As I've mentioned in my SOP, I read my first book in Sociology when I was 10. What you learn in childhood would leave quite an imprint in your mind that would last for years to come. That book was written by 2 American Sociologists. So, they had mostly focused on American society. In that sense, my passion for studying Sociology began concurrently with keen interest to know about the US, the most diverse country (ethnically and racially) in the world. In my opinion, diversity has been one of the key points turning into a superpower a country that didn't even exist 5 centuries ago and was ruled by the British till 18th century .
George Washington, in a letter to John Adams, November 15, 1794 puts it well:
... there is no need of encouragement: while the policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people.
To view the other half of the glass however, this has come at the expense of uprooting millions of innocent native Indians who had been living in the New World for millennia before those white people discovered their continent.
Anyway, having read about America since that age makes me wonder about all the hype and myths surrounding this country.
I'll write more about other reasons that made me interested to study about America. For now, I'll get down to one of the courses that I'm studying this semester. I'll mark course assigments with asterisk (*) to make them distinguished from the rest of my posts.
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