Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking

In “The Cult of Ethnicity” by Arthur M. Schlesinger, he starts off by talking about how racial and ethnic diversities aren’t working in other countries like they are in the United States. When in fact it is causing countries to fight and break apart while The United States is accepting the differences that are arising. In Schlesinger argument he quotes Margaret Thatcher by saying that the reason why the United States can accept and handle it well is because “No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations within a single culture.” Schlesinger then ties it up with stating that more “American-born members of minority groups, white or nonwhite, see themselves primarily as Americans rather than primarily as members of one or another ethnic group.” Schlesinger then states that there are more interracial marriages than ever before and we are a great example to other countries that are struggling to keep their own country together.

Throughout the Schlesinger’s essay he talks about different cultures and in one certain paragraph he uses the word “cult”. He uses it as “the cult of ethnicity,” meaning the culture of a certain ethnicity. Different cultures have different beliefs and each cult have their own practices. Cults are normally known for having a certain leader that they look up to and must abide by certain regulations. Schlesinger refers to them as cults because each culture is a different cult in their own unique way.

In “Chicana” by Martha Serrano she starts off by stating that one must call her Chicana, she then proceeds to talking about where the word came from. Serrano explains that the word ‘hispanic’ “is a term imposed on Americans of Latin descent by federal regulators, unprepared educators, and merchants who want our money but not us.” She then talks a little bit of history and of the wording of “Mexico” which originally was named “meshico” and how it came from “the encounter of between...