Race is one of the most pervasive issues in post-WWII America. The movement for gender equality is still ongoing, as is the promotion of racial equality. The two issues are closely related, as racial minorities and women have been systematically oppressed by backlash against their attempts at integration. The issue of race, however, is steeped in outright violence and unabashed hatred. While the gender divide continues to narrow, the racial divide has hardly dissipated. The United States is a nation that was formed through the marking of difference. Some of the first settlers, the Pilgrims, asserted their rights to the land on the grounds that they were more civilized than the natives and therefore had a right to the land. This legacy of oppression continued through American policy, with the denial of Indian humanity and their right to their land. Michael Herr in Dispatches notes racial tensions: "Suffice to say, Vietnam was where the Trail of Tears was heading all along, the turning point where it touched and came back to form a containment perimeter" (Herr , 49). Herr compares The Trail of Tears, the expulsion of American Indians from their native lands to settlements, to the Vietnam War because it is the same pattern of conquest against an enemy for no legitimate reason. American soldiers did not know who they were fighting and killed many Vietnamese who were not VietCong. The enemy was any Vietnamese, just as the Indian nations were all enemies of the United States and needed to be driven out so that "civilized" peoples could take their lands. Herr sees the war as another example of racial accusations in the United States. Jim Crow laws are another example of racial discrimination... middle of article ...... theory: Religious stereotypes and grouping of Muslims in the United States. Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance. Ed. Carl W. Ernst. Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. Print. Herr, Michael. Dispatches. New York: Knopf, 1977. Print. Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. “African American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17.2 (1992): 251. Web.Lytle, Mark H. “The Second Civil War.” America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era: From Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. N. pag. Print.Peek, Lori A. Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2011. Print.Stop and Frisk in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Journalist Matthew Orr. New York Times, July 11, 2010. Web. May 16 2014. .