Rebecca Faison Response #2

    "…Such an answer challenged their very conception of what it meant to be American in the first place. For the first time a distinction had been drawn between 'events of American history' and those of 'Americans' history'" (Young 70). This line from James E. Young's "America's Holocaust" thew me for a loop. For years I had been frustrated over how America grew out of immigrants escaping their own country to an unknown land. They didn't travel all that way to create a whole new country; they came to live their lives the way they wanted. The people that lived in what would have become America wouldn't have seen themselves as a united people; each family had their own backstory, hardships, and reasons for traveling across the sea to get there. America was founded from other country's citizens. Having a difference between the country's history and the people's history is very complicated. The people make up the country, and to say that your citizens' background and reasoning for creating an entirely new life in your country is irrelevant isn't being realistic. While stating that the "monument might inspire other 'special groups' to be similarly represented of public land" (Young, 70) is plausible and could end up occupying an excess amount of land, drawing a line between the country's history and it's citizens history is denying the very basis that America was originally formed from -  unfit conditions in other countries that pushed their people to move.