America Essay Research Paper AmericaAmerica The

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America Essay, Research Paper America America. The land of opportunity, the country that beckons to so many people, calling to them with the promise of freedom to live their lives as they see fit. As our National Anthem states, the United States is the land of the free and the home of the brave. The motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unum, means from many, one. The United States has always been known as a melting pot, a place where people from many different cultures coming together to form a unified whole. America is the country where dreams can come true. In order to understand America, one must first look at the physical aspects. The United States is located in the North and West hemispheres of the globe. It is the third largest country in the world, after Russia and

Canada. It also has the third largest population in the world, with an estimated 274,943,496 people in the year 2000. (Encarta 2000 Online) The United States consists of 48 continental states, plus Alaska and Hawaii. The United States has a rich and varied natural environment. Possessing all four of the world s most productive agricultural climates, the United States is one of the world s leading agricultural countries. The varied terrains have attracted many different groups of people. America s population has always been bolstered by immigration. The high standard of living associated with life in the United States has brought many different people to our shores. While this has brought a lot of good to the country, it has unfortunately resulted in racism. Gloria Yamato defines

racism as the systematic, institutionalized mistreatment of one group of people by another based on racial heritage. (Rothenberg 152) Americans have always believed that they are the best, that no other country in the world can surpass them. This leads to a feeling of superiority when it comes to dealing with people of different races. The most obvious example of racism is in our dealings with African Americans. We forced them to come to our country, made them slaves, and then supposedly freed them while making laws which made it perfectly legal to separate them from us. If America is truly the land of the free, then why are African Americans still fighting for equality today? To put a stop to racism, we need to understand it. Every human being has the responsibility to

understand everything he/she makes a judgment about. People just don t take the time to understand racism and therefore, we can t put a stop to it. As Gloria Yamato stated in her essay, so, what can we do? Acknowledge racism for a start, even though and especially when we ve struggled to be kind and fair, or struggled to rise above it all. (Rothenberg 153) That s the first big step to understanding racism; acknowledging its existence. People don t want to believe that racism is real because it is an ugly thing. It mars the perfect beauty of the United States. Unfortunately, racism is not something that will be ended anytime soon. There are too many ignorant people out there who are perfectly content with the way things are now. Another aspect of population in the United States is

gender. Over half the population of the country are women, yet they still have to fight for equality. Women wage an ongoing battle for equality in much the same way as other racial minorities. Women are constantly harassed on the choices they make, whether it concerns their personal life or their careers. As stated by Marilyn Frye, If she is heterosexually active, a woman is open to censure and punishment for being loose, unprincipled or a whore. (Rothenberg 147) Men are not treated this way, so why should women? In our society it seems to be perfectly all right for a man to have promiscuous sex, but if a woman does it, she s a tramp. On the other hand, if she refrains from heterosexual activity, she is fairly constantly harassed by men who try to persuade her into it and