America on Immigration- are we really fixing this problem?

Immigration is not a subject that I have ever had an articulate opinion on. I took some time today to think about it, and after reading Silko's piece, I feel like I have a better idea. It was shocking to me that Border Patrol officers have the legal clearance to pull over absolutley anyone they want to at the checkpoint, including "white people who appear to be clergy, those who wear ethnic clothing or jewelry, and women with very long hair or very short hair." It seems wrong to me that the patrolmen are allowed to search anyone who comes through even if they don't have any reasonable suspicion. Silko is an American citizen, but since she is of color, she got pulled over and searched by the patrolmen; even legitimate citizenship doesn't count for anything in the minds of the patrolmen.

There must be another way to keep illegal immigrants from coming into the country. Better yet, there needs to be a way to help people in the citizenship process. Frankly, however, I don't think the opportunities for most immigrants are as great as they anticipate. A friend of mine went to law school in Mexico and came here to hellp support her family. Most of her family lives here, but she sends money to Mexico every month to support her parents. She works as a cleaning lady, but she is obviously more qualified and intelligent than her position. I think the opportunities for her to work as a lawyer in Ecuador are far superior to any opportunity she has hear. Most immigrants take positions here that no Americans will take: the grunt work. For many of them, there are better opportunities for them in other parts of the world, but they have been lured here by the promise of the American Dream.

Journal #14- Response to Britnee Rosales

While I do agree that it would be a necessity for me to carry something with me from home, like a photograph or a letter, I disagree with your opinion that it helped Lieutenant Cross to carry those items that reminded him of Martha. I actually believe it was detrimental to his platoon that he was constantly focused on what he had left at home. He would get so enveloped in thinking about the relationship he wanted with Martha that he didn't focus fully on leading his platoon.

After he burned the photographs and letters from Martha, he shows that he wants to turn all of his attention to the platoon because he feels resposible for what happened to Ted Lavender: "It wouldn't help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as an officer" (1471). Cross felt that some of the emotional baggage he carried ditracted from his ability to carry out his duty as the leader of the platoon. This gave me the idea that it would be nice to have something to remind me of what I was fighting for, but I wouldn't want to carry anything that would keep me from effectively serving.

Bonus Blog #3- Double-consciousness

The most apparent illustration of double-consciousness in the texts by Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna were shown in the language of the characters in both stories. Both authors use dialogue to show the obvious difference between natural-born Americans and immigrants. In Sui Sin Far's story, Lae Choo and her husband use broken English, often omitting words from their sentences. This is shown on page 303 of the text when Lae Choo says to the lawyer, "What that you say?" This is an interesting juxtaposition of the characters because the educated lawyer and the Chinese immigrant mother have a conversation where their language is a clear difference between them.
The same is true in Watanna's story when Okikusan speaks to her father. Watanna has done a great job of writing the language exactly as it would be spoken. The Japanese accent is very audible throughout the story, and it is furhter emphasized because Okikusan speaks this broken English while she is in her own country. It shows ho great the American influence on Asia really was becuase people, even in Asia, see American people and speak to them in whatever English they know.
Both of the characters, Lae Choo and Okikusan, are accutely aware of their differences from Americans, and they both have this double-consciousness and awareness of themselves as they attempt to belong to one culture. They both hear their differences in the way they speak English, and they both see them in the way they look. Okikusan's circumstance is a little different however because she has the brown, curly hair of an American woman and the facial characteristics of a Japanese woman.

Zitkala-Sa and the American Dream

Zitkala-Sa'a story is, in my opinion, an attempt at fulfilling the American Dream. After she receives a prize from her second speech competition, at the end of the story, she says, "the little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart" (438). She attempts to climb up in society, and she wants to achieve her goals in life, but at this time in American history, there is no way for her to truly fulfill her goals. She gets a "little taste of victory" when she wins the competition, but there is still so much animosity toward Native Americans. The spectators at the competition are a perfect example of this; one of them holds a flag with a racial slur against Native Americans and displays the extreme prejudice she faces throughout her life.
Even if she was able to achieve her American Dream, there would be one party that was against her. Her Native American mother did not support her decision to pursue her education at the university. The general population of her origin does not support her assimilation into "white" culture, and it takes time for her to embrace both her native history and her new culture.

A Surviving Quality of Hawai'ian Culture

"His people welcomed our presence; and no matter how protracted our stay, Hawaiian hospitality, or love and loyalty, whichever it may please the reader to call it, was never exhausted." Chapter IV

One of the reasons I like this quote is because it talks about how Hawaiian, not American, hospitality survived through American Imperialism; it shows a sense of pride in Hawaiian culture. When it says that hospitality "was never exhausted," it shows that people had to work hard to keep their culture alve through American Imperialism.

11- Response to Shelby Turner

It was really interesting that you brought up the way McKay called White people "hungry dogs" and "the monsters." I noticed this, too, and was shocked by how openly Black authors were beginning to write and speak their minds. The way these two authors wrote really shows how the tables turned in American culture. Before and during the Civil War, the countr was owned, controlled and dominated by White people. But when the war ended, more Black people were able to speak out in support of their race. Some, like McKay and Hopkins, went as far as to seek revenge from White people in their writing. With their new sense of power and freedom of speech after the war, Black people as well as White abolitionists were able to show their disapproval of slavery and discrimination in new ways.
Hopkins' story showed that, even though Black people could not be legally bound to White people anymore, there was still a lot that kept them inferior. Lynching was unforgiving. If someone even pointed a the finger of blame at a Black person, they were sure to be hunted down, even if they had truthfully done nothing wrong. Black people also still worked for White people. Since most of the money in the country belonged to White male landowners, like Reverend Stevens, Black people acquired jobs from them to earn money of their own.

Realizations about Slavery 10/24

When reading The Wife of his Youth, the moment I realized that Mr. Ryder was Liza's husband was when he stood up in the middle of his dinner party and told the story of his afternoon visitor. But I didn't know what he would do with that information until the last paragraph of the story. That is the point in the story when I learned something new about slavery; it was never too late for any of them. By the time Liza was freed, Mr. Ryder (Sam) had already begun his new life, but she didn't stop looking for him. She never gave up in the hopes that she could finally begin her life with him. In the Harper poem, in the last two stanzas, we find out that the speaker is sixty years old. When I first read the poem, the way it talked about beginning an education, I thought the speaker was much younger. It reminded me that, when the Civil War ended, African Americans of all ages were freed, and some of them were finally able to start their lives as free people when they were already in their later years.

Another point in the story that stood out to me was hen Mr. Ryder says, "we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black" (57). It showed that there was a heirarchy in society after the Civil War. It wasn't a utopia of free citizens. White people were still at the top, Black people were still at the bottom, and mulattos were not accepted by either group. In other words, mulattos were too white to be considered black and too black to be considered white. In this story they had their own separate society and it may have been frowned upon for Mr. Ryder to acknowledge Liza as his wife because she was a black woman born into slavery and she did not fit into their mulatto society.