AMH23Blog

      This week's module discusses political polarization, terrorist attacks, and civil rights advancements (LGBT, people of color in politics). In this post, I will be focusing on the topic of political polarization, which is the idea that parties in government could create rifts in the country on the basis of ideologies. As a result, citizens could begin to fight with each other and prevent progress and solidarity within that country, such as the US. Two of the largest political parties today are the Republican and Democratic parties. Admittedly, there are other parties besides these, however, they are much smaller and have significantly less influence of politics and the country. This division amongst a country's own people can become very dangerous and express itself in protests, riots, and even civil wars.      On the same spectrum of polarization due to differences in beliefs, a recent case of this in the US can be seen in the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. This m

       This week's module is discussing changes in American power (specifically the executive branch), democracy v. communism, and new American policies and acts that were put in place. For this post, I will be focusing on the topic of the fight between democracy and communism. To provide some background knowledge, two main 'players' in this fight are the US, representing democracy, and the Soviet Union, representing communism. A very real fear at the time, for both parties, was that one of the two political ideologies would spread and get rid of the other one, thus weakening it's power. On the side of democracy and the US, the spread of communism would rid freedom, individuality, and quality of life for all. As a result, the strategy of 'containment' was created in order to help prevent communism from spreading to other unaffected nations. In doing so, the US would be able to spread democracy and peace to other nations by preventing them from falling under the

      For module 5's Immigration essay, I chose to focus on The Life Story of a Chinese Businessman by Lee Chew (1906). This essay discusses the experiences one Chinese Immigrant has in leaving his home in China to build his own fortune in America. Some key ideas that can be found throughout the essay are firstly that there is strong nationalism amongst cultures and their own. To explain, immigrants such as the Chinese, Irish, and Italians tend to mostly stick to themselves and their own cultures as opposed to assimilating into others because of either their own beliefs, prejudices, or discrimination. For example, the narrator, who is a Chinese immigrant, mentions staying within "the Chinese theater and Chinatown" on his days off as opposed to mingling with Americans or other immigrants that aren't Chinese.  Even more, the narrator continuously insults other immigrants that aren't of his ethnicity by insulting their appearance, intelligence, and overall character

        This week in class we are discussing WW2 and the cause of the war, as well as, the atrocities that came from it. For this specific post, I will be honing in on the xenophobia and racism that happened during the war and how those in power abused their authority to discriminate specific groups of people. Notably, examples of this abuse in power would be the creation of Jewish concentration camps by Germany and Japanese internment camps by the US. In both cases, the government of these nations wielded their powers to hurt the citizens of their nation because of their xenophobia towards those they saw as scapegoats and blamed for the war.       To explain further, Germany created concentration camps mainly for Jews, but also those they saw as "lesser than", in an attempt to create an ultimate Aryan race as directed by Hitler, who had the power at the time. Many historians speculate that Hitler mainly targeted Jews because of his belief that almost all of the issues German

      This week in class, we are discussing The Great Depression and the New Deal (1929-1941). Key focuses during this time were obviously The Great Depression itself, what the consequences of this time were, and the lasting effects by the government onto the economy. To provide some background, The Great Depression was a devastating time as people were out of jobs, businesses were shutting down, and the public morale was at an all time low. Families were being torn apart as every able-bodied member was being forced to work just to survive in horrid conditions. Specifically, the homes of these families were crowded due to low costs of tenement homes being full of people and filth, along with the streets around these buildings which wreaked illness on all those forced to live there. Moreover, the government was unsure whether intervening in the economy would be a good idea and therefore allowed for this to perpetuate due to inaction. Eventually, the government would finally step in and

  This module one of the topics we discussed was the Progressive Reformation. This was a time in which many calls for change were being made, particularly for more civil rights, education changes, and better working conditions. The topic I will be focusing on in this post is the demand for better working conditions.      At the time, working hours were long and grueling. Even worse, families were torn apart as almost everyone in the family who was able, had to work which meant less time together. This resulted in resentment by the workers towards the the capitalists and businessman in charge. Furthermore, a social rift began to form and protests for improved working conditions such as better pay, shorter hours, and safer working conditions began to be called for.      This idea of better working conditions is quite familiar today, as it has been carried all the way to the modern day. One recent case would be The Great Resignation after Covid-19. This was an event in which "reco