American Violence, 1800 – 1980

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK: *Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2008. While Americans pride themselves on their liberty, few citizens realize the role of violence in ensuring one group’s freedom over another. This paper must be at least 1,250 words and free from any grammar or spelling errors. You must put your best work forward. You will need to pick three examples from the course that show me you have done the work of the course; in other words, you must cite course materials and really define your examples to receive full points in answering the following prompt: How has the US government employed violence to obtain social control of its minority populations? There are hundreds of examples of violence and coercion in our history. I want you to focus on the role of violence between the American government and minority groups: consider the Cherokee, the Yahi, the Mexican, Irish, the Chinese the Japanese, the African American, the Lakota, even against animals like buffalo. As we move closer to the present, these violent episodes become reminders of how members of the American government oppressed its own people.