Journal 2- Bedford p. 311-33

Today's reading showed me something about the beginning of the United States that I had never thought of before. I've taken quite a few classes on American history, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to learn about our country as much as I have; but today's reading put things in a new perspective. I knew that one of the things that brought the American colonies together was the oppression they felt from Great Britain, but I never thought about how influencial language was to the banding together of so many cultures. The textbook talks about how many different cultures and religions were present in the New World-- there were Dutch, Germans, English, Protestants, Catholics, Puritans, Native Americans-- and they all had different sets of values to live by. They all had separate newspapers and ways of communicating through the written word. However, once the British began taxing them outrageously for the products essential to spreading information, they realized that the overarching goal they all had was the same. They wanted to be free from the constraints and exploitation of Britain.
It amazed me that language was so important to them that so many people put their beliefs, their cultures, and their pride in the back seat and decided that the lines of communication should be open among all of the colonies. When they realized that their routes of communication were at the threat of being cut off because of a ridiculous tax, many of them decided that there were more important things to worry about than fighting among the diverse groups of people who came here. They all came here for a reason and they all were tired of being exploited and controlled by the British. And the power and the need for the written word is one fo the things that brought them together to fight for the nation that we still fight for today.

Journal 1- What is an American?

Before I walked into class on Tuesday, I had been trying to think about my definition of "America." Since I have been incredibly fortunat all my life to attend great school and live in nice, safe places, I think of America in a very positive light. However, when we discussed Crevecoeur's letter, I started thinking that maybe I made the same mistake he did. His biggest mistake in writing about America was that he wrote about it solely from his point of view and the views of people lke him. He excluded some of the large populations of America at the time, like the Native Americans, women, slaves, Jews and Eastern Europeans. I realized that I was not looking at America as a whole, I was only looking at it from the perspective of people who have been as fortunate as I have been.
As we were reading the Langston Hughes poems, I realized that my view of America completely neglected the victims of racism that still exists here. Although Hughes wrote his poems more than fifty years ago, there is still a problem with racism in our country. I still think America is a wonderful country filled with freedom and opportunity, but Hughes' poems have reminded me that America still has a long way to go to become the utopia it was orginially intended to be.