Not Like Us Discussion

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The Effect of a “Frontier less” Society on Minorities and Immigrants

Part 1

Our textbook discusses the concept of the border. The frontier phenomenon has grown from borders. And the degree of the possible and real impact of these phenomena on the development of territories, depends on administrative region within the countries or the country itself. In 1920, the American historian Turner wrote a book that presents the history of the United States around the concept of border. This one is conceived opposite of the European border. The European border marks a boundary not to cross between densely populated regions. On the contrary, the borders in the United States always pushed back to the west, is a vast zone vaguely delimited between a populated area and an empty and wild region: a boundary to cross. From this call would have formed all the American identity (Daniels 21).

The frontier is incessant invitation to surpass, to enterprise, to movement, to conquest; which forces individualism by the necessity of forming small groups or families for colonization. It is also the race for democracy in the already populated states to take into account the aspirations of the citizens and prevent them from taking the path of the west; it is still the taste of freedom and the refusal of any public control. In short, for Turner, the frontier is at the origin of the American way of life: individualistic, enterprising, having a taste for expansion, individual freedom, and the rejection of public power, all in an identity formed in opposition to Europe. In 1920, however, the border had long reached the shores of the Pacific. It remains for the American to defend at any cost the values ​​of democracy and freedom that allowed him to find the concept of the border ("The American Yawp, Chapter 17, Section II).

The first of the great merits of the frontier, according to Turner, and which in some way is the ferment of individualism and democracy that characterize the American people, lies in a composite nationality, contradictory, heterogeneous, heteroclite, at once idealistic and materialistic, but perfectly coherent, a cultural hapax that no old - implicit, European - criterion can circumscribe. ("The American Yawp, Chapter 17).

Part 2:

Thus American history is punctuated by examples of how the American authorities have transgressed the fundamental principles erected as the foundations of American democracy. How can it be explained that the government has been able to resort to discriminatory practices, in violation of many provisions of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection ( Equal Protection Clause )? One possible path is that the expansion of powers of the executive as the primary condition that allowed the implementation of most of these initiatives. The history of the United States permeates all American society, and this story is founded from the beginning of slavery and racism, as well as on the armed violence and opportunism of money adventurers. All of this has had severe consequences after centuries of unbridled capitalism. This is how millions of middle-class and ultra-rich citizens have been able to appoint a billionaire to represent them. This sort of political culture has the effect of letting oligarchs decide the fate of the lives of millions of people, of many peoples, if not of the planet. In reality, American policy conveys a particular conception of public life: a kind of "civil war". In his inaugural speech, on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump did not hesitate to break sugar on his country, on his predecessors and their policies, speaking in particular of "American carnage" and countries populated "rusty factories like tombstones". For its part, the influential newspaper The Washington Post has sharply criticized this false image of an impoverished and crime-ridden country.

Work cited

Daniels, Roger. Not like us: Immigrants and minorities in America, 1890-1924. Ivan R Dee,

1997.

Frederick Jackson Turner, "Significance of the Western Frontier in American History":

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/17-conquering-the-west/frederick-jackson-turner-significance-of-the-frontier-in-american-history-1893/

The West as History: The Turner Thesis: http://www.americanyawp.com/text/17-conquering-

the-west/#VIII_The_West_as_History_the_Turner_Thesis