America is, without a doubt, an extremely diverse nation. Beyond that, we pride ourselves upon our title: “The United States”. Has this title really ever represented the state of our nation? I think not. Our country was unfortunately founded on slavery and the denial of rights. In fact, I believe that we have yet to remedy the hatred and injustice that plagued our country in the past.
America may appear united from an outsider’s point of view, but its history is contradictory to this. In paragraph 2 of “A Quilt of a Country”, Quindlen points out that “Many of the […] stories of the […] nation […] are stories not of tolerance, but of […] slavery and sweatshops, the burning of crosses, […] the lynching of blacks, the denial of rights to women, [and] the murder of gay men.” One may argue that when our nation was conceived, these were not our ideals, but, the first man in office, George Washington, participated in the demeaning practice of owning slaves. Can we truthfully deny our dark history…show more content… Sure, we don’t attack and demean each other as much as we used to, but what does that amount to? Certainly, tolerance is a far cry from unity. As Quindlen illustrated (P. 2, Para. 4, L. 1-5), here in the ‘States, we can’t seem to stop complaining about the other, or “them”. Whichever group is new, different, or seemingly dangerous always gets criticized and questioned. We go around living our lives, even going so far as to help our fellow citizens, and yet we “speak in theory of hatred” for each other (Quindlen, P. 1, Para. 4, L. 1-4). We were and still are divided along the ideological lines of race, color, religion, political stance, etc. Patel mentions (P. 3, Para. 1-2) having seen women in Islamic headscarves being shamed for their religion. Chances are you’ve probably seen someone shamed for something as simple as what they wore. How can we achieve unification if we can’t seem to agree upon the simplest of
