As I read these stories, most of the people in the first handful of chapters were immigrants from Europe. Of course they had a hardship of getting jobs because of the language barrier, but once they got over that, they started making what was considered a lot of money. They talked about how they got naturalized within five years and how they can vote for politicians. However, other immigrants were treated completely different, like the Chinese. African Americans that were born in America had to fight for the right to vote. None of these immigrants made any comments on racial problems or they never talked about the poor.
Do you think any of these immigrants saw these problems in America or did they ignore it because they were there just to make money?
I noticed the same issue in these writings. Their stories were much more positive than those of African Americans or Chinese. I found it kind of nice to read positive stories about immigrants in America as opposed to the depressing tales of mistreatment we have been reading. Also, these stories meshed with what I had always been taught about America and immigrants, but my family immigrated long ago from European countries, which was clearly a very different experience from what other immigrants faced.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that these people chose to simply ignore the problems of other races in America because they were solely concerned with making money. I feel like they were just so concerned with working hard to make a better life for their families and themselves that they were unaware of the plights that other races were facing.