Essay on "America's Intolerant History"

Essay 3 pages (870 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Intolerance

American history is unfortunately a history of intolerance. As Reid, Toth, Crew & Burton (2008) point out, "ironically, the American Revolution may have established a culture and destiny of intolerance in the United States by providing a model for the use of violence to support any cause that seems honorable," (p. 7). Intolerance stems from a belief in White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) superiority to all other social and ethnic groups from African-Americans to Jews to Native Americans and Latinos. Because WASPs have enjoyed political hegemony in the United States since colonial times, they have wielded this power to maintain economic and social status in order to subjugate others.

Intolerance started before the United States was a nation, before the war of Independence. The persecution of Native Americans revealed the roots of intolerance in America. The United States built itself on a foundation of bloodshed and violence by driving the Native Americans off lands they enjoyed for hundreds or in some cases thousands of years. The "ideology of pure hatred" and attitudes of condescension and paternalism carried over into all areas of Indian policy, land use policy, and then to the WASP interactions with other non-WASP groups (Reid et al. 2008, p. 8). Those other groups include the Spanish-speaking and Native American groups of Central America and the Caribbean, which have been labeled as outsiders and stigmatized because of linguistic, ethnic, and cultural difference.

It is therefore ironic is that one of the four main values that define WASP ethnicity is "a belief in democracy that promoted equality, freedom, and individualism," (Reid et al. 2008, p. 2). WASP Americans have persecuted nearly every non-WASP group imaginable and even spread intolerance among WASPs who do not conform to certain social norms. For example, women were and to a degree still are deprived of human rights, freedoms, and liberties. The dominant culture does not tolerate homosexuality either.

Often intolerance manifests merely as social stigma or being ostracized from the mainstream community. At its more severe manifestations, intolerance may mean a systemic lack of rights and freedoms or lack of access to wealth and cultural capital. The most severe evidence of intolerance in America has been the creation and maintenance of hate groups. For example, when slavery was abolished, the spirit of racism persisted in the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan is in some cases viewed as such an integral part of Southern American society, showing how entrenched bigotry and hatred is in the United States. The idea that the United States is a Christian and white nation is one that is strangely popular.

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