Essay On Cultural Diversity In America

625 Words3 Pages

Cultural diversity flourishes in the United States even though the golden door are no longer as open as they once were. Americans’ doors have rusted shut through disuse. It doesn’t matter how many people come to the United States looking for freedom and opportunity there will always be groups of people who voluntarily discredit immigrants. Despite Emma Lazarus’s optimistic view, immigrants have and will almost always be looked upon with a predisposition of judgement and shame. With this they will most likely have a harder time reaching the freedom they aspired for. America is “supposedly” home of the free, but with racism still existing legal immigrants can find it hard to find housing and work. Americans tend to have a harder time accepting …show more content…

But yet, this is not the case for most immigrants in the United States. When immigrants come over to the U.S. they carry over new traditions that can be side-eyed by American citizens. An immigrant may have an accent or practice religion not common here and will stick out of what is considered normal in America. In the day, immigrants can “wrap their babies in the American flag, feed them mashed hot dogs and apple pie” to fit in and avoid conflict with patriotic citizens. At night they can “whisper in Spanish or Polish when the babies sleep” (Mora, 132) to hang on to what little pieces they have left of their original selves. This shame of having to hide who a person is stems from harassment received with an immigrants’ so called “freedom”. Pressure created to fit in causes most people to completely change who they are, like in the short story Two Kings by Amy Tan. Jing-mei’s mother belief is “you could be anything you wanted to be in America”. (Tan, 133) Jing-mei’s mother heavily believed this and through the story saw famous or talented Americans and tried to turn her daughter into what she saw. It wasn’t enough for the mother to have a simple daughter, so she took every opportunity she had to mold her daughter into a American prodigy that she saw on the

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