THE UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA
ROTTERDAM UNI OF APPLIED SCIENCES
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
LITERATURE AND CULTURE 1.1
 LEARNING OUTCOMES

1 2 3

You can answer You can answer You can answer

questions about the questions about questions about
various peoples of current topics in American geography.
the United States. contemporary
America.
 QUICK FACTS QUICKLY
▸ Declaration of Independence signed July
4th, 1776
▸ Founding Fathers
▸ Originally 13 states - now there are 50
▸ Washington DC is the capital.
▸ Why ‘United States of America’? ->
 PLACE THE FOLLOWING GROUPS INTO THE
ORDER FROM LARGEST TO SMALLEST.

▸ African Americans
▸ Native Americans
▸ European (White) Americans
▸ Hispanic Americans
▸ Asian Americans
▸ Middle-eastern Americans
▸ Pacific Islanders
USA COMPOSITION BY ETHNICITY
 MELTING POT VERSUS SALAD BOWL

▸ Melting Pot Theory

▸ Assimilation: all cultures blend into one
new culture.
▸ Salad Bowl Theory
▸ Pluralism: each culture remains its own
but adapt certain characteristics.
▸ What do you feel the USA is?
AMERICA’S FIRST
PEOPLES

NATIVE
AMERICANS
 NATIVE
AMERICANS

• First crossed from Asia to the

Americas 13,000 years ago.
• Had advanced cultures and
groups.
• Numbers declined greatly
after the arrival of the
Europeans in 1492 due
primarily to disease and
genocide.
• Native American is a
generalization. If you want
to be precise, they should be
called by their tribal name.
 TRAIL OF
TEARS
-Included the five civilised tribes of the Southwest: Cherokee Choctaw,
Chickasaw, Seminole, and Muskogee Creek
-Were called ‘civilised’ because they had lived with European settlers
for a large period of time
-
1492 COLUMBUS
SAILED THE OCE
AN BLUE
UK, IRELAND,
HOLLAND, GERMANY

FIRST
EUROPEANS
-Amongst the first settlers were:
-The Dutch, who settled a large portion of New
Jersey in New York which was part of New
Netherlands
-The French, who primarily settled parts of Canada
-The Spanish, who colonised the southern states
and most of Mexico
-The English, who colonised the rest of the east
coast of North America

-During and after the English Civil War a lot of pilgrims

fled the country and decided to build better lives for
themselves in America – with their own religion, obviously

-After American independence in 1776, we see the first

wave(s) of immigrants arrive (rather than settlers)
IRISH AND GERMANS

FIRST WAVE
 IRISH AND GERMANS
▸ Came in large groups and Germans are largest ethnicity
in the USA today
▸ Largely Catholic and spoke little to no English so were
disliked
▸ Caused the rise of the first anti-immigration politics
▸ Curiously named ‘Native American Party’ was the first
political gathering against immigration – had nothing to
do with Native Americans, as such
▸ Part of the 'Know Nothing Movement’, named so
because they would exclaim ‘I know nothing!’ when
asked about the politics of the Native American Party
EASTERN AND SOUTHERN
EUROPE, ASIA

SECOND
WAVE
 EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE, ASIA
▸ 1880 onwards
▸ First Asian immigrants – who primarily went to the
west coast; Washington, California, and Oregon
▸ Put to work building the railways and doing
domestic chores
▸ This wave of non-European immigrants lead to
the Chinese Exclusion Act – attempting to stop
this altogether
▸ East coast saw large numbers of Italians,
Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, etc.
▸ Lead to the Immigration Act of 1917, limiting
immigration even further
▸ Early 1960s, we see the start of the third
immigration wave
LATIN AMERICA

THIRD WAVE
 LATIN AMERICANS
▸ Immigration slowed after WW2 until 1960s

▸ After 1960 many Latinos came

▸ New term “Anchor Baby”

▸ Jus Soli versus Jus Sangri citizenship

▸ 17% of the US population is now of Latin

American descent

▸ What does an American look like?

FROM SLAVERY TO
THE PRESIDENCY

AFRICAN
AMERICANS
 GROWING INEQUALITY
▸ African Americans have been in the US as
long as European Americans.
▸ Worse living conditions
▸ Five times more likely to be imprisoned
▸ Police violence towards black men has
become more visible
▸ Became very obvious when unarmed
Micheal Brown was shot and killed by a
police officer who was never going to be
held accountable
A DIVIDED AMERICA
 AMERICA AND THE ALT-
RIGHT
-Backlash began with the election of President former Obama in 2008
-The Tea Party was a populist fraction of the Republican Party, and
focussed on two main points: lower taxes and less immigration
-Coincided with the founding of the Birther Movement; a group of right-
wing conspiracy theorists who, for example, believed that Obama was not
US-born but a Kenyan citizen

-Republicans who were seen as ‘too left’ often had someone from the Tea
Party run against them in the primaries and this caused more centrist
politicians to be pushed out of office

-Usually, conspiracy theories would remain on the fringes, but this

changed when Trump asked Obama to release his birth certificate

-Obama responded as follows:

AMERICA’S RUST BELT
-Another reason Trump was elected was due to his promises to the so-
called ‘Rust Belt’ of America
-An area of the Midwest region that experienced sharp economic
decline due to loss of manufacturing jobs
-The economies of cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Saint Louis crashed
because residents moved elsewhere in search for jobs
-For example: The public schools of Detroit went from 164,000 pupils
enrolled in 2002 to 52,000 in 2012

-People who stayed behind lost faith in the government due to the lack
of help and investment
-For these people Trump seemed like the perfect solution:
-He focussed on the effects immigration has on jobs
-He promised he would bring jobs back to America
 #METOO AND THE
YEAR OF THE WOMAN
-Trump’s election caused political backlash, however
-After Trump’s election the #MeToo movement got started and this
culminated in 2018 with Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme
Court
-Kavanaugh was accused of sexually assaulting former school friend
Christine Blasey in the 1980s
-Refusal by Senators to take these accusations seriously made a large
number of women incredibly angry with the system
-Led to large numbers of women being elected into politics:
-117 women were elected to congress in 2018
-Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House and thus third most
powerful person in the US
-Alexandra Ocasio Cortez is now called the ‘new face’ of the
Democratic party: she’s not wealthy, Latina, and represents the new
working-class
THE END
Don’t forget the homework!