Dear friend,

Throughout your educational career, you may notice how diverse your school population is since you started elementary school, or even perhaps preschool. Your classmates and even some of your friends are people of color and are bilingual. The food that you and other students at school eat are different ethnic cuisines that are unfamiliar. Your teachers may also be classified as a race other than Caucasian. The diversity that is apparent in your school is becoming the present reality of America. Even after you graduate college, receive your masters degree, get a job, and enter the workforce, the people that you are surrounded with throughout your life are not going to have the same race and background as your own. Now in the year 2013, students are able to create friendships and communicate freely with people from other cultures. However, this so called utopian society where everyone accepts one another's' difference is still not met to this present day and was not close to being reached in America's history. America was not always a melting pot full of immigrants. Contrary to people's beliefs, the only indigenous peoples of America are Native Americans, not white Europeans. The Native Americans once roamed America's great plains until Italian explorer Christopher Columbus discovered America and instigated a European quest to conquer American land. Fast forward to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States of America became a safe haven for many immigrants who came from all over the world to construct a better life for themselves. During this time, European immigration to the United States became increasingly diverse where, beginning in the 1890s, large numbers of Southern and Eastern European immigrant groups such as the Italians, Jews, and Polish peoples arrived. Along with their families and a few of their belongings, these people also brought their own culture, customs, and beliefs that they hold. Soon, many people came to America from many different places all over the world. For this reason, many people call America a "melting pot" of cultures. Along with diverse backgrounds the immigrants brought, these differences in cultures brought hostility between the immigrants and the American inhabitants. Once people compare and contrast one another, people become less accepting and are more likely to segregate and create boundaries between each other. They segregate into different groups, just like the different cliques that you may see at school, and would rather associate with another group based on their similar beliefs, cultures,