Selfe's Main Claim

In her essay, Selfe claims that America is not the free land everyone believes it to be. In fact, it is actually still segregated in some cases, and still has the old stereotypical gender roles that it used to. “This Landscape, Americans like to believe, is open to everybody - male and female regardless of color, class, or connection. It is in some fact at some level, a romantic re-creation of the American story…”(301-302). Selfe backs this claim by stating later in the essay that Americans history is full of minority groups that are less fortunate. Selfe shows us examples of multiple advertisements and shows the stereotypical roles that were once played in our nations history that we claim to have overcome and gotten passed, yet still show up everyday in the media. There are still occurances of racism, gender discrimination, and other segregations within our great free nation. “Our cultural experience, indeed, tells us something very different - that America is the land of the free for some”(304). After this, Self continues to talk about the great amount of the segregation and racism that America has had throughout history. Self concludes by saying that “opportunity is a commodity generally limited to privileged groups within this country”(304).