The good life in America, or anywhere else is based on the same fundamental human needs, which are physiological. However, with the advent of modernity it has evolved to include many other resources that would be impossible for a single civilization to acquire. Currently, we cannot fulfil those fundamental and luxury needs without the exploitation of cheap labor in under developed countries. However, the good life is more than just the fulfilment of the basic needs; it is the fulfilment of all the human needs. The cost of the good life is reliant on the suffering and exploitation of others whether or not it is intentional. In the Annals of Labor, John Bowe describes the horrid conditions that migrant workers face in the American agricultural industry. Similarly, the Woodcutter by Robert Gwathmey shows how black workers in the south were destined to hard labor jobs with relatively little income. The Clash of Civilizations describes how the Western civilization took advantage of their modernity to assert their dominance and oppress other cultures. Overall, the west has used their advancement to exploit the under developed nations around the world for their resources and cheap labor.
America has rough history regarding the treatment of minorities, especially when the poor treatment leads to a better life for the oppressors. The good life for westerners has evolved over the course of modernization all of which began with the industrial revolution and continued over a few centuries. All cultures based off the major religions want to modernize, but cultures must change over the course of modernization in order to be successful. The needs of the people of western culture have expanded to the point where the cultures must interact on ...
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...ically, it is also the American consumers that drive the corporate mentality that takes advantage of cheap labor. The west has forced the rest of the world to modernize at an unnatural rate which has greatly increased the clashing between the global civilizations. The modern capitalist economy produces an environment where profit is king and that creates the market for cheap labor, which the non-modernized countries excel at. The price of the good life for westerners involves the exploitation of workers around the globe to support their lifestyles.
Works Cited
Bowe, John. "Annals of Labor: Nobodies: Does Slavery Exist in America?" The New Yorker. Conde Nast, 21 Apr. 2003. Web.
Gwathmey, Robert. The Woodcutter. 1945. Harn Museum, Gainesville.
Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Print.
Since they lacked certain physical and/or cultural characteristics needed to belong in the American nation, they were not considered worthy enough to receive the same rights and privileges they deserve. Therefore, Takaki hopes that with his book, people would acknowledge how America developed a society centered to benefit only white people with the creation of laws hindering these racial groups from receiving the same and equal rights they deserve.
Roediger, David and Blatt, Martin H. The Meaning of Slavery in the North. JStor. 1998. Vol. 18
Franklin, J., Moss, A. Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. Seventh edition, McGraw Hill, Inc.: 1994.
Russell B. Nye: Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830-1860. East Lansing, Mich., 1949
American minorities made up a significant amount of America’s population in the 1920s and 1930s, estimated to be around 11.9 million people, according to . However, even with all those people, there still was harsh segregation going on. Caucasians made African-Americans work for them as slaves, farmers, babysitters, and many other things in that line. Then when World War II came, “World War II required the reunification and mobilization of Americans as never before” (Module2). They needed to cooperate on many things, even if they didn’t want to. These minorities mainly refer to African, Asian, and Mexican-Americans. They all suffered much pain as they were treated as if they weren’t even human beings. They were separated, looked down upon, and wasn’t given much respect because they had a different culture or their skin color was different. However, the lives of American minorities changed forever as World War 2 impacted them significantly with segregation problems, socially, and in their working lives, both at that time and for generations after.
Reynolds, Mary. The American Slave. Vol. 5, by Che Rawick, 236-246. Westport , Conneticut: Greenwood Press, Inc, 1972.
The United States is the most developed capitalist economy in the world. The markets within the economy provide profit-motivated companies endless potential in the pursuance of pecuniary accumulation. Throughout the twentieth-century competitive companies have implemented modernized managerial procedures designed to raise profits by reducing unnecessary costs. These cost-saving procedures have had a substantial effect on society and particularly members of the working class. Managers and owners of these competitive and self-motivated companies have consistently worked throughout this century to exploit the most controllable component of the production process: the worker. The worker has been forced by the influence of powerful and affluent business owners to work in conditions hazardous to their well being in addition to preposterously menial compensation. It was the masterful manipulation of society and legislation through strategic objectives that the low-wage workers were coerced into this position of destitute. The strategies of the affluent fragment of society were conceived for the selfish purpose of monetary gain. The campaigns to augment the business position within the capitalist economy were designed to weaken organized labor, reduce corporate costs, gain legislative control and reduce international competition at the expense of the working class. The owners have gained and continue to gain considerable wealth from these strategies. To understand why the owners of the powerful companies operate in such a selfish manner, we must look at particular fundamentals of both capitalism and corporation strategy. Once these rudiments are understood, we ...
Inequality became instrumental in privileging white society early in the creation of American society. The white society disadvantaged American Indian by taking their land and established a system of rights fixed in the principle that equality in society depended on the inequality of the Indians. This means that for white society to become privileged they must deprive the American Indians of what was theirs to begin with. Different institutions such as the social institution, political, economical, and education have all been affected by race. Sociologists use Assimilation theory to examine race and institutions. The perceived deficiencies of minority immigrant groups by white society has resulted in a generalized characterization of these different racial groups that is demeaning and reinforces the negative stereotypes towards minorities in the United States. Knowles and Prewitt argue that the cause behind the racial tension is the historical roots of institutional racism, which has prevented the minority from attaining equality. Following structured social inequality in the United States, institutions have consistently denied the minority groups through discrimination in education, employment, health care and medicine, and politics. Some ways that this has been done is the use of Jim Crow Laws. These laws created inequality in the educational institution by conducting the black schools and whited schools separately; whites used different textbooks than blacks and they could not be interchanged, and promoting equality for the races was considered a misdemeanor offense resulting in fines or prison. Because of these institutions, we see that there is an American Ethnic Hierarchy. This is divided into a three tier system: first ...
Kolchin, Peter. "Slavery in the United States." MSN Encarta. 2007. Henry Clay Reed Professor of History, University of Delaware. Author of American Slavery: 1619-1877 and Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom. 03 Apr. 2008 .
Flory, Harriette, and Samuel Jenike. A World History: The Modern World. Volume 2. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992. 42.
A large part of this problem is that many Americans buy into the ploys of capitalism, sacrificing happiness for material gain. “Americans have voluntarily created, and voluntarily maintained, a society which increasingly frustrates and aggravates” them (8). Society’s uncontrolled development results in an artificial sense of scarcity which ensures “a steady flow of output” (78).
Knowles, H. J. (2007). The Constitution and Slavery: A Special Relationship. Slavery & Abolition, 28(3), 309-328. doi:10.1080/01440390701685514
North America is, and always has been, an ethnically diverse society. Yet this cultural diversity along religious, ethnic and national lines had been tolerated only in a limited degree, end even only on the dominant Anglo-Saxon elite?s terms.? (Eisen and Wiggins, 1994, p. xii). History books repeatedly show this in their pages. A person can not pick up a history book and read through the pages with out finding something on how a particular athlete or group of athletes were persecuted because of their race. Part of the American dream that is taught to our youth of is freedom, equality and the ability to move ahead in life if a person is motivated to do so. It is unfortunate that this isn?t the case; that is unless the person fits into the right sociological group.
Thoreau, Henry D. "Slavery in Massachusetts." Reform Papers. Ed. Wendell Glick. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1973. 91-109.
In 1992 within a lecture Samuel P. Huntington proposed a theory that suggests that people's cultural and religious identities will undoubtedly be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world, this theory is known as the Clash of Civilizations. Therefore this essay provides a criticism of this theory, whether I agree or disagree with it and also the aspects I like or dislike about the theory as a whole.