Have You Ever Seen Anything In Your Life That Just Seemed To Good To Be True?
Have you ever seen anything in your life that just seemed to good to be
true? Have you ever saw something at a restaurant menu that looked like "a
double dose of all that" but it turned out to be "toe up from the floe up". The
point that I am trying to reach is that western expansion was not good for
America.
The reason why I say this is because a lot of people got caught
up in the western myth. The western myth is a belief that all will profit, all
would be equal, and all will be free.
Hays Jackson states that "Chinese
immigrants started arriving in the United States around the late 1840s and early
1850s." In his article Paper Sons, he states "for many Chinese, however the
United States was the Mountain of Gold". Basically Chinese immigrants came
looking for a better life but what they found themselves taken advantage of,
discrimination, hatred, and abuse. One of the ways that they legally got
discriminated was the Exclusion Acts. The Exclusion Acts were laws saying those
of Chinese descent were not welcome in to the United States unless you were
educated a merchant or a son of a US citizen.
Mariano Vallejo is just one
of the many people who got caught into the Western Myth. To make a long story
short, Vallejo was this man who owned a lot of land and property. After the gold
rush he had nothing. How did he lose it all? The same way the Native Americans
did. Land hungry settlers came upon his lands like roaches come to a dirty
kitchen and Mariano Vallejo was raid-less. Mr. Vallejo life represents the life
of many Mexican and Mexican Americans. Even though Mexican and Mexican Americans
accepted the settlers, their new country treated them like foreigners. By the
end of the 1800s the Mexican and Mexican American found themselves a minority
with little or no power and occupying the lowest rungs of the economic
ladder.
The author Scott Minerbook says that "Blacks viewed the west as a
land of promise both economically and racially even though most came to the west
as slaves". In the story The Forgotten Pioneers the Author talks about how Black
towns were suppose to be set up. Minorbook says " Among the most prominent all
black towns was Nicodemus Kan., established in1877 by a White speculator and his
Black partner. As was often the case during the settling of west , Black
pioneers were promised fertile fields abundant water shady trees and plenty of
game by the alluring avartisement . Instead arriving Blacks found that the best
farmlands surrounding the city had already been taken by whites. There were no
trees and the game was scarce." In other words Whites said "Hmmm we already have
the nice land for ourselves lets give the not so nice area to the Blacks. We can
tell them the land is just like ours and make a profit!"Also the Article says
"Nicodemus lost a competition for a railroad station that would have tied it
into the larger regional economy and went into an economical decline. But the
Legacy of racism played a role; Jim Crow laws barred Blacks from voting and
hampers Black laborers. Four Black people were lynched in a town in Oklahoma in
1910" Just another example of the western myth. All was not free all was not
rich and all was not equal.
Western expansion was not good for America.
On the good side you had more land more money and who doesn't want that. One the
bad side you had racism, discrimination hatred and distrust. But to get this
land and wealth, was it necessary to steal it from Native, Mexican, Native
Americans and Mexican Americans? Was it necessary to make laws to keep other
people from getting their share of the
pie?