RACE AND GENDER

Race and Gender

Race and Gender

Go North, Young Man

Traditionally, America has been an east-west country. We have read our annals, right to left over the page. We were oblivious of Canada. We scarcely observed Mexico, except when Mexico got in the way of our westward migration, which we understood as the will of God, "manifest destiny."

In a Protestant homeland that accepted in rebirth (the Easter promise), land became our metaphor for possibility. As long as there was land before us--Ohio, Illinois, Nebraska--we could accept as factual in change; we could leave behind our in-laws, depart disappointments behind, to start anew farther west. California symbolized supreme likelihood, future-time, the end of the line, where loonies and prophets dwelled, where America's fads inevitably began.

Nineteenth-century genuine land parcel developers and 20th-century Hollywood moguls may have advocated the futuristic myth of California to remainder of America. But the myth was one Americans were predisposed to believe. The concept of California was created by Americans numerous miles away.

Only a couple of early voices from California ever warnedagainst optimism. Two decades after California became American territory, the conservationist John Muir stood at the for demonstration of California and recognized that America is a finite idea: We require to maintain the land, if the illusion of America is to survive. Word of Muir's breakthrough gradually traveled in turn around in time, from the scarcely populated West (the future) to the congested clay brick towns of the East Coast (the past).

I increased up in California of the 1950s, when the state was loading with persons from New York and Oklahoma. Everyone was engaged mislaying heaviness and altering hair hue and evolving somebody new. There was, then, still abounding of bargain land for tract dwellings, under the cloudless sky.

Today, there are isolated villages in Latin America that are amidst the most worldwide locations on earth. Tiny Peruvian villages understand when ranchers are picking pears in the Yakima valley in Washington state.  I am the child of a prophet. I am a fool. I am a casualty of history. I am confused. I manage not understand if I am approaching or going. I talk awful Spanish. And yet I notify Latin America this: Because I increased up Hispanic in California, I understand more Guatemalans than I would if I had developed up in Mexico, more Brazilians than if I dwelled in Peru. Because I reside in California, it is usual for me to understand Nicaraguans and Salvadorans and Cubans. As usual as understanding Chinese or Vietnamese.  My young individual Californians deplore blaring about the uncouth south invasion. I state this to California: Immigration is habitually illegal. It is a impolite proceed, the departing of home. Immigration starts as a violation of made-to-order, a youthful proceed of defiance, an abuse to the village. I understand a man from El Salvador who has not voiced to his dad since the day he left his father's village. Immigrants shock the grandmothers they depart ...