What It Means To Be American Essay

To be American can be seen in many different ways. There is no right or wrong way to tell whether you are American. Some of evidence that interested me through out the stories is that we are all immigrant, the founding father of America weren’t all American, and how only Chinese immigrants were sent to Angel Island. Out of the several stories that we read, many of them enforced or reinforced my point of view on the situation. My personal view on what it means to be American is that your race, religion, clothing, hair and all things like that don’t matter. To be American you just have to be a citizen of the United States, in my opinion. Several pieces of information throughout the several stories that I read interested me. In the essay
Knowing my perspective on the situation, in contrast “American History” discusses the discrimination that went on between races. In the story, Eugene, a Puerto Rican girl, was not accepted into the home of an American due to the fact that she was Puerto Rican. The young girl, Eugene, was only there to study with a friend for a short amount of time. In my opinion, that isn’t right of fair for her to not be accepted just because of her race, she did nothing to the Americans. In”The Immigrant Contribution” it is said that migrants came to the United States “for freedom and the hope for economic opportunity”. This piece of evidence reinforces my point of view because immigrants were coming to the United States to have more options and live a better life, but we couldn’t always get along, so it dampened their chance. The final piece of evidence supports my point of view on the whole situation. In “With a Little Help from My Friends” it’s is interesting to me how when a family from Iran came to America, they could bong so well with the Americans. This really went to show that it doesn’t matter your background, to get along with someone