an ‘I’m better than you’ culture show explicitly in the Naturalization Act of 1790, defending the white’s livelihood in America.
And what I finally realized is that our racism in American probably came from fear. Fear that some other nation like the British could dominate us. The settlers who moved to the New Land, the New Frontier wanted freedom from the powers across the Atlantic. So they were forced to criticize and dehumanize other races with the power of force, disallowing their cultures from being accepted in our common one.
