“What does it mean to be an American?” by Bridget Durham
Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder. One person finds the rain fall beautiful while another finds a bright sunny day to be beautiful. This is not to say that one is better than the other, simply different. Just as beauty differs, what it means to be American differs from person to person and it is dependent on multiple different things. Socio-Economic status, race, gender, and religion all factor into what it means to be American. So, when asked “what does it mean to be American,” the answer is going to depend on who is doing the asking and who is being asked. This is not to say that any one perspective is better than another, simply different. In contemplation of what it means to be American, it is important to remember that people tend to group together based on similar experiences so one group of people is going to share similar ideologies compared to another. The most common way of grouping people would be women, the enslaved, white men, and immigrants.
An effective way to begin to wrestle with “What does it mean to be American,” is to start with the perspective of the majority. White males account for most of the population, but they can be broken down into 2 groups. The upper elite and the working class. Examples of the upper elite would include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. These men embody the American dream, rags to riches. Their inventions helped to boost the economy of America and they got where they are not because of their family’s money, but by their own accord. This American dream was influenced by Theodore Roosevelt who embodied American exceptionalism. Roosevelt went from a frail asthmatic kid to the bully pulpit as he climbed the social ladder. Just as Bell, Edison, and Ford built themselves up from nothing, Roosevelt wrote “Man in the Arena,” in an attempt to make this dream a reality for more people. In “man in the arena” Roosevelt argues that “[i]t is not the critics who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” The man who gives his blood, sweat and tears to his own betterment is the one who embodies the American dream. The man who criticizes the one working does nothing for the betterment of society.
He also argues, “shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workday world (“Man in the Arena”).” Shame on the man who expects perfection and is incapable of working for the money he has. This speech is aimed primarily at white males because it was near impossible for women to gain work outside of the house and due to Jim Crow Laws, formerly enslaved people did not make enough to accumulate wealth. Due to this, the American dream was primarily a white man’s dream. To be American for a white man, and only a white man, was to build themselves up from nothing.
One would hope that the women who were raising American youth would be treated with the respect that any law-abiding American citizen deserves, but nevertheless they were not. Ask a woman what it means to be American, between 1840-1924, and they will tell you that they are meant to marry and raise the children. This sense of working only for the man of the house is portrayed in “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In “The Great Gatsby,” the main themes are one of rags to riches and American exceptionalism, as the reader is given the story of Daisy Buchanan’s love affair with Jay Gatsby. The story is told through Nick Carraway, who is Daisy’s cousin. In the first chapter the book strays from these themes as Daisy describes how she hopes her infant daughter will be. She says, “I hope she’ll be a fool. That is the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool (Fitzgerald 17).” Daisy states this of her daughter not because she wants her to be illiterate instead because she knows the struggle of growing up in a society that does not respect women for who they are. The idea of her daughter growing up in this society and being aware of all the injustices causes Daisy to wish for her daughter to be blissfully unaware. She believes that is the only way a woman can be happy in society. She wishes for her infant daughter to be beautiful so she can marry easy and not struggle with love, as she has.
Daisy says this about her daughter because women had no place in the American dream. What it meant to be American, for women, was to be seen and not heard and support their husbands.
Similarly, in “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman the narrator is portrayed as going insane under medical treatment that her husband has recommended for her. The narrator suffers from postpartum depression which at the time was called hysteria. She is instructed to rest and be secluded. The story is one of the first horror fictions as the narrator begins to go insane and see a woman in the wallpaper. The way the narrator describes her situation shows how women are overlooked and subjected in their marriages and society. In the story she is not allowed to write, and it is said that “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage (Gilman).” Women had no way of standing up for themselves and were often seen as irrational or delusional. “Yellow Wallpaper,” plays on this idea and takes it to the extreme.
With this negative connotation surrounding women, they are not given a spot in the American dream, they had to earn it. That is what Susan B Anthony and others did when women began to protest their right to vote. One of their main campaign slogans was, “Mr. President how long must women wait for liberty?” With the women’s suffrage act and the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, women were able to gain a small place in the American dream. The nineteenth amendment gave women the right to vote. It states, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex (US Const. amend. XIX, sec.1).” Even with the nineteenth amendment, the societal expectations of women do not change. What it means to be American for them remains the same for them.
With the ratification of the thirteenth amendment formerly enslaved people gain the right to citizenship but it is a long time before they can join white males in their pursuit of the American dream. Due to Jim Crow Laws and increasing violence against them from the Ku Klux Klan what it means to be American to them, is to deal with the hand they were delt. “School begins” is a political cartoon that was published showing how those who are formerly enslaved are still looked down upon and seen as uneducated. Uncle Sam is looking down on them and scolding them. They are depicted as children with cartoonish faces while the white kids are in the back and look clean and put together. This cartoon shows how they are viewed in society.
In the “Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro,” by Frederick Douglass, he was asked to speak at a Fourth of July celebration. He says, “what have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” Douglas asks why he is here and if these “freedoms” that the white people enjoy are extended to African Americans. He uses a rhetorical question to point out the hypocrisy of him being asked to speak at the Fourth of July Celebration. He continues, “I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary (Douglas)!” This line has a double meaning, white people are pale, and the celebration is dull and lacking in excitement. To further his claims he states, “your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us…Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions (Douglas)!” What it means to be American to those who are formerly enslaved, is to fight for their correct treatment. They have heard the wails of millions who have died in captivity and being American for them is fighting for justice.
In contemplation of what it means to be an American, Lincoln does not attempt to answer this question, but he is knowledgeable about how to rebuild the nation. He states, “with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wounds, to care for him…and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” What it means to be American in-between 1840-1924 varies from person to person, but it should not. In the Atlanta Compromise Speech by Booker T. Washington, he argues that “no race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” This argument is made to further the idea that the formerly enslaved and those who are free, need to work together and find a common ground between them. The fourteenth amendment states that, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property (Const. amend. XIV, sec.1).” It is based in the constitution that all Americans should have a similar stance of what it means to be American because a nation divided cannot stand. They are all protected under the same laws, under one God.
What is America? by Judson DiVenere
Well, America is numerous things. In the majority period of 1850-1930, America was recovering from the Civil War and internal conflict. With the Civil War over, America now has time to focus on other things and expand in other areas. No internal conflict meant America could focus on positioning itself as a global power to be reckoned with. Immigrants from across the world saw America as the land of opportunity and a place without as much conflict as their home country. With more free time, new types of creativity arose in the realms of music and film. In the period of 1850-1930, America takes a more modern shape of what we see today through inventions, injustices, music, and film.
America is littered with many bad things that happen within this timeframe. Slavery was abolished in 1865, at the very beginning of this period. With no forced labor in the United States, racist people and mobs took to other ways to try and show their authority. The KKK was established. The KKK is a white supremacy hate group that is anti-immigrant, anti-catholic, and anti-women. In the bottom left of my painting, the black, burning cross represents the hate that the KKK members carry out because of the emptiness in their hearts. Because of more immigrants immigrating to the United States who were different by the language they spoke, culture they embraced, or color of their skin, hate was targeted towards them as well as black people. Not just the KKK and other groups carried out hate. Even normal, white civilians would display their hate by throwing rocks at immigrant-owned stores, like in the image above. In 1919, an event called the Red Scare occurred. This was a widespread belief throughout America that all immigrants coming into the country somehow loved communism and anarchism. The result of this scare was the Palmer Raids. These raids targeted communists and sought to deport them from the country to keep our country a democracy. The hammer and sickle in the top right corner of my painting represent the communism that traveled over to the United States. The hammer and sickle are painted inside the lines and overall neater than everything else in my painting because communism looks good on paper, like Karl Marx intended. Communism was never meant to be taken advantage of to abuse people and keep people impoverished, like Russia and the Soviet Union did. This fear of communism still lingers around today in the United States, with these scares affecting the country for years to come. The black, burning cross affects almost everything in my painting. The fire from the cross is melting the pot above it, representing the hate that people had against immigrants. The smoke from the fire crawls around the painting, towards the saxophone, the Statue of Liberty, and the hammer and sickle. Racism in this period affected everything and fueled segregation in the years to come as well as the hate in America today. The fear of communism and the hate towards immigrants and just in general people that are different still haunts our country today, showing the modern shape that America is taking in the early 1900s.
Compared to last term’s essay which was a majority of bad things in America, the decades between the time periods have turned the tides and this time period is the turning of America into the good-ish country we see today. In my painting, the Statue of Liberty’s torch is burning the cross. Racism in America interpreted the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of whiteness. Whiteness towering above all who come through the harbor to seek a better life. The Statue of Liberty is also contrasted with another view of its representation. In Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” she interprets Lady Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles,” who cries, “‘Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’” welcoming all of the new immigrants through Ellis Island and through the harbor. Lady Liberty represents the newfound freedom that these immigrants yearn for in the United States, who seek to have a better life in the land of opportunity. The statue is a woman which displays the girl power that started to spread around the United States with women being able to work during the first World War and the first election women could vote in 1920. One of the colors for women’s rights is purple, which is spread throughout my painting, representing the new, unalienable rights that women gained in the time period. When Teddy Roosevelt became president in the very early 1900s, he was a bigger-than-life character. His mind also was thinking about the future of the country and making the United States the best place to be. In 1906 when Upton Sinclair released The Jungle, an inside look into the Chicago meatpacking industry with a focus on trying to show the harsh treatment of immigrants, he wrote about the disgust that went into creating meat for the city. The workers plucked the meat with cut hands and acid-washed fingers, spreading their germs for everyone to eat. They would rub soda against the meat to distinguish the rotten smell of spoiled meat. Rats would crawl into the meat carts and the shoveler would not even bother to pluck it out. Roosevelt having seen the reports of the horrid meatpacking industry, passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. These bills made sure that the business would not sell misbranded meat or meat with rats in it. It required the factories to be cleaner and overall saved thousands of lives that would have died from food-borne diseases. These two bills
eventually led to the creation of the FDA, which protects public health. Since the Civil War was over and the United States did not have an internal war occurring, free time meant new creativity arose in the realms of music and film. Rhapsody in Blue is an animated film with a
twelve-minute score that combines classics, jazz, and blues. Jazz was created circa 1900 by African-Americans who combined their traditional music with blues from the United States. In the 1920s during the Prohibition era, mafia-owned speakeasies, or jazz clubs, sprouted up for town-goers to listen to music and illegally drink. Those speakeasies still exist today, but not in the illegal sense of the Prohibition era. Finally, money was greatly affected during this time. With the rise of that new free time and higher education, railroad companies and tycoons started to make even more bank than they were during the Civil War. Those railroads transported all types of goods and commercial passengers across the country. The railroads led to the creation of investment banking in which investment bankers, like J.P. Morgan, invested in those railroads and made large amounts of money off of them. J.P. Morgan also invested in Thomas Edison’s lightbulb, which we use every day. Would Edison have been found if it weren’t for JPM? Those railroads were not government-owned yet. In the court case of Plessy v. Ferguson in Louisiana, the government admitted that they could not control what happened on those railroads, including segregated train cars. Investment banks at this time were unregulated in 1914. High-ranking businessmen from the companies served on the boards of almost every public company, allowing everything to swing in the favor of the investment bankers. This created lots of new and unfair wealth for people. The giant dollar sign in the middle of my painting represents that money was at the center of everything during this time as well as today. The Knights of Labor were the final endeavor of this period that starts to take shape to look like the America we see today. They bargained for eight-hour workdays, five-day work weeks, and ending child labor. All three of these things were accomplished and shaped the America we see today. Racism, communist scares, immigration, jazz, health, and money all developed greatly during this time and take shape in what looks like the modern America.
Overall, good and bad things happened in this developmental period of America in 1850-1930. It started to take a more modern shape, with modern approaches, and the abolishment of old customs, such as child labor and slavery. As Patrick Henry said it best, “Give me liberty, or give me Death!”
