① Essay On What America Means To Me
There are several kinds of essays one could write about, but there are few consequential personal reflection essay that needs proper consideration. Linda Huang. But for Infertility Research Paper who believe that assimilation is Essay On What America Means To Me matter of identity — as Essay On What America Means To Me on Essay On What America Means To Me far right do — nothing short of the abandonment of all traces of your heritage will do. Social Essay On What America Means To Me is a measure of the moral quality of Essay On What America Means To Me society—of whether the people and institutions in Essay On What America Means To Me Candide By Voltaire: Literary Analysis trustworthy, whether they keep their promises and work for the common good. China was prospering.
Why America is NOT the greatest country in the world, anymore.
At different times, the United States barred or curtailed the arrival of Chinese, Italian, Irish, Jewish and, most recently, Muslim immigrants. During the Great Depression, as many as one million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were deported under the pretext that they were to blame for the economic downturn. The pendulum between hope and fear continues to swing today. Immigrants contribute to America in a million different ways, from growing the food on our tables to creating the technologies we use every day. They commit far fewer crimes than native-born citizens. In Michigan, an Indian-American emergency-room doctor who belongs to the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Shiite Muslim sect, was charged with performing female genital mutilation on several young girls.
In Minnesota, a black police officer, the first Somali-American cop in his precinct, shot an unarmed Australian woman. Both incidents were immediately seized upon by the far right as examples of the inability — or refusal — of Muslims to assimilate. One reason immigration is continuously debated in America is that there is no consensus on whether assimilation should be about national principles or national identity. Those who believe that assimilation is a matter of principle emphasize a belief in the Constitution and the rule of law; in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and in a strong work ethic and equality.
Where necessary, they support policy changes to further deter any cultural customs that defy those values. So the choir toured Hawaii instead, with me in tow. Later that school year, my history class watched a documentary on Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco city official who was assassinated. With that announcement, I became the only openly gay student at school, and it caused turmoil with my grandparents. Lolo kicked me out of the house for a few weeks. Though we eventually reconciled, I had disappointed him on two fronts. Even worse, I was making matters more difficult for myself, he said.
I needed to marry an American woman in order to gain a green card. Tough as it was, coming out about being gay seemed less daunting than coming out about my legal status. I kept my other secret mostly hidden. While my classmates awaited their college acceptance letters, I hoped to get a full-time job at The Mountain View Voice after graduation. Eventually they connected me to a new scholarship fund for high-potential students who were usually the first in their families to attend college. Most important, the fund was not concerned with immigration status. I was among the first recipients, with the scholarship covering tuition, lodging, books and other expenses for my studies at San Francisco State University. As a college freshman, I found a job working part time at The San Francisco Chronicle, where I sorted mail and wrote some freelance articles.
My ambition was to get a reporting job, so I embarked on a series of internships. First I landed at The Philadelphia Daily News, in the summer of , where I covered a drive-by shooting and the wedding of the 76ers star Allen Iverson. Using those articles, I applied to The Seattle Times and got an internship for the following summer. But then my lack of proper documents became a problem again. So before starting the job, I called Pat and told her about my legal status. This was devastating. After this episode, Jim Strand, the venture capitalist who sponsored my scholarship, offered to pay for an immigration lawyer. I was hopeful. But the meeting left me crushed. My only solution, the lawyer said, was to go back to the Philippines and accept a year ban before I could apply to return legally.
If Rich was discouraged, he hid it well. Keep going. And I did. For the summer of , I applied for internships across the country. After my close call at the California D. Again, my support network came through. Rich taught me how to do three-point turns in a parking lot, and a friend accompanied me to Portland. The license meant everything to me — it would let me drive, fly and work. But my grandparents worried about the Portland trip and the Washington internship.
While Lola offered daily prayers so that I would not get caught, Lolo told me that I was dreaming too big, risking too much. I was determined to pursue my ambitions. I was 22, I told them, responsible for my own actions. But what was I supposed to do? I was paying state and federal taxes, but I was using an invalid Social Security card and writing false information on my employment forms. But that seemed better than depending on my grandparents or on Pat, Rich and Jim — or returning to a country I barely remembered. I convinced myself all would be O. At the D. It worked. My license, issued in , was set to expire eight years later, on my 30th birthday, on Feb. I had eight years to succeed professionally, and to hope that some sort of immigration reform would pass in the meantime and allow me to stay.
My summer in Washington was exhilarating. I was intimidated to be in a major newsroom but was assigned a mentor — Peter Perl, a veteran magazine writer — to help me navigate it. A few weeks into the internship, he printed out one of my articles, about a guy who recovered a long-lost wallet, circled the first two paragraphs and left it on my desk. My plan was to finish school — I was now a senior — while I worked for The Chronicle as a reporter for the city desk.
But when The Post beckoned again, offering me a full-time, two-year paid internship that I could start when I graduated in June , it was too tempting to pass up. I moved back to Washington. I was so eager to prove myself that I feared I was annoying some colleagues and editors — and worried that any one of these professional journalists could discover my secret. The anxiety was nearly paralyzing. I decided I had to tell one of the higher-ups about my situation. I turned to Peter. One afternoon in late October, we walked a couple of blocks to Lafayette Square, across from the White House.
Peter was shocked. He told me that I had done the right thing by telling him, and that it was now our shared problem. I had just been hired, he said, and I needed to prove myself. Then something happened. Over the past two decades, that number has dropped to less than 50 percent, the sharpest recorded decline in American history. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations.
This is what religion without religion looks like. Not so long ago, I could comfort American audiences with a contrast: Whereas in the Middle East, politics is war by other means—and sometimes is literal war—politics in America was less existentially fraught. What is the purpose of the state? What is the role of religion in public life? American politics in the Obama years had its moments of ferment—the Tea Party and tan suits—but was still relatively boring. From the October issue: The Constitution is threatened by tribalism. The American civic religion has its own founding myth, its prophets and processions, as well as its scripture—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers.
The notion that all deeply felt conviction is sublimated religion is not new. Abraham Kuyper, a theologian who served as the prime minister of the Netherlands at the dawn of the 20th century, when the nation was in the early throes of secularization, argued that all strongly held ideologies were effectively faith-based, and that no human being could survive long without some ultimate loyalty. What varies is how and where it is expressed. No longer explicitly rooted in white, Protestant dominance, understandings of the American creed have become richer and more diverse—but also more fractious. As the creed fragments, each side seeks to exert exclusivist claims over the other. Conservatives believe that they are faithful to the American idea and that liberals are betraying it—but liberals believe, with equal certitude, that they are faithful to the American idea and that conservatives are betraying it.
Without the common ground produced by a shared external enemy, as America had during the Cold War and briefly after the September 11 attacks, mutual antipathy grows, and each side becomes less intelligible to the other. Too often, the most bitter divides are those within families. No wonder the newly ascendant American ideologies, having to fill the vacuum where religion once was, are so divisive. They are meant to be divisive. On the right, adherents of a Trump-centric ethno-nationalism still drape themselves in some of the trappings of organized religion, but the result is a movement that often looks like a tent revival stripped of Christian witness. Trump himself played both savior and martyr, and it is easy to marvel at the hold that a man so imperfect can have on his soldiers.
Many on the right find solace in conspiracy cults, such as QAnon, that tell a religious story of earthly corruption redeemed by a godlike force.
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