fs6+09

Jay Griffin Medford High School October 20th, 2009

1) Technology, both as ideology and as economic development, had an enormous impact on culture and race in America. It served as a metaphore and materialist basis for the domination of mind over body, capital over labor and whites over Indians, Blacks, Mexicans, and Asians. 2) The new technology was viewed as a way for men to use machines and steam power to replace their bodies as sources of labor, and as a way to keep men busy and controlled in a market society. White technology would enable the Anglo race to establish iself as the superior race in North America. Thomas Hart Benton claimed the "white" race alone had recieved the divine command, to subdue and replenish the earth. The disappearance of Indians from the Atlantic coast appeared to be the effect of "divine law." In the progress of technology, the domination of civilization over nature, American expansion westward, and destruction of Indians and Mexicans, the destiny of white America seemed manifest. Citizenship for non-whites was unlikely at this time, forced immigration of native Americans by Presidnet Jackson and the forces of technology lead to the near desruction of the entire native American race in the coninental United States.