Before reading the text, I did not know about the hardships that people in Ireland faced. I could not believe that families partially cooked their potatoes, leaving the center still hard, to digest them slower. i never knew that there was suffering before the famine or that over one million people died from hunger. To escape the starvation, people boarded a ship where they would face more starvation to reach America, a land with "riches growing like grass." Once they reached America, it seems like they were encouraged to forget their journey and create a new life. In the reading, it states that the Atlantic Monthly predicted there would no longer be an "Irish question" or "Irish vote" and instead, just people "one in feelings and practically one in race." Why does everyone have to take the same position and be a single race? I think it would have been interesting to read more about why there was this push for the "melting pot." Why did people need to be similar?