1. The quote I chose that best represented the lecture and both readings were from Trans-national America by Randolph S. Bourne. The quotes states, "Our cities are filled with these half- breeds who retain their foreign names but have lost the foreign savor. This does not mean that they have actually been changed into New Englanders or MiddleWesterners. It does not mean that they have been really Americanized. It means that letting slip from them whatever native culture they had, they have substituted for it only the most rudimentary American—the American culture of the cheap newspaper, the ‘movies,’ the popular song, the ubiquitous automobile. The unthinking who survey this class call them assimilated, Americanized. The great American public school has done its work. With these people our institutions are safe. We may thrill with dread at the aggressive hyphenate, but this tame flabbiness is accepted as Americanization. The same moulders of opinion whose ideal is to melt the different races into Anglo-Saxon gold hail this poor product as the satisfying result of their alchemy".
2. I believe the meaning of this quote is there is no such thing as "American culture". America is filled with different kinds of people that make up America, but to the most extremists or patriotic "American", having different breeds of different cultures is a bad look for America. These Americans try to sell or preach to the foreigners about the "American culture", and tell them what is acceptable and what is not. Once they sell these people this "dream" then they have kept these people from fully expressing their culture, and rebelling against the "American culture". They would say they were Americanized.
3. I chose this quote because I believe it has a lot of relevance to today's issues. For instance, Donald Trump blatant disrespect towards Mexicans, and how he constantly calls them rapist, murderers, and drug dealers. I find this completely absurd because every culture has bad apples in them, but that does not mean every person in the culture is a bad apple. I also find it completely disgusting because Mr. Trump completely ignores the negative history of America (i.e 400 years of slavery, the KKK, and White Supremacy), but yet he calls every other culture that does not look like him "bad guys".
2. I believe the meaning of this quote is there is no such thing as "American culture". America is filled with different kinds of people that make up America, but to the most extremists or patriotic "American", having different breeds of different cultures is a bad look for America. These Americans try to sell or preach to the foreigners about the "American culture", and tell them what is acceptable and what is not. Once they sell these people this "dream" then they have kept these people from fully expressing their culture, and rebelling against the "American culture". They would say they were Americanized.
3. I chose this quote because I believe it has a lot of relevance to today's issues. For instance, Donald Trump blatant disrespect towards Mexicans, and how he constantly calls them rapist, murderers, and drug dealers. I find this completely absurd because every culture has bad apples in them, but that does not mean every person in the culture is a bad apple. I also find it completely disgusting because Mr. Trump completely ignores the negative history of America (i.e 400 years of slavery, the KKK, and White Supremacy), but yet he calls every other culture that does not look like him "bad guys".
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