The Melting Pot

“A lot of folks didn't know they were black. A lot of people thought they were Americans.” So said (Black Panther) Jimmy Garrett about those attending his (identity raising) reading groups in the 1960's. (Cited in Andrew Hartman's A War for the Soul of America.)

They “thought they were Americans.” What a humiliating idea.

"America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming... Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American." That was the take of Israel Zangwill (in The Melting Pot) who, though English, better understood America's mission than many Americans.

Some have viewed this mission as a call for assimilation, which, to a degree, it is. America has always been a potpourri, an olio both ethnically and politically. We are a country of immigrants (remaining so today, notwithstanding the current political brouhaha) and while most of our newest members have adopted the culture of their new land, we have all gained by their incorporation into our culture of fragments of their own.

But the most important element has been the acquisition of our ways by those who have come here. It is what many have sought and what others have accepted in the quest to leave the oppressive situations in which they lived. Some came for the freedom we offer, and some primarily for economic reasons. Either way, however, they chose to join a society which they viewed as superior to their own. And there is no question that many of our country's benefits are unique, and worth the difficulties associated with migration.

There is no question, though, that Americans have been prejudiced against those they considered different from themselves. This includes those of other races, ethnicities, and religions. All are seen as “foreigners” or other “undesirables.” Some of our citizens denigrate as well those with accents, different sexual practices, opposing political views, and other levels of education from their own. Over the years, however, the differences have often faded (not invariably, of course) with assimilation and acculturation.

But we must all remember that assimilation doesn't preclude the maintaining of the cultures of their upbringings, nor the teaching of those cultures to their children or to us. That is a desirable practice helping us better understand both the values and practices of other nations and peoples – important on its own and a special need of those traveling for pleasure or business – and the comparative strengths of our own society. The importation of traditions other than our own is beneficial to us.

Still, “multiculturalism” can go too far. Some see their new home as a place which they would like to turn into one resembling the old. Europe has experienced immigration over recent decades (not just the recent flood from the Middle East) which has led to voluntary ghettoization and an attempt to import and impose the societies that they left, including religious law, on those to which they fled. And this has led to conflict and distrust all around them. It has led to demands that the newer members of that society “go back where they came from.”

A major problem is that while most want to assimilate and become full members of their new society – to become indistinguishable from other citizens – there are many who prefer the past to the present, and are unwilling to give up their old ways. Moreover, there are many who believe, often with good reason, that they are being marginalized by their new fellow citizens. But there are others who see their presumed marginalization as a meal ticket. It is a rationalization for any failures of their own, and a stick to be used against a society that they claim has oppressed them. Their ways are right, and society's are wrong.

From my perspective, such an attitude is unwarranted. It is admirable to want to preserve the past practices of your heritage, but that should be along with, not instead of, those of your new home. Perhaps your traditions should inform the new society in which you live, but they should not replace them. Except to the degree that they are protected by the first, or some other, amendment, they should be subservient to American law.

We do not live in an either/or society – one that requires that we eschew either our past or our present – but one that is both/and: one in which past, present, and future enhance each other. That is a status that will provide for our future and make it profitable for us all. We can be whatever, and Americans as well.