The Unpredictable Past Summary

4. Why did critics like Horace Kallen and Randolph Bourne dislike the pressure on immigrants to “Americanize” and join the “melting pot”? What did they envision that America should be like under the ideals of “cultural pluralism”?

The world is full of rich culture, diversity and experiences unique to each individual. When determining the validity of historic accounts we must factor in that particular historian’s point of view, which should be characterized by ethnicity, idealogy, theoretical or methodological preference. With these factors views of the past often vary from person to person. In this essay I will be discussing the four different stages that shaped the writing of American history over the last 400 years.

(An analysis of how the authors Hughes, Clifton and McElroy and how they use history in their works.)

“Thinking Critically, Challenging Cultural Myths” is the introduction of the ninth edition book Rereading America, published in 2013 by Bedford/St. Martin’s Press and edited by Gary Colombo from Los Angeles City College, Robert Cullen from San Jose State University, and Bonnie Lisle from University of California, Los Angeles. In this section, the editors state the target of this book is toward the college students and emphasize the importance of thinking critically and challenging cultural myths as the readers will face with more complicated writings in the future. Some methods are given to help us to reach the purpose more easily. The introduction also gives an overview of the entire book’s structure and the purposes of each kind of chosen articles.

It proves not solely that this "common law" wedding between history and anthropology works, however conjointly that in several respects, it appears almost indispensable to a full understanding of early american history itself. The essays specialize in, and are for the most part held together by, the sole factor that mattered on the first yankee frontiers: the social and cultural interactions and competition between white and red peoples. And here we mean mostly between French, English, (and to a way lesser extent, Spanish), and eastern Native

The study of history and the teaching of history has come under intense public debate in the United States in the last few decades. The “culture-wars” began with the call to add more works by non-Caucasians and women and has bled into the study of history. Not only in the study of history or literature, this debate has spread into American culture like wildfire.

“The Indian presence precipitated the formation of an American identity” (Axtell 992). Ostracized by numerous citizens of the United States today, this quote epitomizes Axtell’s beliefs of the Indians contributing to our society. Unfortunately, Native Americans’ roles in history are often categorized as insignificant or trivial, when in actuality the Indians contributed greatly to Colonial America, in ways the ordinary person would have never deliberated. James Axtell discusses these ways, as well as what Colonial America may have looked like without the Indians’ presence. Throughout his article, his thesis stands clear by his persistence of alteration the Native Americans had on our nation. James Axtell’s bias delightfully enhances his thesis, he provides a copious amount of evidence establishing how Native Americans contributed critically to the Colonial culture, and he considers America as exceptional – largely due to the Native Americans.

The American desire to culturally assimilate Native American people into establishing American customs went down in history during the 1700s. Famous author Zitkala-Sa, tells her brave experience of Americanization as a child through a series of stories in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Zitkala-Sa, described her journey into an American missionary where they cleansed her of her identity. In “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” Zitkala-Sa uses imagery in order to convey the cruel nature of early American cultural transformation among Indian individuals.

Why acknowledge history? The solution is because we essentially must to achieve access to the laboratory of human involvement. In the essay “Haunted America”, Patricia Nelson takes a truly various and remarkably gallant stance on United States history. Through the recounting of the White/Modoc war in “Haunted America,” she brings to light the complexity and confusion of the White/Indian conflicts that is often missing in much of the history we read. Her account of the war, with the faults of both Whites and Indians revealed, is an unusual alternative to the stereotypical “Whites were good; Indians were bad” or the reverse stand point that “Indians were good; Whites were bad” conclusions that many historians reach. Limerick argues that a very brutal and bloody era has been simplified and romanticized, reducing the lives and deaths of hundreds to the telling of an uncomplicated story of “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys”.

The author of this book is a professor of history at Columbia University and is one of the country’s most noticeable historians. He graduated from Columbia with his doctoral degree under Richard Hofstadter. Foner is one of only two people to be president of three major professional organizations. They are the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians.

Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.

Tindall, George Brown, David E. Shi, and Charles W. Eagles. America a Narrative History. 10th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

Two political cartoons, “School Begins” by Puck and “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” by G.F Keller, both published in the late nineteenth century, avail of distinct examples in order to reveal America's attempt to civilize immigrants and non-white groups as a means of granting them social acceptance throughout the nineteenth century. “School Begins” exhibits Uncle Sam, a popular U.S. cartoon figure throughout history, as the dominant white American male in the center. In the cartoon, the class is made up of well-disciplined students studying books labeled with their state’s name, juxtaposed with the disorderly class seated in the front made up of the “Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and Cuba.” The territories are depicted as uncivilized, serving the racist and denigrating image that justified the right to govern the new territories gained after the Spanish-American War of 1898. In “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner”, immigrants and Americans of different backgrounds sit around a table, prepared for the feast . The groups represented at the dinner reveal unruly characteristics and stereotypical representations of each group’s food to highlight their conflicting differences in American society. By looking at how the artists utilize the exaggeration of non-white and immigrant groups, we can see the dominant civilizing narrative the U.S. secured through imperialism and assimilation, and this is salient because it exhibits a racist hierarchy that justified Western civilization

The style and tone of The Histories is varied throughout the work. It is analytical and subjective at times, and far-fetched

At the beginning of episode one, in the show Reveal the Past, the main character gets into a car crash. Mark and Milla were on their way to Mexico when a truck hit them. Mark almost died but, in episode two, Mila brought him back to life due to the powers that she, later on, realized she had. Once understanding her abilities she helps heal patients, in episode three. While she is curing a patient, nurse Lily a simple person, catches Mila healing someone and assumes she is hurting the patient so she goes to call the police but instead makes a deal.