Weekly Response Essay by Karissa Chow
In the reading “Tracing the Trajectories of Conquest” by Juan Perea, he discusses role of race on the America’s Manifest Destiny and the desire for Mexico as well as the path to statehood. I found the reading very interesting because it brought out issues that I have not previously thought of before. For example, both the reading and our class discussion talked about the how the Puerto Rico is just territories and the factors that went into it. I found an article by the Washington Post that said that in a referendum in 2012 61% of Puerto Ricans wanted statehood. I think that it is really ironic that Puerto Rico has to pay federal taxes yet they do not get any representation in Congress nor can vote for …show more content…
I thought this idea was very interesting because of my own family experiences. My parents immigrated to the U.S. when they were both 13 years old and now they have fluent English without any accent. Growing up, my parents would speak to me in Chinese sometimes and especially when I was younger I knew Chinese and English. My parents always instilled in me the importance of knowing English and knowing it well. They said that it was important to know Chinese but because I was living in a society surrounded my Caucasians it was important to be able to fluently converse in their language. So for me, that means if I go to another country I make a concerted effort to learn a little bit of the language to converse with the people in their own tongue. It does not mean that I think that their language is more important or mine is any less but that the best way to communicate is in the other person’s own native tongue. So for me, I think that people who live in American should be learn to speak English because that is still one of the most spoken languages in the world and especially in the U.S. Conversely, since American does have so many Spanish speaking people, we should be able to converse also in Spanish in order to talk with them. I mean the Europeans are able to learn several different languages so I think we should be able to do the same as a common courtesy. I think it is wrong for Americans to
In the reading “Tracing the Trajectories of Conquest” by Juan Perea, he discusses role of race on the America’s Manifest Destiny and the desire for Mexico as well as the path to statehood. I found the reading very interesting because it brought out issues that I have not previously thought of before. For example, both the reading and our class discussion talked about the how the Puerto Rico is just territories and the factors that went into it. I found an article by the Washington Post that said that in a referendum in 2012 61% of Puerto Ricans wanted statehood. I think that it is really ironic that Puerto Rico has to pay federal taxes yet they do not get any representation in Congress nor can vote for …show more content…
I thought this idea was very interesting because of my own family experiences. My parents immigrated to the U.S. when they were both 13 years old and now they have fluent English without any accent. Growing up, my parents would speak to me in Chinese sometimes and especially when I was younger I knew Chinese and English. My parents always instilled in me the importance of knowing English and knowing it well. They said that it was important to know Chinese but because I was living in a society surrounded my Caucasians it was important to be able to fluently converse in their language. So for me, that means if I go to another country I make a concerted effort to learn a little bit of the language to converse with the people in their own tongue. It does not mean that I think that their language is more important or mine is any less but that the best way to communicate is in the other person’s own native tongue. So for me, I think that people who live in American should be learn to speak English because that is still one of the most spoken languages in the world and especially in the U.S. Conversely, since American does have so many Spanish speaking people, we should be able to converse also in Spanish in order to talk with them. I mean the Europeans are able to learn several different languages so I think we should be able to do the same as a common courtesy. I think it is wrong for Americans to