Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re all on the same boat now.” Here, MLK Jr. talks about how all people should be treated equally, no matter what their culture is. This goes in line with the idea of multiculturalism, which is the idea of many cultures coming together to create a diverse community. Many contemporary writers used the idea of multiculturalism to emphasize what the lives of non-whites are actually like in America. Multicultural writers show that the American Dream is impossible for non-white Americans, there is racism towards non-whites in America, and there is a cultural conflict between traditional values and cultures and American values and cultures for American immigrants.
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These writers tell how it is harder for a non-white person to achieve their goals, and many non-whites in America believe as early as their childhood that there is no way for them to live the American Dream. In the essay “Change,” the narrator describes the urban Indians who leave their reservations to go to the city who “expect a good job and a decent standard of living,” but are then ruined when they instead face “prejudice, unemployment, poverty, and ill health.” The narrator describes the distress and sadness of the Indians who expect so much, only to end up being wrought with “rage, hopelessness, and alienation.” The narrator here describes the experience of many Indians who expected to live the American Dream, but rather lived the exact opposite. Additionally, Alice Walker, in her essay “The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?,” recounts her various experiences of being an African-American throughout her life. She details her exact thoughts the moment she started to believe it was not possible for her to achieve her dreams when she says, “I wanted to be an author or a scientist--which the color of my body denied.” Walker had realized as a teenager in high school that her dreams were not as easily achievable as those of her white peers, giving up on the hope of becoming a writer like she wished for years. Before the Civil Rights Movement, Walker and most other non-whites accepted the fact that the American Dream of living one’s best life was a dream not meant for them. Moreover, in “Let’s Tell the Story of All America’s Cultures,” Ji-Yeon Yuh reports how she never learned about the good contributions to America that Indians or Asian Americans had, but alternatively adopted the idea that the only American heroes were white. Ji-Yeon Yuh was bullied by her classmates for being a “slant-eyed
These writers tell how it is harder for a non-white person to achieve their goals, and many non-whites in America believe as early as their childhood that there is no way for them to live the American Dream. In the essay “Change,” the narrator describes the urban Indians who leave their reservations to go to the city who “expect a good job and a decent standard of living,” but are then ruined when they instead face “prejudice, unemployment, poverty, and ill health.” The narrator describes the distress and sadness of the Indians who expect so much, only to end up being wrought with “rage, hopelessness, and alienation.” The narrator here describes the experience of many Indians who expected to live the American Dream, but rather lived the exact opposite. Additionally, Alice Walker, in her essay “The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?,” recounts her various experiences of being an African-American throughout her life. She details her exact thoughts the moment she started to believe it was not possible for her to achieve her dreams when she says, “I wanted to be an author or a scientist--which the color of my body denied.” Walker had realized as a teenager in high school that her dreams were not as easily achievable as those of her white peers, giving up on the hope of becoming a writer like she wished for years. Before the Civil Rights Movement, Walker and most other non-whites accepted the fact that the American Dream of living one’s best life was a dream not meant for them. Moreover, in “Let’s Tell the Story of All America’s Cultures,” Ji-Yeon Yuh reports how she never learned about the good contributions to America that Indians or Asian Americans had, but alternatively adopted the idea that the only American heroes were white. Ji-Yeon Yuh was bullied by her classmates for being a “slant-eyed