America; The broken mirror.

Physical places are the places we go to and live in. Our community, our home. A lot of the time we may view our home as the best place on Earth? But can that even be true? Could our home be a home to many or is it a nightmare to some. A lot of the time I think only from my own point of view which is a middle class white high school boy, yet what about looking at the physical places I see daily, how do they differ if I look at them from the point of view of a foreigner visiting the U.S.

The U.S., constantly called the "Melting Pot." On the outside the U.S. appears to be a place where people of different races come together and live and work happily together with each other. In reality though it is quite different. Once you actually see the real U.S. or at least the real Norwalk you notice that America is very segregated in a sense, even to this day. Instead of one melting pot it is more like a menu with different soups on it. None are the same and don't have much of a relation with each other. If you visit Norwalk you see how most whites live in certain neighborhoods, while most blacks and Hispanics live in their own specified neighborhoods that every Norwaukee knows about. This reveals how America is not as unified racially as many other foreigners may think. Maybe it is a fact of human nature that people like to live near people of the same race? It doesn't mean that they don't like other races, but they feel more comfortable with people of the same background.

Public schools in Norwalk are diverse however you still have much of a division between races especially in high school. At Brien McMahon high school I saw many people, yet most tables had people with the same race on them. There were a few tables with mixed races, yet majority were one race. There is also much of a division when it comes to classes. I visited AP and honors classes in which majority of the students were Caucasian. When I visited a regular class majority of the class was of Hispanic or African American background. Why was there such a division among classes as well if Brien McMahon high school is overall very diverse?

During my stay here in the U.S. I visited Yale University and toured the school, yet I saw many students running to classes, 95% of them were white. I wondered if I was visiting a school only for whites or is that the same with all Ivy Leagues? If so why is there such an image of white majority if the U.S. is a country of diversity? I visited McDonalds afterwards for lunch in which I finally saw a person of another race than white. This gave me the sense that in a way America, and more specifically Fairfield Country is like a broken mirror. Each piece is apart of the overall picture yet each has its own shape and is separate from the other pieces. I will return to home with a feeling of the U.S. as being not a "Melting pot," but a broken mirror. Even though segregation is said to have ended, there is a new form of separation. Maybe this is unapparent to Americans who are being raised in such a society that is very different from my home country, which is majority one race. After my experience the American dream is more of an American Nightmare.