Daniels, Chapter 5

       Growing up you are taught that America is this big melting pot with all different kinds of people put together.  Essentially that is true but personally I have never seen America as a great melting pot. A great melting pot would have races that blend together and get along, and this just isn’t the case with the American people.  I look at America as being more of a tossed salad with many different races all put together under one race but everyone can see that they are not equals. 

When people see that they are not equally, or rather not treated or considered equally amongst their peers, you get the results of segregation.  One thing that I find very interesting is that there was segregation between the Europeans over superiority.  The British were seen as the most dominant while the rest of the continent like the: Scottish, Irish, Germans, etc. were seen as inferior.

Another thing that caught my attention is that when the British came to the states they immediately started calling themselves Americans and ignored their ethnic background.  They considered themselves American colonists instead of British.  None of the fist people that came to the new land were born on American soil so none of them would technically be American at all.  The ideas, traditions, and cultural beliefs that they had were still British; it takes a while for one to form a new cultural identity. 

Another interesting fact that stood out was that the Native Americas did become slaves when the Europeans conquered them. Although the slavery did not last long, it still happened.  I never knew of this until reading this chapter.  As surprising as it is, it does make perfect sense to me that when a race is conquered they essentially become slaves, but the thing that amazes me the most is how this information is not well known to everyone.  I don’t ever recall learning about Native American slaves in any other history class or anywhere else.

Immigration during the1700's was still legal thing since there was no policy against it.  This resulted in a huge boom in population because so many people immigrated to America.  The constitution in 1781 was not very clear on the subject of immigration control, but once it was ratified, in 1788, regulations became clear. 

It is no secret that America is diverse, and I will be the first to admit it, yet there are still racial tensions.  If you look at a very racially diverse city there are certain areas that mostly Latinos live in, areas of mostly Asians, areas of mostly blacks, so on and so on.  It is so odd to me that people in America still bunch together in racially similar groups much like they did when immigration first started happening; this is the reason that American isn’t essentially a melting pot but rather a tossed salad.