Is America truly America?

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In the near century since Langston Hughes's poem, Let America be America Again, have we changed and made America stand true to its ideals as Hughes wished? No! While great progress has been made since 1936 with many movements "enabling" rights for all peoples, the country still retains many of its racist sentiments and values from an age long past. African Americans still fight against racist sentiments, Native Americans still face unemployment and poverty, the poor are still poor, and the immigrants are still told to "go back home to their country." Has America truly stood strong with its values of equality and freedom for all? America is not the shining image of equality and high quality of life it appears to be from the outside. Every once in a while, when I go to India to meet my family, they always ask what life is like in the great land of America and they always have the same sense of disbelief. America is not truly the ideal place that it appears from the outside. It is a land of racism, poverty, sexism, and other problem which prevent it from being what it was intended to be by our founding fathers. As Langston Hughes put it nearly a century ago, 

"We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!"

Comments

  1. Jessie ChangNovember 13, 2022 at 6:10 PM

    Very interesting take Sohum, I'm glad that today we are trying to make as many changes as possible regarding racism, sexism, poverty, and more, but it's truly sad to see society be like this. In the end, I believe it is impossible to get rid of all these problems because it is so deeply rooted in human nature. Anyways, when I die, I wanna be reincarnated as a deep sea creature so I don't gotta deal with this human bs.

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