The United States, in many ways, is a nation founded on hypocrisy. We preach “equality for all”, but kept Africans enslaved for over a hundred years, denied women the right to vote, and promote an economic system where the wealthy benefit and the poor suffer. However, we have, and continue to be, a very xenophobic nation, we are afraid that “immigrants are going to take our jobs” – even though we are a country founded and built by the toil and sweat of such men and women. We have discriminated against many different people over the course of our great and noble history, including Africans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and Germans. An article entitled “Xenophobia: American Nativism” deals with this very issue. It tackles the issues of xenophobia
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The first measure that the dominate groups used was legislative control, namely attempting to implement an extended waiting period for naturalization and voting for immigrants to 21 years instead of the national government 's five. They also desired to exclude immigrants from holding public office and sought to prevent a large number of “lesser” immigrants from entering the country at all. The dominate group sought to use legislative control to curtail the efforts of Germans to integrate into American society because they were afraid that the German people would “destroy” the heavily ingrained values that the “white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant” culture had made them accept. This fear of change was also a heavy reason for why many Americans became xenophobic after the South 's reintegration into the American culture after Reconstruction ended in 1877. The myriad of immigrants had two main ways to deal with their discrimination, avoidance and acceptance. They avoided racism and intolerance by moving to more accepting communities, more specifically, the Midwest. The immigrants also learned to accept their treatment by the dominate society because, in many cases, they either could not return back home or, if they could, social conditions were worse in their homeland. The minority groups responded the way they did because they found acceptance from other minorities when they moved further westward or, despite their inhumane treatment by the majority of Americans, found that life in the United States was better than life back home. Although we are a nation founded on noble ideals, our record in living up to them has been less than perfect. Our founders may have been wealthy hypocrites, but their hearts were in the right place. If we truly want to change our attitudes towards those seeking a
The first measure that the dominate groups used was legislative control, namely attempting to implement an extended waiting period for naturalization and voting for immigrants to 21 years instead of the national government 's five. They also desired to exclude immigrants from holding public office and sought to prevent a large number of “lesser” immigrants from entering the country at all. The dominate group sought to use legislative control to curtail the efforts of Germans to integrate into American society because they were afraid that the German people would “destroy” the heavily ingrained values that the “white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant” culture had made them accept. This fear of change was also a heavy reason for why many Americans became xenophobic after the South 's reintegration into the American culture after Reconstruction ended in 1877. The myriad of immigrants had two main ways to deal with their discrimination, avoidance and acceptance. They avoided racism and intolerance by moving to more accepting communities, more specifically, the Midwest. The immigrants also learned to accept their treatment by the dominate society because, in many cases, they either could not return back home or, if they could, social conditions were worse in their homeland. The minority groups responded the way they did because they found acceptance from other minorities when they moved further westward or, despite their inhumane treatment by the majority of Americans, found that life in the United States was better than life back home. Although we are a nation founded on noble ideals, our record in living up to them has been less than perfect. Our founders may have been wealthy hypocrites, but their hearts were in the right place. If we truly want to change our attitudes towards those seeking a