Black Arts Journal Entry - Week 8 (3/8/23): Creating a Course on the History of American Culture

If I were in the place of a teacher who had the goal to teach a class about the history of American Culture, I would primarily focus on the Hispanic community and how they contributed to the development of the history of what the American Culture is today. 

When people think about the history of American Culture, they usually think about the feats that the white Americans have accomplished in contributing to the development of their nation. What people don't realize or appreciate, is that various groups of people with various different cultures from around the world have just as mostly contributed to the development of American Culture.

There are the Blacks, the Asians, the Hispanics, the Jewish, etc. who have done so much for this nation, but receive little to no recognition or appreciation for what they have done for the development of this nation's history.

I am Hispanic myself and I had a first person experience in seeing and understanding the struggles my family have gone through when they moved to this nation long ago and the accomplishments they have made. So with my familiarity with the subject, I would focus on teaching a course that focuses on the contributions Hispanic culture has made to this nation's history.

My course will focus on how these people have migrated to the nation in the first place, how they colonized it, how they were then overthrown, leading to a history of discrimination and segregation from the whites who have overtaken the land, who have now become diminished to a community, despite it's large size, that has been pushed back into obscurity and rarely get any recognition in the development of American history. I would teach the history of the Hispanic community in American culture, but also how the discrimination that followed carried out into modern eras. Such as asking how has social media helped bring more cultural appreciation to the community or how has it increased discrimination in society?

I would like to find other fellow students who are a part of this community to join my course or people of different cultures who have taken an interest in learning more about this culture. It would show that there are still people out there who have a genuine interest and appreciation in learning more about this community and potentially learn how to give it more recognition in today's societal mainstream media.