Calling Planet College Professor ...

What planet do college professors live on? Here's the "background" section of an essay assignment Incredible Daughter #1 got in her freshman English class:

America has become the new homeland for many people from just about any culture one can think of. [Fine sentence structure there.] We are a country rich in diversity, race, heritage, religious beliefs, language, and ethnicity. There is nothing new about people immigrating to the U.S. to try and [sic] capture the so called "American Dream." This has been going on since the birth of this country. [And before.] However, there seems to be a much greater distaste and much less tolerance in modern day [sic] society for diversity in culture, ethnicity, and race than in earlier times. The theory of the U.S. being the great meling pot seems to have faded into the past and been replaced by higher degrees of discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice and racism.

Incredible Daughter #1 was incredulous. She immediately thought about slavery, Jim Crow, anti-German and anti-Chinese discrimination and numerous other obvious pieces of evidence supporting greater historic discrimination, then went on a diatribe against affirmative action. Love that girl. How does she know so much at 19 that has seemed to slip by her prof?