Melting Pot, Salad Bowl, Chocolate Fondue

Here's my effort to resolve all the issues of shared American identity inward nether 1,000 words. It was published dorsum inward 2013 as an thought piece in the (Minnesota) Star Tribune newspaper.


"Analogies for America: Beyond the Melting Pot"
Timothy Taylor


Melting pot or salad bowl? For decades now, these 2 contestants convey been slugging it out inward the contender for most appropriate metaphor for how the cultures as well as ethnicities of America represent together. But my preference is to recall of America every bit chocolate fondue.

The popularization of “the melting pot” metaphor is unremarkably traced to a soppy, sentimental as well as rattling pop play of that cite yesteryear an immigrant named State of Israel Zangwill that opened inward Washington inward 1908. The melting pot metaphor is a way of expressing “E pluribus unum” — “Out of many, one” — the already former proverb adopted inward 1782 for the Great Seal of the U.S. (and which you lot tin dismiss encounter on the dorsum of the $1 bill). “E pluribus unum” has every bit good been imprinted on U.S. coins since the 18th century.

The traditional criticism close the melting pot was that what is particular close American civilisation isn’t its homogeneity, but rather its powerfulness to absorb the elements of many cultures, as well as therefore locomote yesteryear them only about to everyone. For example, every bit John F. Kennedy wrote inward his 1958 book, “A Nation of Immigrants”: “One author has suggested that a ‘typical American menu’ mightiness include some of the next dishes: ‘Irish stew, chop suey, goulash, chile con carne, ravioli, knockwurst mit sauerkraut, Yorkshire pudding, Welsh rarebit, borscht, gefilte fish, Castilian omelette, caviar, mayonnaise, antipasto, baumkuchen, English linguistic communication muffins, gruyère cheese, Danish pastry, Canadian bacon, hot tamales, wienerschnitzel, petit fours, spumoni, bouillabaisse, mate, scones, Turkish coffee, minestrone, filet mignon.’ ”

In our multicultural as well as individualist age, the mutual electrical load is that the metaphor says that Americans should give upward our cultural as well as ethnic identities. This critique strikes me every bit overwrought. Yes, the civilisation of the province where you lot alive is constraining. But what’s distinctive close modern America is the looseness of these constraints, as well as the array of available choices.

However, it does bother me that the melting pot metaphor is a relic of a bygone time, when melting dissimilar metals together was a mutual for many industrial workers. It every bit good bothers me that melting dissimilar metals together produces a desired trial solely if you lot adhere to a formula. Bronze is copper as well as tin. Brass is copper as well as zinc. If you lot only dump dissimilar metals into a melting pot, what comes out is probable to last flawed as well as brittle, non rigid or useful. When supporters of the melting pot metaphor showtime talking, it ofttimes turns out that they convey a clear mental formula for what it agency to last American — as well as it isn’t e'er my formula.

The notion of America every bit a salad bowl seems to convey been popularized yesteryear the eminent historian Carl Degler. His majority “Out of Our Past: The Forces that Shaped Modern America” was a commonly used textbook from the 1950s upward through the 1980s. In the 1959 edition, he wrote: “[S]ome habits from the former province were non discarded; inward those instances the children of immigrants fifty-fifty into the 3rd as well as 4th generations retained their differences. In take in of such failure to melt as well as fuse, the metaphor of the melting pot is unfortunate as well as misleading. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 to a greater extent than accurate analogy would last a salad bowl, for, although the salad is an entity, the lettuce tin dismiss nonetheless last distinguished from the chicory, the tomatoes from the cabbage.”

While the salad bowl metaphor has a healthy, crunchy “eat your vegetables” telephone to it, it seems awkward to me every bit well. After all, who is the pale as well as crunchy iceberg lettuce? Who is arugula? Who are the artificial bacon bits? Who are anchovies? Salad ingredients are non all created equal.

Salad is e'er falling apart, as well as you lot tin dismiss almost never teach all of the ingredients, inward only the correct proportions, into your oral fissure at the same time. Imagine the oversized modern salad bar, amongst multiple kinds of lettuces as well as vegetables, but every bit good seeds as well as nuts, tuna salad, slices of chicken or ham, edible bean salad, hard-boiled eggs, crackers as well as popcorn, along amongst pick of soup as well as dessert. It misses what is cohesive as well as distinctive close America to encounter the province every bit a long buffet of ingredients, which nosotros all involve to exclude or include according to our transient appetites of day.

My ain proposition is that America is chocolate fondue. Our dissimilar cultural as well as ethnic backgrounds are the strawberries, pineapple, as well as cherries, the graham crackers as well as cookies, the pound cake as well as brownies, the rice crispy treats as well as marshmallows, the popcorn as well as the peppermint sticks. Then nosotros are dipped inward America. We swim inward America. We are coated inward America. Because Americans tin dismiss as well as arrive at come upward from all ethnicities as well as races, nosotros all await similar Americans.

Of course, chocolate doesn’t e'er deliver on its promise. It tin dismiss teach grainy, rancid, burnt as well as bitter. Some people convey no gustation for chocolate, or are fifty-fifty allergic to it. America has ofttimes non lived upward to its promises as well as ideals. But when I recall consider all the human beings who convey ever lived, inward all the dissimilar places as well as times only about the world, I experience profoundly fortunate to last living inward modern America.

There’s an former even close when heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis decided to enlist inward the U.S. Army inward 1942. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 friend of his objected, as well as said: “It’s a white man’s Army, Joe, non a dark man’s Army.” But Joe Louis had observed the Nazi propaganda machine closed up, every bit the final result of his 2 epic fights against the German linguistic communication Max Schmeling (who was non a Nazi, but whom the Nazis attempted to exploit). So Louis told his friend: “Lots of things incorrect amongst America, but Hitler ain’t going to gear upward them.”

In that spirit, I’d enjoin lots of things are incorrect amongst America, but often, the best answers for what’s incorrect amongst America are a bigger dose of what’s correct amongst America. On the Fourth of July, I involve to sit down amongst household unit of measurement as well as friends, as well as to enjoy the textures as well as sweetness of our shared American experience.

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Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at ­Macalester College in St. Paul. He blogs at http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com.
Sumber http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/