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Toward an Inclusive Culture: Diversity and Its Dimensions in The Us

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Published: Feb 22, 2024

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Introduction, the impact of diversity and inclusion on american culture, workplaces, and schools, from melting pot to mosaic: the multicultural evolution.

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america is a melting pot essay

The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’ Essay

America is sometimes referred to as the ‘melting pot’, meaning that people from different cultural and racial backgrounds mix together to form a new society. In this regard, it is important to notice that this concept can be divided into two aspects. On the one hand, it signifies the blend of people belonging to various ethnic groups through marriages or other forms of intimate relationships. On the other hand, ‘melting pond’ represents the active exchange of traditions between different ethnicities and forming of a new culture that embraces all of the customs and practices with equal respect.

However, while America can be called a ‘melting pot’ from the former perspective, it is arguable that it deserves such a name in the latter sense. As such, the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center reveals that 52% of Americans claim that interracial marriages have neither a positive nor negative impact on society (Livingston & Brown, 2017). On the contrary, 39% of the respondents noted that such unions are generally good, whereas only 9% think the opposite (Livingston & Brown, 2017). Therefore, American citizens are generally open to forming interethnic families, which coincides with the ‘melting pot’ gist.

As for the cultural exchange that equally recognizes the traditions of each group, I believe that the U.S. has many elements to improve; for instance, there is substantial historical evidence of how many immigrants and minority groups were subjected to ‘acculturation’ or learning the ‘American way’, which implied subordination to the views of the dominant white group. Despite the fact that such practices are criticized now, and official institutions, including schools and colleges, seek to embrace multiculturalism, the situation is still not satisfactory, and there is significant institutional racism present. Nevertheless, I believe the country is on the right track and has already made significant progress in becoming a true ‘melting pot’.

Livingston, G. & Brown, A. (2017). 2. Public views on intermarriage . Pew Research Center. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, May 26). The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-concept-of-america-as-a-melting-pot/

"The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’." IvyPanda , 26 May 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-concept-of-america-as-a-melting-pot/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’'. 26 May.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’." May 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-concept-of-america-as-a-melting-pot/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’." May 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-concept-of-america-as-a-melting-pot/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Concept of America as a ‘Melting Pot’." May 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-concept-of-america-as-a-melting-pot/.

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HistoryDisclosure

What Does Melting Pot Mean in American History?

The term “melting pot” is often used to describe the United States and its history of immigration. But what does it really mean? In this article, we’ll explore the origins of the melting pot concept, its evolution over time, and its impact on American society.

Origins of the Melting Pot

The phrase “melting pot” was first popularized in a play by Israel Zangwill in 1908. The play, titled “The Melting Pot,” was a romantic drama that portrayed America as a place where immigrants from different cultures could come together and create a new, unified identity.

Zangwill’s vision of America as a melting pot was influenced by his own experiences as an immigrant from Russia. He believed that America offered a unique opportunity for people from all over the world to come together and create something new.

The Evolution of the Melting Pot

Over time, the concept of the melting pot evolved and became more complex. While some people continued to see America as a place where immigrants could assimilate into a single culture, others began to question whether this was desirable or even possible.

In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, many Americans began to embrace multiculturalism and celebrate diversity rather than trying to force everyone into a single mold. This led to a greater appreciation for different cultures and traditions within American society.

The Impact of the Melting Pot

The melting pot has had both positive and negative impacts on American society. On one hand, it has allowed people from diverse backgrounds to come together and create something new. This has led to innovations in art, music, cuisine, and other areas.

However, some critics argue that the melting pot has also led to cultural assimilation and erasure. They argue that immigrants should be able to maintain their own cultural identities while also participating fully in American society.

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Melting Pots and Salad Bowls

What is the future of assimilation in America? By Bruce S. Thornton .

For people in the United States, immigration has particular resonance. We continually hear that we are a nation of immigrants. Many people see the laws that try to control illegal immigration and its social and economic costs as a repudiation of this heritage—an ethnocentric or even racist attempt to impose and monitor an exclusive notion of American identity and culture. Opponents also charge that these laws invite the police to practice discriminatory racial profiling, creating the possibility that legal immigrants and U.S. citizens will be unjustly detained and questioned.

President Obama stated in 2010 that tough immigration-control laws like Arizona’s—which was stripped of several provisions during the most recent Supreme Court term—“threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” The greater significance of such laws, however, is the way they touch on deeply held and frequently conflicting beliefs about the role of immigration in American history and national identity. These beliefs have generated two popular metaphors: the melting pot and the salad bowl .

FUSED INTO INCLUSION AND TOLERANCE

The melting pot metaphor arose in the eighteenth century, sometimes appearing as the smelting pot or crucible , and it described the fusion of various religious sects, nationalities, and ethnic groups into one distinct people: E pluribus unum . In 1782, French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur wrote that in America, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”

A century later, Ralph Waldo Emerson used the melting pot image to describe “the fusing process” that “transforms the English, the German, the Irish emigrant into an American. . . . The individuality of the immigrant, almost even his traits of race and religion, fuse down in the democratic alembic like chips of brass thrown into the melting pot.” The phrase gained wider currency in 1908, during the great wave of Slavic, Jewish, and Italian immigration, when Israel Zangwill’s play The Melting Pot was produced. In it, a character says with enthusiasm, “America is God’s crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!”

This image, then, communicated the historically exceptional notion of American identity as one formed not by the accidents of blood, sect, or race, but by the unifying beliefs and political ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: the notion of individual, inalienable human rights that transcend group identity. Of course, over the centuries this ideal was violated in American history by racism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and other ignorant prejudices. But in time laws and social mores changed, making the United States today the most inclusive and tolerant nation in the world, the destination of choice for millions desiring greater freedom and opportunity.

Of course, this process of assimilation also entailed costs and sacrifice. Having voted with his feet for the superiority of America, the immigrant was required to become American: to learn the language, history, political principles, and civic customs that identified one as an American. This demand was necessarily in conflict with the immigrants’ old culture and its values, and, at times, led to a painful loss of old ways and customs. But how immigrants negotiated the conflicts and trade-offs between their new and old identities was up to them. Moreover, they remained free in civil society to celebrate and retain those cultures through fraternal organizations, ethnic festivals, language schools, and religious guilds.

Ultimately, though, they had to make their first loyalty to America and its ideals. If some custom, value, or belief from the old country conflicted with those core American values, then the old way had to be modified or discarded if the immigrant wanted to participate fully in American social, economic, and political life. The immigrant had to adjust. No one expected the majority culture to modify its values to accommodate the immigrant; this would have been impossible, at any rate, because there were so many immigrants from so many lands that it would have fragmented American culture. No matter the costs, assimilation was the only way to forge an unum from so many pluribus .

A TAINTED SALAD

Starting in the 1960s, however, another vision of American pluralism arose, captured in the metaphor of the salad bowl. Rather than assimilating, different ethnic groups now would coexist in their separate identities like the ingredients in a salad, bound together only by the “dressing” of law and the market. This view expresses the ideology of multiculturalism, which goes far beyond the demand that ethnic differences be acknowledged rather than disparaged.

Long before multiculturalism came along, Americans wrestled with the conflicts and clashes that immigrants experienced. A book from the 1940s on “intercultural education” announced its intent “to help our schools to deal constructively with the problem of intercultural and interracial tensions among our people” and to alleviate “the hurtful discrimination against some of the minority groups which compose our people.” One recommendation was to create school curricula that would “help build respect for groups not otherwise sufficiently esteemed.” Modern multiculturalism takes that idea but goes much farther, endorsing a species of identity politics predicated on victimization.

Multiculturalism as we know it is not about respecting or celebrating the salad bowl of cultural or ethnic diversity, but about indicting American civilization for its imperial, colonial, xenophobic, and racist sins. Multiculturalism idealizes immigrant cultures and ignores their various dysfunctional practices and values. At the same time, it relentlessly attacks America as a predatory, soulless, exploitative, warmongering villain responsible for all the world’s ills.

Worse still, the identity politics at the heart of multiculturalism directly contradict the core assumption of our liberal democracy: the principle of individual and inalienable rights that each of us possess no matter what group or sect we belong to. Multiculturalism confines the individual in the box of his race or culture—the latter often simplistically defined in clichés and stereotypes—and then demands rights and considerations for that group, a special treatment usually based on the assumption that the group has been victimized in the past and so deserves some form of reparations. The immigrant “other” (excluding, of course, immigrants from Europe) is now a privileged victim entitled to public acknowledgement of his victim status and the superiority of his native culture.

FOR WANT OF A SHARED DESTINY

And so the common identity shaped by the Constitution, the English language, and the history, mores, and heroes of America gives way to multifarious, increasingly fragmented micro-identities. But without loyalty to the common core values and ideals upon which national identity is founded, without a commitment to the non-negotiable foundational beliefs that transcend special interests, without the sense of a shared destiny and goals, a nation starts to weaken as its people see no goods beyond their own groups’ interests and successes.

Multicultural identity politics worsen the problems of illegal immigration. Many immigrants, legal or otherwise, are now encouraged to celebrate the cultures they have fled and to prefer them to the one that gave them greater freedom and opportunity. Our schools and popular culture reinforce this separatism, encouraging Americans to relate to those outside their identity group not as fellow citizens, but as either rivals for power and influence or oppressors (from whom one is owed reparations in the form of government transfers or preferential policies). The essence of being an American has been reduced to a flabby “tolerance,” which in fact masks a profound intolerance and anti-Americanism because the groups that multiculturalism celebrates are defined in terms of their victimization by a sinful America.

No matter how the laws of Arizona and other states fare, this problem of assimilation will remain. Millions of the illegal immigrants in this country are no doubt striving to become Americans despite the obstacles multiculturalism has put in their path. Many others have not developed that sense of American identity, nor have they been compelled, as immigrants were in the past, to acknowledge the civic demands of America and give her their loyalty. Their relation to this country is merely economic or parasitic. Figuring out how to determine which immigrants are which, and what to do with those who prefer not to be Americans, will be the challenge of the years ahead.

Adapted from Defining Ideas (www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas). © 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

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BackStory: The Melting Pot: Americans & Assimilation

Illustration of many people walking into a pot over a fire, with the Statue of Liberty in the background

Cover of 1916 theater program for Israel Zangwill's 1908 play The Melting Pot .

Wikimedia Commons

This episode of NEH-funded  BackStory  explores the idea of assimilation in the United States. Featuring interviews with several historians, it covers history from the eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, with connections to current events. In " The Melting Pot: Americans & Assimilation ," you’ll learn about:

  • President Theodore Roosevelt’s views on “hyphenated Americanism”
  • Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill and the “melting pot” metaphor
  • Assimilation in Early America and the impact of the Louisiana Purchase
  • Forced assimilation in Native American boarding schools
  • Japanese Americans in Chicago after World War II
  • W.E.B. Du Bois’s thoughts on what assimilation meant for African Americans

Below, find comprehension questions and EDSITEment resources, all grouped by segment. A full transcript of the episode is available at the BackStory site .

Note: This episode discusses white supremacist and xenophobic ideas. It also discusses anti-Indigenous violence and anti-Black violence, including lynching. The segment “100% American” includes an anti-Japanese slur.

Comprehension Questions

  • What did Theodore Roosevelt mean when he said, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism”? How did events and trends of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century shape his perspective?
  • What were nativists? What were their views on U.S. citizenship and identity?
  • How did nativist views differ from Roosevelt’s “civic notion of American identity”?

EDSITEment Resources

The closer readings commentary Everything Your Students Need to Know About Immigration History introduces resources for teaching about immigration and nativism.

Further explore the contested meaning of U.S. citizenship with the BackStory episode “ To Be a Citizen? The History of Becoming American .”

  • How do you interpret the “melting pot” metaphor for American society? How would you compare it to the “salad bowl” metaphor?
  • From Israel Zangwill’s perspective, how did others misinterpret and misuse the melting pot metaphor?
  • How did Zangwill’s British Jewish identity shape his writing and political views?
  • How did the real America of the early twentieth century compare to the ideal America of Zangwill’s play?

Gain a fuller understanding of Jewish American history with the lesson plan Pearl S. Buck: "On Discovering America" (grades 9-12) and the media resource Jewish American Keywords for Chronicling America .

The Statue of Liberty features in The Melting Pot . Consider the history and symbolism of the Statue of Liberty in the lesson plans The Statue of Liberty: The Meaning and Use of a National Symbol (grades K-5) and The Statue of Liberty: Bringing “The New Colossus” to America (grades 6-8).

  • What did eighteenth-century German Americans appreciate about living in Pennsylvania?
  • How did German Americans feel about assimilation? In what ways did they maintain their distinct identity?
  • What were Thomas Jefferson’s views on Native American assimilation?
  • What does historian Joanne Freeman mean by saying that the border crossed places and people? How did this occur and who did this affect?
  • What was the symbolic meaning of the “Mexican bandit” stock character in Western dime novels? How did the character type represent a supposed danger to American society?

The following lesson plans can help contextualize identity and assimilation in the eighteenth century:

  • American Colonial Life in the Late 1700s: Distant Cousins (grades 6-12)
  • William Penn's Peaceable Kingdom (grades 9-12)
  • Empire and Identity in the American Colonies (grades 9-12)

Learn more about nineteenth-century U.S. territorial expansion and the impact of the Louisiana Purchase with the lesson plans On This Day With Lewis and Clark (grades 6-8) and Who Belongs on the Frontier: Cherokee Removal (grades 6-12). The page Lewis and Clark: Exploring Uncharted Territory links to additional lesson plans and resources.

  • What were the main goals of federal Indian schools like Carlisle and Chilocco? What methods did they use to achieve these goals?
  • How does the student experience of Chilocco Indian School compare and contrast with your school experiences?
  • Why did scholar Tsianina Lomawaima’s father run away from Chilocco?
  • When her book on Chilocco was first published, why did Lomawaima feel that she never should have written it?
  • Why did U.S. assimilation policies seek to separate Native families?
  • Why is it important to share and understand painful histories?

Explore the diversity of Native American cultures with the following resources:

  • Curriculum: Language of Place: Hopi Place Names, Poetry, Traditional Dance and Song (grades K-5)
  • Lesson Plan: Anishinabe/Ojibwe/Chippewa: Culture of an Indian Nation (grades K-5)
  • Lesson Plan: Not “Indians,” Many Tribes: Native American Diversity (grades 6-12)
  • Lesson Plan: Native American Cultures Across the U.S. (grades 6-8)
  • Teacher’s Guide: American Indian History and Heritage
  • Media Resource: Native American Keywords for Chronicling America
  • Why did the U.S. government incarcerate Japanese Americans in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor?
  • Why did the U.S. government forcibly relocate 20,000 Japanese Americans to Chicago during World War II? What were the government’s goals with relocation?
  • Why did Japanese Americans in the postwar era seek to be “100% American”? What do you think were the risks of not conforming and assimilating?
  • How have Japanese Americans in Chicago established a sense of community? What challenges have they faced?

Contextualize the history of Japanese American internment camps with the lesson plan Japanese American Internment Camps during WWII (grades 6-12) and the media resources I Remember: Japanese Incarceration During WWII and Why Here?: Heart Mountain, Wyoming and Japanese Incarceration .

Broaden understanding of Asian American history with the lesson plan Asian American & Pacific Islander Perspectives within Humanities Education (grades 6-12) and the media resource Asian American and Pacific Islander Keywords for Chronicling America .

  • What was “scientific racism”?
  • What does it mean that race is socially constructed?
  • What was W.E.B. Du Bois’s argument in his 1934 article “Segregation”? Why did this article lead to Du Bois leaving the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)?
  • How do you think W.E.B. Du Bois would have answered his own question, “Am I an American, or am I a Negro? Can I be both?”

Further explore the ideas and writing of Du Bois with the media resource W.E.B. Du Bois Papers .

Learn more about the NAACP’s activism against anti-Black violence with the following resources:

  • Student Activity: Birth of a Nation, the NAACP, and the Balancing of Rights (grades 6-12)
  • Curriculum: NAACP's Anti-Lynching Campaigns: The Quest for Social Justice in the Interwar Years (grades 9-12)
  • Media Resource: BackStory: Blackstory
  • After listening to the episode, how would you define assimilation?
  • Do you think there is such a thing as assimilation?

Use the closer readings commentaries What Does It Mean to Be American? and Connecting the Past and Present with the Immigrant Stories Project to promote reflection on immigrant experiences and what it means to be an American.

Founded in 2008,  BackStory  is a weekly podcast that explores the historical roots of current events. Hosted by a team of historians of the United States, the show features interviews with other scholars and public historians, seeking to bring U.S. history to life. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the show do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more at the  BackStory  website .

Related on EDSITEment

Backstory: to be a citizen the history of becoming american, everything your students need to know about immigration history, the statue of liberty: the meaning and use of a national symbol, what does it mean to be american, native american cultures across the u.s., japanese american internment camps during wwii, w.e.b. du bois papers, connecting the past and present with the immigrant stories project.

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america is a melting pot essay

Against the “Melting Pot” Metaphor

On arguments over americanization and homogenized culture.

In February 1915 the Nation magazine had run a two-part essay, “Democracy versus the Melting Pot: A Study of American Nationality,” by Horace Kallen, at that point a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In a frontal challenge to the Americanization movement, Kallen argued that it promoted not a melding of many cultures but the predominance of one. “Jews, Slavs, Poles, Frenchmen, Germans, Hindus, Scandinavians and so on” were supposedly to be transmuted by the “‘the miracle of assimilation’ into beings similar in background, tradition, outlook, and spirit to the descendants of the British colonists, the Anglo-Saxon stock.” The Anglo-Americans, in their guise as ur-Americans, presumed to rule by right of “cultural primogeniture.” The first immigrants, through the accident of being first, had become an aristocracy, advocates “of the pride of blood.” This was not only anti-democratic, but also authoritarian, as resistance by subordinated ethnics was met with coercive measures like the Anglo-supremacist public school system, which attempted to eradicate old-country ways by crushing the spirit of immigrant pupils.

Why did the Americanizers act this way? To some extent, it was a simple matter of self-interest; many advantages accrued to the firstborn son in a patriarchal culture. But Kallen believed the justification also rested on a confusion about the relationship between the state and civil society. The Anglo-Americans assumed that the survival of the nation hinged on cultural uniformity, as it did in European countries. A nation divided against itself could not stand. Dual loyalty was an impermissible contradiction in terms.

For Kallen this was a false dilemma. There was a fundamental difference, he argued, between a “nation of nations” and a “confederation of cultures.” It was the latter term that summed up more precisely the peculiar status of the United States, a country constructed through an ingathering of peoples. The various “cultures” (a.k.a. “races” or “ethnicities” or “nationalities”) were the building blocks of civil society. Each ethnic group expressed its emotional and voluntary life in its own language, using its own aesthetic and intellectual forms. Their enclaves were the sites of their most intimate social relations, the deepest sources of cultural identity, the domain of religion and kinship, and the terrain within which the citizen “lives and moves and has his being.”

The state was an altogether different thing. It provided the framework for, and upheld the rules of, the democratic political system, and its proceedings were appropriately transacted in English, the lingua franca of the commonwealth. The role of the state, which should belong to no particular ethnicity, was to guarantee the independent existence of its component socio-cultural parts. The state’s business was not to impose homogeneity but to protect difference. Its motto, Kallen might have said, should not be E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), but In Uno Plures (In One, Many).

The Americanization process could also do with a better metaphor, Kallen thought—not the Zangwillian melting pot, but a symphony orchestra:

As in an orchestra, every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody, and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization.

Kallen’s focus, to be sure, was almost completely on the “harmony” piece, as was Zangwill’s; he hoped that “‘American civilization’ may come to mean perfection of the cooperative harmonies of ‘European civilization,’ the waste, the squalor, and the distress of Europe being eliminated.”

More broadly, Kallen thought the Anglo-conformist vision deeply misguided in scorning precisely what was most remarkable about the multi-cultural society that had emerged, unplanned, on the American strand. And in 1915, with Americanization advocates gaining strength, it seemed to Kallen that the country was approaching a crossroads. What do we want the United States to be, he asked, “a unison, singing the old Anglo-Saxon theme,” or “a harmony, in which that theme shall be dominant, perhaps, among others, but one among many, not the only one?”

Kallen’s essay attracted the attention of another titan of pragmatism, John Dewey, whom he had met in Cambridge in 1905 or 1906. Kallen struck up a correspondence with the Columbia-based philosopher, and continued it when he accepted a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin. Kallen also visited Dewey in New York. During the summer of 1917, he taught at Columbia on Dewey’s invitation, and was invited back in the spring of 1918 to give a course of lectures, after which he settled in Gotham permanently.

In responding to Kallen’s essay, both in personal correspondence and public essays, Dewey agreed strongly with much of the analysis. “I never did care for the melting pot metaphor,” he said. “To maintain that all the constituent elements, geographical, racial and cultural in the United States should be put in the same pot and turned into a uniform and unchanging product is distasteful.” Indeed, “the concept of uniformity and unanimity in culture is rather repellent.”

He agreed, too, that the “Americanization” campaign was a cover for Anglo-supremacists. “I want to see this country American,” Dewey wrote Kallen, “and that means the English tradition reduced to a strain among others.” In an essay of 1916 he underscored this, using Kallen’s preferred metaphor, insisting that “Neither Englandism nor NewEnglandism, . . . any more than Teuton or Slav, can do anything but furnish one note in a vast symphony.”

Dewey also accepted that “our unity cannot be a homogeneous thing like that of the separate states of Europe.” “Hyphenism” was to be welcomed. “Variety is the spice of life, and the richness and attractiveness of social institutions depend upon cultural diversity among separate units. In so far as people are all alike, there is no give and take among them. And it is better to give and take.” The United States should extract “from each people its special good, so that it shall surrender into a common fund of wisdom and experience what it especially has to contribute. All of these surrenders and contributions taken together create the national spirit of America.” Only in this sense was assimilation acceptable. Indeed, “genuine assimilation to one another—not to Anglo-Saxondom—seems to be essential to an American. That each cultural section should maintain its distinctive literary and artistic traditions seems to me most desirable, but in order that it might have the more to contribute to others.”

Dewey did have some reservations about Kallen’s argument. For one, it seemed to assume harmony was the default state of inter-ethnic relations. “I quite agree with your orchestra idea,” Dewey explained, “but upon condition we really get a symphony and not a lot of different instruments playing simultaneously.” Civic obligation was not sufficiently emphasized in Kallen’s pluralism, focused as it was on the parts rather than the whole.

Provincialism was a second concern. “The dangerous thing is for each factor to isolate itself, to try to live off its past, and then to attempt to impose itself on other elements, or at least keep itself intact and thus refuse to accept what other cultures have to offer.” This shoe best fit the Anglos, to be sure, but any ethnicity could fall prey to narrow loyalties and parochial prejudices.

Then there was Kallen’s emphasis on ethnic continuity rather than change. Kallen implied that ethnics were virtually unmeltable, and suggested that Americanizers had been misled into thinking them readily remoldable because they concentrated on superficial externalities. It was true, Kallen argued, that greenhorns often embraced assimilation as an economic strategy, and adopted American speech, clothes, and manners. But once the immigrant attained a certain level of acceptance and stability, assimilation slowed, even stopped, and ideals of nationality resurged. The “wop changes into a proud Italian; the hunky into a proud nationalist Slav.” At times Kallen seemed to suggest a biological basis to this stasis, with his talk about “ancestral endowments,” though he never actually wandered into Madison Grant territory, and his focus on fixity could be put down to obdurate cultures.

A year after Kallen’s Nation essay, a more dynamic objection to the melting pot metaphor was advanced by Randolph Bourne, an acquaintance of Kallen and a disciple of Dewey. Bourne was not an academic, but a journalist and self-described member of New York’s “younger intelligentsia,” yet his relations with Columbia College had been transformative. He’d had a difficult childhood in suburban Bloomfield, New Jersey, where he’d suffered from the collapse of the family fortune in the Panic of 1893 and from multiple physical handicaps: his features had been badly mangled by a forceps at birth, and he’d developed a hunchback from a bout of spinal tuberculosis at the age of 4.

In 1909, Columbia provided him with a full academic scholarship. There he was introduced to the writings of James and Boas, developed socialist politics in part through his classes with Beard, and became a student of Dewey, seeing in his pragmatism “an edge on it that would slash up the habits of thought, the customs and institutions in which our society has been living for centuries.” After graduating in 1913, he spent a year in Europe, then moved to the Village and joined the radical scene. He got a staff job at the New Republic and published there in 1915 his series of articles applauding the Gary Plan. But feeling himself marginalized, he turned for outlets to other magazines, and in July 1916 he gave his “Trans-National America,” a piece inspired by Kallen’s work, to the Atlantic Monthly .

“No reverberatory effect of the great war,” ran his opening sentence, “has caused American public opinion more solicitude than the failure of the ‘melting-pot.’ . . . We have had to watch hard-hearted old Brahmins virtuously indignant at the spectacle of the immigrant refusing to be melted… We have had to listen to publicists who express themselves as stunned by the evidence of vigorous traditionalistic and cultural movements in this country among Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians and Poles, while in the same breath they insist that the alien shall be forcibly assimilated to that Anglo-Saxon tradition which they unquestioningly label ‘American.’”

Far more vigorously than had Kallen—aided perhaps by himself being of ancient English stock—Bourne ripped into Anglo-American hypocrisy. The truth was “that no more tenacious cultural allegiance to the mother country has been shown by any alien nation” than by the Anglo-Saxon descendants in the United States. “English snobberies, English religion, English literary styles, English literary reverences and canons, English ethics, English superiorities, have been the cultural food that we have drunk in from our mothers’ breasts.” The war had exacerbated such sentiments, revealing the Anglos to be “still loving English things, owing allegiance to the English Kultur, moved by English shibboleths and prejudice. It is only because it has been the ruling class in this country . . . that we have not heard copiously and scornfully of ‘hyphenated English-Americans.’” In truth, the Anglo-Saxon element “is guilty of just what every dominant race is guilty of in every European country: the imposition of its own culture upon the minority peoples.”

Fortunately, Americanization had failed. “The strong cultural movements represented by the foreign press, schools, and colonies” were positioned to save the United States from cultural stagnation, precisely because they “have not been melted down or run together, made into some homogeneous Americanism.” Rather the country had become “a cosmopolitan federation of national colonies, of foreign cultures, from whom the sting of devastating competition has been removed. America is already the world federation in miniature, the continent where for the first time in history has been achieved that miracle of hope, the peaceful living side by side, with character substantially preserved, of the most heterogeneous peoples under the sun.” America, Bourne asserted, “is a unique sociological fabric, and it bespeaks poverty of imagination not to be thrilled at the incalculable potentialities of so novel a union of men.”

If “America is coming to be, not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors,” then it follows, Bourne argued, that “any movement which attempts to thwart this weaving, or to dye the fabric any one color, or disentangle the threads of the strands, is false to this cosmopolitan vision.” Trans-nationalism was the antidote to the “belligerent, exclusive, inbreeding” nationalism, “the poison of which we are witnessing now in Europe.” Which was why he was “almost fanatically against the current programs of Americanism, with their preparedness, conscription, imperialism, integration issues, their slavish imitation of the European nationalisms which are slaying each other before our eyes.”

__________________________________

america is a melting pot essay

From  Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919.  Used with permission of Oxford University Press. Copyright © 2017 by Mike Wallace.

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A glacier calving makes a huge splash.

Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows

america is a melting pot essay

Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Physics, Utrecht University

america is a melting pot essay

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america is a melting pot essay

Climate Model Specialist, Utrecht University

Disclosure statement

René van Westen receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC-AdG project 101055096, TAOC).

Henk A. Dijkstra receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC-AdG project 101055096, TAOC, PI: Dijkstra).

Michael Kliphuis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “ The Day After Tomorrow ” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.

While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?

Twenty years after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has observably slowed over the past two decades, possibly to its weakest state in almost a millennium . Studies also suggest that the circulation has reached a dangerous tipping point in the past that sent it into a precipitous, unstoppable decline, and that it could hit that tipping point again as the planet warms and glaciers and ice sheets melt.

In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.

The results showed that the circulation could fully shut down within a century of hitting the tipping point, and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.

We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.

The ocean’s conveyor belt

Ocean currents are driven by winds, tides and water density differences .

In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.

Two illustrations show how the AMOC looks today and its weaker state in the future

This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a conveyor belt .

Too much fresh water from melting glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet can dilute the saltiness of the water, preventing it from sinking, and weaken this ocean conveyor belt . A weaker conveyor belt transports less heat northward and also enables less heavy water to reach Greenland, which further weakens the conveyor belt’s strength. Once it reaches the tipping point , it shuts down quickly.

What happens to the climate at the tipping point?

The existence of a tipping point was first noticed in an overly simplified model of the Atlantic Ocean circulation in the early 1960s . Today’s more detailed climate models indicate a continued slowing of the conveyor belt’s strength under climate change. However, an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation appeared to be absent in these climate models.

This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.

We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.

The result: Dangerous cold in the North

Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.

The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent changed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.

Two maps show US and Europe both cooling by several degrees if the AMOC stops.

These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.

The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points . For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to declining precipitation . If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.

The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past . During glacial periods when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.

So, when will we see this tipping point?

The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly approaching its tipping point , possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.

Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.

A line chart of circulation strength shows a quick drop-off after the amount of freshwater in the ocean hits a tipping point.

The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the climate shifts are unstoppable on human time scales.

It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.

This article was updated on Feb. 11, 2024, to fix a typo: The experiment found temperatures in parts of Europe changed by more than 5 F per decade.

  • Climate change
  • Global warming
  • Extreme weather
  • Atlantic Ocean
  • Climate models
  • Greenland ice sheet
  • Ocean circulation

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Chicago church helps migrant families secure work permits

Published february 22, 2024 • updated on february 22, 2024 at 5:45 pm.

A local church is working with the city of Chicago to provide housing, resources, legal aid services and access to job opportunities for migrant families.

It’s part of a network of churches and organizations helping migrant families to secure work permits so they can make a living on their own.

A special moment captured on camera by Unity Initiative Chicago has been viewed tens of thousands of times on social media. The woman seen in the video is filled with joy and happiness after getting her work permit and she’s not the only one.

“The best thing that could have happened to me,” said Usvely Rejel, who told NBC Chicago through an interpreter. The 34-year-old from Venezeula is a mother of two. She received her permit in December and has been working in the café at Grace and Peace Church in the Austin neighborhood ever since.

Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.

“I feel super happy because first I can work. I already have my social. I can have my bank account,” she said. “I can start getting my credit to have my own house. I can have a bigger business. I can dream. Without my papers you can’t do nothing.”

The church provides housing, resources, and legal aid services to migrants in partnership with the city of Chicago. Pastor John Zayas told NBC Chicago around 1,500 migrants who have gone through the church already have their documents in hand.

“The good news is once they get their paperwork and permits it’s time go right so we have companies that have called us to ask for folks who are ready to work because they’re ready to hire,” said Pastor Zayas.

america is a melting pot essay

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america is a melting pot essay

Did solar flares cause the AT&T service outage? A meteorologist explains

But the application process is long and complex, a process 24-year-old Alejandra Alvarado said she couldn’t have done without the network of support.

“I can now start working legally without being afraid,” she said.

The pastor said they started posting the videos on TikTok to show that everyone is chasing the American Dream.

“I know there is a negative side to this and we’re trying to combat that with the positive side because we’re still a melting pot for immigrants,” he said.

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'Rhapsody in Blue': After a century, Gershwin's musical melting pot still resonates

Tom Huizenga

Tom Huizenga

america is a melting pot essay

George Gershwin, photographed in his 72nd Street apartment in New York in 1934. His Rhapsody in Blue premiered 100 years ago on Feb. 12, 1924. PhotoQuest / Contributor/Getty Images hide caption

George Gershwin, photographed in his 72nd Street apartment in New York in 1934. His Rhapsody in Blue premiered 100 years ago on Feb. 12, 1924.

It was cold and snowy in New York City 100 years ago today, and Aeolian Hall, across from Bryant Park, was packed. Composers Sergei Rachmaninov and John Philip Sousa were in the audience, along with violin sensation Jascha Heifetz , conductor Leopold Stokowski and actress Gertrude Lawrence. Hundreds, reportedly, were turned away. They all came to attend "An Experiment in Modern Music," a concert mounted by the popular bandleader Paul Whiteman.

"My idea for the concert," Whiteman wrote in his autobiography, "was to show these skeptical people the advance which had been made in popular music from the day of the discordant early jazz to the melodious form of the present." Judging from that, and articles such as one in a 1921 edition of Ladies' Home Journal whose headline read "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?" one might wonder whether Whiteman was trying to whitewash the perceived lowbrow origins of jazz for the elites comfortably seated in their temple of classical music.

And yet, a surprise was in store for those in attendance. Late in the long program of mainly fluffy confections, such as Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys," came a caterwauling clarinet, slithering up the scale. It was the opening salvo that introduced George Gershwin 's Rhapsody in Blue , a piece teeming with possibilities not only for the composer but for what American music could sound like.

"Gershwin is well aware of what he's doing, and he really doesn't give a damn what people think," says Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall . "He wanted to bridge musical worlds that were separate."

Those worlds were jazz — the pop music of the day — and classical. And bridge them he did. Gershwin's Rhapsody was thunderously applauded that day, and Whiteman toured it relentlessly for years. More successful mergers from the composer followed, with An American in Paris , the Concerto in F, the Cuban Overture and the opera Porgy and Bess . The problem, Horowitz says, is that Gershwin was shunned by the American composers who were best positioned to dictate the direction of American classical music.

" Aaron Copland , Virgil Thomson and Leonard Bernstein , they all write about Gershwin as if he's a dilettante — can't be taken completely seriously," Horowitz says. Jazz, they thought, wasn't serious music — and for Gershwin to introduce it into classical music was like poisoning the well.

"You know as well as I do that the Rhapsody is not a composition at all," Bernstein wrote in a 1955 essay on Gershwin, cast in a faux dialogue between himself and an imagined music manager. "It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together — with a thin paste of flour and water."

If the Rhapsody 's debut audience had embraced it, the critics were far less accepting. The following day in the New York Tribune , Lawrence Gilman wrote about "how trite and feeble and conventional the tunes are," while as late as 1933, Paul Rosenfeld, in The New Republic , wrote: "The Rhapsody in Blue is circus music. ... It stands vaporous with its second-hand ideas and ecstasies," adding that the Rhapsody was "not so much music, as jazz dolled up."

The attitude toward Gershwin had potent implications for classical music in America. In the 1920s, white composers might have drawn from the wealth of homegrown Black music. But they didn't — except Gershwin. Acknowledging that resistance is essential, Horowitz says, to understanding the limitations classical music faced in America between the two world wars. "Classical music in the United States has never really acquired its own indigenous identity." It's why, he argues, classical music still remains marginalized today.

america is a melting pot essay

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was one of the first successful works to combine jazz and classical music. Library of Congress/George Gershwin Bain Collection hide caption

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was one of the first successful works to combine jazz and classical music.

Then there's the question of appropriation. Was Gershwin stealing from Black culture? And how does the question change once later generations of Black musicians begin to borrow chord progressions from Gershwin? "It's a topic that we don't talk about a lot," says trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard , who himself straddles the fence between jazz and classical. In 2021, he became the first Black composer to have a work staged at New York's Metropolitan Opera. "When you say appropriating, it's like somebody who's taken music without giving credit to the originators. And I don't think Gershwin was that way. Were they taking the DNA from that? Of course. But I don't think it was done with ill intent." Part of that DNA came from Gershwin hanging out in Harlem, soaking up the energetic "stride" piano style, which incorporated elements of ragtime, blues and folk music.

"I think that a lot of the writing in Rhapsody in Blue definitely is not stuff that Gershwin learned in his piano lessons as a young boy," says pianist Lara Downes , who has played the Rhapsody many times and is touring a new version of it. (Full disclosure, Downes and I work on the NPR program Amplify .) Sitting at her own piano to demonstrate, Downes says Gershwin picked up a lot from the stride piano giants, some of whom were his friends, such as James P. Johnson , Willie "The Lion" Smith and Luckey Roberts, who claimed he gave Gershwin lessons. "It's this very athletic kind of playing," she says. And you can hear it through much of the Rhapsody .

But Downes hears more than just jazz in Gershwin's piece — she hears politics. "Just three months after Rhapsody in Blue was performed, the Johnson-Reed Act was passed," she points out. "Incredibly xenophobic, anti-immigrant legislation that essentially shut down Ellis Island, completely stopped immigration from Asia, drastically cut back immigration from southern and Eastern Europe."

Gershwin himself was a second-generation Russian immigrant, who told biographer Isaac Goldberg he thought of his Rhapsody as "a musical kaleidoscope of America." You can hear sounds of Tin Pan Alley, where as a teenager he worked as a song promoter; there are whiffs of Yiddish theatre, Spanish music, the hurdy-gurdies of the Lower East Side and, of course, jazz.

"I don't hear Rhapsody in Blue anymore as just a piece of entertainment," Downes adds. "I think it's a little bit of an act of rebellion, or at the very least, it's a statement about what America should be and what that sounds like."

What America sounds like to Downes is nothing less than a vibrant gumbo of cultures. She and Puerto Rican composer and saxophonist Edmar Colón have taken Gershwin's hundred-year-old melting pot idea into the present, collaborating on Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined , an expanded version of Gershwin's original that folds in a generous measure of Afro-Cuban flavors as well as Chinese music. The work received its world premiere last October and a recording was released earlier this month.

But they aren't the only ones remolding Gershwin's malleable Rhapsody . To mark the anniversary, Banjo guru Béla Fleck has just released Rhapsody in Blue(grass) . Fleck, who has won 17 Grammys in 13 separate fields, is no stranger to the Gershwin multicultural ethic. The Rhapsody translated into bluegrass sounds like just another fluent musical language for Gershwin, and a testament to the sturdiness of his singular melodies.

"When you listen to Rhapsody in Blue , it seems to be steeped in the fabric of American culture," Blanchard says. "I think Rhapsody in Blue is one of those pieces that really opened the door for a lot of people." That's especially true of the many composers who have, over the decades, tried to blend classical and popular music. There is a long line of jazz-classical mashups from the likes of Duke Ellington , Leonard Bernstein himself, Charles Mingus , Ornette Coleman , Anthony Braxton , Wynton Marsalis and Tyshawn Sorey . Plus, an entire lineage of Black composers — including William Grant Still, Florence Price , William Levi Dawson and many others — who incorporated Black spirituals, dances and field songs into their works.

New Music Friday: 5 albums out Feb. 16, plus 'Rhapsody in Blue' still thrills at 100

New Music Friday: 5 albums out Feb. 16, plus 'Rhapsody in Blue' still thrills at 100

Gershwin died in 1937 from a brain tumor, at just 38. Who knows what American classical music would sound like today if he'd survived, or if American composers had taken more seriously both him and the Black music that inspired him. But that doesn't take any power away from Gershwin's music for Lara Downes.

"When we hear Rhapsody in Blue , we are somehow connecting with Gershwin and his enthusiasm and his open heart," she says, "and his wanting to show us the best of what our country can be — whether we know it or not."

  • Lara Downes
  • George Gershwin

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    america is a melting pot essay

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  1. What was the Melting Pot Culture

  2. AMERICA MELTING POT! WHY MANY OF OUR PEOPLE WON'T MAKE IT!

  3. America..Melting Pot or Salad Bowl?

  4. The Great American Melting Pot

  5. Melting Pot of Cultures PEP Social Studies

  6. The melting pot

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  1. Is the United States Honoring Its 'Melting Pot' Identity?

    January 22, 2021 The United States is often depicted as a "melting pot," in which diverse cultures and ethnicities come together to form the rich fabric of our Nation.

  2. Toward an Inclusive Culture: Diversity and Its Dimensions in The Us

    From Melting Pot to Mosaic: The Multicultural Evolution. ... The Vibrant Diversity of American Culture Essay. America is a melting pot of cultures, and its richness lies in its diversity. From the food we eat to the music we listen to, American culture is shaped by its history, immigration patterns, and societal values. ...

  3. The Concept of America as a 'Melting Pot' Essay

    The Concept of America as a 'Melting Pot' Essay Exclusively available on IvyPanda America is sometimes referred to as the 'melting pot', meaning that people from different cultural and racial backgrounds mix together to form a new society. In this regard, it is important to notice that this concept can be divided into two aspects.

  4. What Does Melting Pot Mean in American History?

    The Melting Pot is a term that has been used since the late 19th century to describe the United States of America as a nation that is comprised of diverse cultures and ethnicities. It refers to the idea that immigrants from various parts of the world come to America and blend together, creating a new and unique American culture.

  5. Melting Pots and Salad Bowls

    The melting pot metaphor arose in the eighteenth century, sometimes appearing as the smelting pot or crucible, and it described the fusion of various religious sects, nationalities, and ethnic groups into one distinct people: E pluribus unum. In 1782, French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur wrote that in America, "individuals of all ...

  6. Is America Really A Melting Pot Essay

    1822 Words 8 Pages 8 Works Cited Best Essays Melting Pot Analysis This essay aimings to compare and contrast the different between a "Gorgeous Mosaic and a Melting pot" along with three other essays that will be mention later in the text.

  7. Is America A Melting Pot Essay

    In a collection of essays titled "Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrant and What It Means to Be American," Jamar Jacoby has a piece titled "The New Immigrants and the Issue of Assimilation" originally published in 2004.

  8. Melting Pot Essay

    America being known as "The Melting Pot," defends the claim that in today's society, The United States of America is moving toward a new standard in which diversity and individuality are encouraged more than uniformity and conformity. Before a naturalization ceremony 577 Words 3 Pages

  9. The Evolution of the Melting Pot: Cultural Dynamics in the United

    The concept of the "melting pot" has its roots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, serving as a metaphor to depict the amalgamation of diverse nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures.

  10. BackStory: The Melting Pot: Americans & Assimilation

    In "The Melting Pot: Americans & Assimilation," you'll learn about: President Theodore Roosevelt's views on "hyphenated Americanism" Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill and the "melting pot" metaphor; Assimilation in Early America and the impact of the Louisiana Purchase; Forced assimilation in Native American boarding schools

  11. Personal Narrative: America Is A Melting Pot

    "America is a melting pot." This metaphor is often used to describe America's strong diversity for there is hardly anyone in this country who is purely one nationality. ... In a collection of essays titled "Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrant and What It Means to Be American," Jamar Jacoby has a piece titled "The New ...

  12. Against the "Melting Pot" Metaphor ‹ Literary Hub

    By Mike Wallace. October 30, 2017. In February 1915 the Nation magazine had run a two-part essay, "Democracy versus the Melting Pot: A Study of American Nationality," by Horace Kallen, at that point a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In a frontal challenge to the Americanization movement, Kallen argued that ...

  13. Is America A Melting Pot Essay

    8 Pages Good Essays Read More Forging A New Vision Of America 's Melting Pot In Forging a New Vision of America 's Melting Pot by Gregory Rodriguez the author expresses support for a heavy Mexican influence in the United States and integration of races.

  14. America: the Melting Pot? Free Essay Example

    The United States of America has always been known as the melting pot of the world. Now our country is being faced with people trying to come here illegally and it is creating an argument between legal citizens. Don't use plagiarized sources. Get your custom essay on " America: the Melting Pot? " Get custom paper NEW! smart matching with writer

  15. Melting pot

    America is the melting pot in which all the nations of the world come to be fused into a single mass and cast in a uniform mold. — Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, English translation entitled "A Frenchman in Lincoln's America" [Volume 1] (Lakewood Classics, 1974), 240-41, of "Huit Mois en Amérique: Lettres et Notes de Voyage, 1864-1865 ...

  16. Argumentative Essay-America The Melting Pot

    America The Melting Pot A nation founded by immigrants, for immigrants, but now decides it's too risky to let in people who need our help. Imagine being forced to put all belongings in a bag, and walk with your family to the nearest countries, and being denied continuously of shelter.

  17. The Views Of Americas Melting Pot Myth English Literature Essay

    America being a melting pot is a controversial issue, throughout America there are hundreds of different races yes, but that does not mean that there is not racism.

  18. Melting Pot Essay

    Is America A Melting Pot Essay Is America melting pot? According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 47% of hate crimes are racially motivated. In second place, a tie between religion and sexual orientation account for about 19%. Many people face discrimination every day because of religion, where they're from, and even

  19. America As A Melting Pot

    3 Pages Decent Essays Read More America Is The Great Melting Pot America is the "great Melting Pot". From an early age every "American" is taught that America contains a mixture of the world 's cultures in a perfectly blended mixture. We honor and respect all cultures and invite them to bring their customs here to the United States.

  20. America: the Melting Pot? Essay

    Immigration is defined because the motion of people from one nation to another for the only function of a secure residence. The United States of America has all the time been generally identified as the melting pot of the world. Now our country is being confronted with individuals attempting to come back here illegally and it's creating an ...

  21. Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers

    Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows ... This cools the North American ...

  22. Chicago church helps migrant families secure work permits

    A Chicago church is working to help asylum-seeking migrants secure work permits, legal resources and housing, NBC Chicago's Vi Nguyen reports. A local church is working with the city of Chicago ...

  23. America Is The Great Melting Pot

    5 Pages Open Document America is the "great Melting Pot". From an early age every "American" is taught that America contains a mixture of the world 's cultures in a perfectly blended mixture. We honor and respect all cultures and invite them to bring their customs here to the United States. But do we really?

  24. 'Rhapsody in Blue,' Gershwin's musical melting pot, at 100 : NPR

    'Rhapsody in Blue,' Gershwin's musical melting pot, at 100 On Feb. 12, 1924, a sassy fusion of jazz and classical music debuted in New York, sparking a mutual exchange of ideas still debated today.

  25. America A Melting Pot

    1048 Words 5 Pages Decent Essays Read More Known To Many As The 'Melting Pot,' The United States Consists Known to many as the 'melting pot,' the United States consists of a variety of cultures and peoples. Immigrants from near and far traveled and continue to do so for economic opportunities or to escape persecution.

  26. ‎ADAM ASZTALOS

    38K likes, 238 comments - adamasztalos on February 22, 2024: "The city of São Paulo never ceases to amaze me in its grandeur. Being the most populous urban ..."

  27. America Is A Melting Pot

    5 Pages Known To Many As The 'Melting Pot,' The United States Consists Known to many as the 'melting pot,' the United States consists of a variety of cultures and peoples. Immigrants from near and far traveled and continue to do so for economic opportunities or to escape persecution.