Immigrant Groups Usa

Submitted by: Submitted by

Views: 115

Words: 1824

Pages: 8

Category: US History

Date Submitted: 12/01/2013 03:27 PM

Report This Essay

Immigration to the United States is a complex demographic phenomenon that has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants, crime, voting behavior… Among all these immigrant groups, this paper will focus on three specifically: the Irish immigrants, the African-American and the Native-American.

These three groups which lived the same experience of being from a different ethnicity, who had suffered from xenophobia and negative stereotypes are also different from each other considering their immigrant’s history, their assimilation, the way they deal with their cultural differences.

Race-based stereotypes have always existed. Unfortunately, they generalize groups of people in manners that lead to discrimination and ignore the diversity within groups. Movies sometimes build stereotypes or at least reflect them to their audience. The movie The Help is set in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era. Skeeter Phelan returns to her hometown after receiving her Journalism degree from Ole Miss. She is a fiery, tenacious character who wants nothing more than to be a writer. Once thrown back into her small town, Skeeter begins to see her world a little differently. She does not approve of the way her friends treat the domestic help, others that are not in their social group, or even each other. The movie is laced with many racial inequalities and stereotypes. Aibileen and Minnie are the main characters from the Black, domestic help group, enlightening the stereotype of the Mammy. The Black woman who takes care of the family and the home of the White. But there is an implicit danger of perpetuating the tradition of Black actresses in “Mammy” roles. Indeed, even if the book and film are an attempt to dispel the archetype of the Mammy, the image of an...