“A Quilt of a Country”

1. “A Quilt of a Country” By Anna Quindlen

2. Do Now: • How is America like a quilt? What do they have in common?

3. Notion • Definition: an idea or belief about something.

4. Author’s Argument • America is built on the idea that all men are created equal but sometimes people think they are better than others. • America is compared to a crazy quilt because a lot of cultures try to mix together (sometime we are successful and sometimes we aren’t).

5. Bigotry • Definition: intolerance toward those who hold different opinions than you **The next few slides show examples of when America wasn’t successful!

6. Burning Crosses • The image of the burning cross is one of the most potent hate symbols in the United States, popularized as a terror image by the Ku Klux Klan since the early 1900s.

7. Lynching From 1882 - 1968 • In the US, 4,743 people were lynched. Most of them were African Americans (72.7%). • In the South, people were blaming their financial problems on the freed slaves so lynchings became a popular way for whites to take out their anger.

8. Women’s Rights What Women Have Won Still Fighting for Reproductive rights Military service in active combat Equal pay for equal work Sexual harassment (me too movement) Just to name a few!! • Women got the right to vote in 1920 • 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national origin. • Education Codes of 1972, equal access to higher education and to professional schools became the law.

9. Matthew Shepard Openly gay University of Wyoming freshman was tied to a log fence, pistol-whipped 19-21 times, and left to die in the frigid cold for 18 hours. He died 5 days after the attack. The manner of his killing - the New York Times likened it to the Western custom of nailing a dead coyote to a fence to ward off intruders - detonated national outrage.

10. What tragedy is Anna talking about in line 20? • What makes America successful? • What does she mean by our enormous blessings?

11. Bemoan • express discontent or sorrow over (something).

12. Ascendancy • occupation of a position of dominant power or influence

13. Immigration in the Early 20th Century Why people immigrated Where did they work? Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, Bohemians, and Italians flocked to the coal mines or steel mills, Greeks preferred the textile mills, Russian and Polish Jews worked the needle trades or pushcart markets of New York. Railroad companies advertised the availability of free or cheap farmland overseas in pamphlets distributed in many languages, bringing a handful of agricultural workers to western farmlands. But the vast majority of immigrants crowded into the growing cities, searching for their chance to make a better life for themselves. • Escaping religious, racial, and political persecution, or seeking relief from a lack of economic opportunity or famine still pushed many immigrants out of their homelands. • Many were pulled here by contract labor agreements offered by recruiting agents.

14. Gilded • give a misleading or false brilliance to

15. Line 22 - 39 • What is the problem according to Quindlen and Cuomo?

16. Line 22-39 (Answer) • Immigrants who come to this country seem to stay in neighborhoods with their own people and then fight with others they don’t get along with.

17. Line 40 – 49: Even though Americans fight a lot, we don’t separate and become different countries(makes us successful!)

18. Immigration in the Early 20th Century Ellis Island Government inspectors asked a list of twenty-nine probing questions, such as: Have you money, relatives or a job in the United States? Are you a polygamist? An anarchist? Next, the doctors and nurses poked and prodded them, looking for signs of disease or debilitating handicaps. Usually immigrants were only detained 3 or 4 hours, and then free to leave. If they did not receive stamps of approval, and many did not because they were deemed criminals, anarchists or carriers of disease, they were sent back to their place of origin at the expense of the shipping line. • Immigrants entering the United States who could not afford first or second-class passage came through the processing center at Ellis Island, New York. • Built in 1892, the center handled some 12 million European immigrants, herding thousands of them a day through the barn-like structure during the peak years for screening.

19. Immigration in the Early 20th Century "I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.” – an old Italian saying Ellis Island Immigrants • For the newcomers arriving without family, some solace could be found in the ethnic neighborhoods populated by their fellow countrymen. • Here they could converse in their native tongue, practice their religion, and take part in cultural celebrations that helped ease the loneliness

20. Line 50 -59 • What used to hold us together? -a common enemy (WWI, WWII, Communism, The Cold War (Russia)

21. But after the fall of Communist Russia we didn’t have a common enemy anymore. • 9/11 had united us as a people and our new common enemy is terrorism.

22. Communism How does a communist government operate? • Ideally, no private property, businesses or industries are owned individually. The government owns everything and will equally distribute resources to every citizen.   • There are also no different social classes (e.g. middle class, low class) as all wealth and resources will be equally distributed among all citizens. • The government decides the amount of wealth and resources distributed equally to everyone. Furthermore, if anyone were to disagree with the government or the ideology of communism, not much can be done as people were trapped under the government's control. • There are no rich or poor in a communist-run state. Ultimately, everyone is equal.

23. Cold War (1945 – 1991) • The Cold War was a long period of tension between the democracies of the Western World and the communist countries of Eastern Europe. The west was led by the United States and Eastern Europe was led by the Soviet Union. • It was a 'war of words' and competition involving the Cold War Space Race (putting a man in orbit and getting to the moon) and Arms Race involving the nuclear build-up between the USA and its allies in the West and the Communist world dominated by the USSR and China in the East. • Main events of the Cold War such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs, the Soviet Invasion of Hungary, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the U2 incident brought the world to the brink of a Nuclear War and annihilation.

24. Vexing • causing annoyance, frustration, or worry.

25. Lines 61 - 71 • What did the National Opinion Research Center find about most Americans surveyed? • What is one of the things the U.S. stands for?

26. Answer from previous slide • The idea that a great nation can consist of refugees from other nations – if not side by side then on other sides of the street or city.

27. Abet • to encourage, support, or aid usually in wrongdoing

28. Psyche • the human soul, mind, or spirit.

29. Coalescing • coming together to form one mass or whole.

30. Line 79 - 88 What does Quindlen say about “new immigrants”?

31. New immigrants • They are similar to old immigrants, but come from Korea, Viet Nam, and Latin America • They live in the ma and pa store. • Their kids are doing well in school • They work hard • They are making it

32. What does tolerance mean? • It means to accept other people’s differences (race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) • It means you don’t judge or discriminate

33. According to Quindlen there are two behaviors that aid in unity: • Tolerance and Patriotism. • She says we should be proud of all these countries and cultures coming together and making one country with one name!

34. “Map of the world” • Photographs of the World Trade Center tragedy showed people from all over the world, which shows our diversity. This was a `a world tragedy not just an American one.