Is America As A Melting Pot or A Mixing Bowl/Mosaic
America As A Melting Pot
• melting-pot model of American, prevalent at the beginning of the 20th century
• immigrants were encouraged to completely discard the cultural heritage
• It is particularly used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the USA
• the melting-together metaphor was in use by the 1780s.
• Israll Zangwill, whose drama Melting Pot published in 1908 popularized the concept of white melting pot
• After 1970 the desirability of assimilation and the melting pot model was challenged by proponents of multiculturalism
• many different types of peoples, ideas and religions successfully co-exist
• The history of America is a history of multiracial society
• The white majority somehow interacted with blacks and Native Indians. Consisting of Anglo-Saxons, Irishmen, Germans, Jews, Italians, Poles and other Europeans this majority was not homogeneous.
• All immigrants tried to learn American way of living and become a part of the “melting pot”
America As a Mixing Bowl/Mosaic
• people of different backgrounds can fit together without losing their original identity
• multiculturalism, celebrating diversity and teaching tolerance
• African American civil rights movement should also be mentioned among the events that changed the ethnic situation in the USA
• the ethnic distribution of population all over the USA resembles “a mosaic”: the South is black, the West is Asian, Hispanic and Native Indian
• The report of the Council of Economic Advisers indicates that different ethnic groups choose not only different parts of the county to live in, but also different parts of the metropolitan areas
• The separation between ethnic groups involves the distribution of jobs as well. For instance, in California, Mexicans work as gardeners, domestics, cooks and food preparers. Koreans open small business. Filipinos become nurses and medical technicians. African Americans work in government jobs.
• have equal rights with other American citizens the prejudices against them are still strong
• All scholars point out that there is a line between blacks and others and doubt that African Americans will ever be included in the “melting pot”.
• blacks are resistant to exogamy too. Such marriages are regarded as the betrayal of one’s own race.
Conclusion
In conclusion it would be appropriate to state that the American society now is in the transition from a “mosaic” to a “melting pot”, creating a new culture, which will absorb and mix races and cultural peculiarities of different ethnic groups.