Is America a "melting pot?"

[Rebkeh]

NO ... People mean well but it doesn't help. It goes something like this:

Blur differences between people (the appearance of "unity/coming together&quot --->

Perpetuate the myth that because all people have equal value (true), therefore all lives are the same (not true)--->

Privilege becomes a non issue ---> perpetuates myth that privilege doesn't exist

----> elevates yet another myth that we have arrived and the playing field is level

---> Inequality continues and the privileged not only feel better (whew! We dodged that one, who wants to work that hard?) but they get what they need and the rest of us go right on with the racist status quo. Again. And again. So on and so forth.

Intentions are nice, but they are only met when the results are legitimate.

I am ALL FOR coming together but not if it means I will be erased.

Think salad or quilt, not melting pot. We can come together as equals while embracing differences and acknowledging privilege, and be willing to be uncomfortable. This is work, guys. Hard work. We don't get to sit back and restore the "good ol days."

It's long past time for a new normal.

That is all.

[dembotoz]

1. shit and all this time i thought equality was good

well shame on me

[davidn3600]

18. Cultural relativism.

And it's on full display as Europe is being driven to the cultural breaking point.

[Journeyman]

2. I like Jacob Riis' phrase better: A crazy quilt of humanity, all stitched together but separate. . .

An early 20th Century social reformer and muckraking photojournalist, Riis was instrumental in publicizing the plight of newly arrived immigrants and the squalor and crime with which they had to contend. Befriended by Theodore Roosevelt, Riis proved indispensable in the movement to both integrate a wide array of peoples into their new society and to provide better housing and living conditions for all.

He rejected the "melting pot" analogy because it wasn't what he saw. In his experience, it was best described as a "crazy quilt of humanity," all stitched together but retaining its group and individual identification.

I see that as a much better description of us all. A crazy quilt. The patches may be smaller and less distinct, patterns and colors blending across the seams, but singularly distinct in the main, nonetheless.

I keep that idea foremost in mind, and constantly reflect that not every "patch" in our quilt is cut square or properly stitched. In fact, there are many patches that are cut irregularly along both the warp and weft, and they are rarely if ever securely attached to anything, let alone woven in among the rest of us.


Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890), 21-27.

[Rebkeh]

13. Thank you, I had seen something like this before but didn't know its origin

I like the quilt idea much better than absorption.

[pangaia]

26. I think one of my junior high school history teachers was a grand daughter.

I vaguely remember her showing us photos of and by her grandfather.

[jaysunb]

3. America is a "garden." n/t

[hopemountain]

15. a very organic & wholistic description nt

[TexasProgresive]

4. Not a good analogy

The best that immigrants and minorities have done is to add a bit of seasoning to the main entre.

This is simplistic but there you go.

[hopemountain]

16. no. wrong. a bit of seasoning?

much more than that - including blood, sweat, and tears.

[Major Nikon]

19. I disagree with "the best"

If you only consider civil rights, then yes many people have been pushed to the outskirts. However if you look at everything which defines culture, and particularly the best of it, there's plenty of examples of food, music, art, values, and traditions which are heavily influenced by immigrants and minorities.

[SusanCalvin]

21. You're kidding, right...? nt

[TexasProgresive]

22. It is just my observation

The workforce where I was employed for 37 years was overwhelmingly unmixed. The lack of people of color being nomnated for an Academy Award and the lack of diversity in the PTB of the Academy. The lack of real diversity in the U.S. Government espcially elected official.

Yes people from various ethnic groups have given us some wonderful color, in dance, music, food and so forth. But when you get down to the nitty gritty why are most of the "power" jobs held by one ethnic and gender group?

[SusanCalvin]

24. And you think this is a good thing????? nt

[TexasProgresive]

28. NO

There's a difference between approval of a situation and recognizing that it exist.

[SusanCalvin]

29. Gotcha. A number of ppl I know took it otherwise. nt

[Igel]

5. I melted rosin today.

Old rosin that's been around for a few years, not very usable in its current form. Both light and dark rosin.

To some extent it mixed as it melted but a little stirring mixed it well. It stayed mixed. It's now a few shades of green lighter than it was.


A few days ago I had a salad. I started with the croutons and tomatoes on top, but after mixing all the tomatoes and croutons were on the bottom, with the lettuce on top.

I've also had to mix marbles as part of a random probability demo. The white and black and red marbles were all the same size and value, but differed in color. Once mixed, their relative distribution was random--just like with the rosin, except the marbles were large enough to be perceived as discrete units and therefore when there was a cluster of red, black, or white marbles people could interpret it as non-random or somehow color related when it wasn't. With the rosin, however, we're talking about something like 10^21 discrete objects mixed together in a small space, so any random bunching of the molecules that made the dark rosin dark green and the light rosin light-brown isn't noticeable.


Note that the melting pot worked fine for groups except for blacks, and white society tended to segregate them. About the time that segregation broke down was precisely followed by anti-assimilationist fervor. Those who had so long fought for integration now found that if integregation succeeded their institutions and roles would vanish. In many areas, Hispanics had assimilated after a stint of being discriminated against, so there are Hispanics with long family histories in the US that are "white" for all intents and purposes and are now told to "recover" their "true" cultures and "their" language, even as others are being told to somehow remain distinct.

The problem is that as long as we perceive ourselves as being distinct groups and communities we'll act as the primates we are, whatever ivory tower theorists and polemicists might want us to be. Political scientists melt down in self-fueled angst when peace agreements that rely upon antagonistic groups suddenly living in peace break down because the groups remain antagonistic, or when they find that new groups suddenly form on economic, racial, social, political, religious, values-based (etc., etc.) fault lines.

But they also have seen and ignored the data-driven research that resulted in the 1990s from the USSR's collapse that looked at how groups blended and merged or fought and split. If they have a common past narrative, whether that involves admitting or overlooking injustices, they get along. If there's a narrative that they share and the interpretation of which they agree on so that there aren't any grievances that remain from 50 or 150 or 250 or 350 years ago that they use as proxies for the present, they can build together. Most of the fighting ultimately boiled down not to "pay us money" but "respect us," and "respect us" usually meant "adopt our perspectives and viewpoints." Often it meant adopting values, as well, but those weren't all that different to begin with.

There and then, as in the old US melting pot, most people remained who they were. Nobody was erased, except in the sense that they no longer had a group that they necessarily IDed with that was separate from other groups. My brother's family continued to be Italian-American in trivial ways that let them claim that status. My family continued to be what it was, more Anglo-Irish than others, and my godparents' family was still Polish-American. Not that the names mattered much. This wasn't a problem as long as the Italians, Irish, and Poles didn't all reject the very idea of being "like one of those people" that they hated and stress the differences more than the similarities, emphasizing being unlike their despised more than just being what they were.

In the US, the drive to be true to the skin-color-determined language and culture is creating more divisions than existed. In a sense, we're moving from multiculturalism to polyculturalism. Instead of group play it's more like parallel play, as we mature as a nation into infancy.

[Rebkeh]

6. Dissolving superficial identities works great in spiritual spaces, I personally suggest it. But...

It does not translate into political spaces.

Besides, the issue here is more than equality, it's also about justice. Nobody can live freely in an unjust society. Not to mention the right to be safe in our own skin.

[hopemountain]

17. thanks, rebekeh! nt

[virgogal]

8. You mentioned that some Hispanics are "white"

for all intents and purposes.

Well yeah, most Hispanics ARE white.

You also mentioned that they assimilated after a period of being discriminated against. So did the Irish and Chinese.for example.

I don't get your point.

[Mike__M]

10. I acknowledge no shame in wearing the label "Primate"

Koko's mother, different as she may have been, is my aunt.

[Donkees]

7. Yes, if you imagine it as a place where different elements come together to create something new...

...something that might not have existed otherwise. Just like creating a work of art.

[Odin2005]

9. Your post is neither here nor there.

The truth is that every ethnic group that is considered "Socially White" HAVE assimilated into a melting pot, see the social trajectories of Irish, Italian, and Jewish Americans. Look at light-skinned Hispanics now, two of them are front-runners for the GOP. Racism and White Privilege are the CAUSE of the "mixed salad", and groups not affected by that DO end up being fully assimilated.

Identitarian ideology is getting annoying.

[Mike__M]

11. "Melting Pot" is the colonizer's term for eradication

Here's a tangential bit of history: the Alaska Native Brotherhood / Alaska Native Sisterhood, an influential and respected civil rights organization, had its beginnings among Native members of the Presbyterian Church (which church provided some of the most active missionaries working in Alaska), whose purposes included the wiping-out of native customs in the name of "civilization" and "progress". At the time, and under the influence of the missionaries, it must have seemed to those native leaders that their people could only hope to succeed in American society by renouncing their traditional ways and blending in to become more like the people who had taken over their country. Traditional languages, ceremonies, marriage customs and art were discouraged or outlawed for years, leaving a gap for modern youth that requires strenuous efforts at "cultural revitalization" to keep the cultures and their locally-centered wisdom alive. That is one legacy of "melting pot" thinking. Fortunately, the other priorities of the ANB/ANS were demand for citizenship and promotion of education; eventually it became apparent that culture and success were not mutually exclusive, and part of today's ANB/ANS mission is to "share cultural knowledge, wisdom, and artistic beauty of Native Tribal Societies and strive for a spirit of Brotherhood and Sisterhood among all people."
So, Rebkeh, I would say that America has striven to be a melting pot, and it is one of several shameful aspects of our history that should be renounced. Like you said: hard work.

[Rebkeh]

12. Exactly, and to go one further

Had indigenous peoples and their wisdom not been suppressed so successfully, we might not have the climate change issues we have today. Everyone has a part to play, let's not dissolve into a sea of beige. Every distinct culture has inherent value.

[yuiyoshida]

14. Its really hard to melt butter into SWEET AND SOUR SOUP

OH, it can be done, but why ruin the flavor??

[Arazi]

23. Brilliant! I 100% agree this will be hard work but soooo worth it

Thank you for teaching all of us something today

[treestar]

25. It was

The group I came from melted in eventually. I don't feel affinity to certain European countries that I happened to be descended from at this point. Newer immigrants will, but their descendants probably won't.

[LWolf]

27. I had this conversation with

someone I care greatly about last week. He was frustrated with what he sees as "reverse racism," because he doesn't "see color," but the content of one's character.

Except that he doesn't see institutionalized inequality, either, and when I tried to point it out, it pushed his buttons. For this person, I stayed calm, matter of fact, and pointed out just a couple of realities, then changed the subject and gave him time. A few days later, he brought it up again. I pointed out that his excessively emotional reaction to a simple statement on my part indicated some level of racism, and he acknowledged it...owned it, looked uncomfortable, and I left him to think upon it again. Because he's intelligent, principled, and will get there if I don't attack.

But that's just one person. One reasonable person with potential for evolution. Maybe that's the way we stitch the quilt together. One person at a time.

[cherokeeprogressive]

30. The United States is more like a TV dinner tray than a melting pot.

Compartmentalized.

[artislife]

31. I always kind of thought of America as a Cobb Salad.

Fitting into our little rows, with the chef deciding which row would have more and which ingredients are side by side.


?itok=ttNqm_Wo

[mgmaggiemg]

33. really cute ;)

[mgmaggiemg]

32. reba...

many....many, many years (decades) ago my poli sci prof said there was no melting pot...that we are a salad by race, class, culture gender etc etc....and there there is no such thing as peace....(he was kind of a depressing guy...but right)....however we have the great privilege of living in this polyglot nation that has separation of church and state while giving you total liberty in the "pursuit of happiness".....I think there was never such a thing as the "good ol days" that is a republican lie...those liars lie so much their pants are on fire.....it's true that it's hard work...and it's a privilege to be able to reach out to others who are different (my grandfather was an aremian refugee...again..many many decades ago) the thing that immigrants only learn after a couple of generations is that its possible to hang on to ones familial culture AND become part of a new one...AND (here's the best part) BE WHOLE ...be a whole integrated human being...by being very eclectic and flexible and adopting the best of everything....having grown up in a military town I knew war brides and their double cultured /dual nationality children from all over the world....and then you see all these different cultures switching religions ....it's mystifying but asians love christianity and american europeans love buddhism...that is an example of religion swap...if you grew up in a military town you would understand they do it enthusiastically...and voluntarily....I grew up with hinduism, atheism, christianity, agnosticism and buddhism....at one table....at the holiday dinners...the atheist insisted on celebrating all the pagan/christian holidays....without GOD....america has more religious and cultural minorities than any place on the planet...we take more immigrants than any nation in the world ...we give more aid..than any nation in the world....as far as appropriating alien cultures american blasphemously and affectionately imitate/swap every religion and culture under the sun ...we cannot help ourselves...we are vulgar and mispronounce everything...I know a little latin, italian, german french, spanish...and slaughter them all when speaking including my own native english....american love to break the rules...even when they know they are wrong....so this feeling you have of being erased...that comes from with in you...I wish my mother had known how to speak and read armenian....but when she was growing up during ww2....assimilation was the thing...but my mother passed down the legacy of food and family secrets etc...it's much more possible in todays enlightened america to hang on to familial culture and integrate at the same time...and don't let anyone fool you it was never easy...it always took effort...but well worth it...for democracy ....cheers, Maggie

[CTyankee]

34. salad or a mosaic...

[mgmaggiemg]

35. very appropriate quote....

zen..like breaking the bowl and putting it back together again...in a mindful purposeful way...all the stronger....