Melting Pot, Salad Bowl, Chocolate Fondue

Here's my effort to resolve all the issues of shared American identity inwards nether 1,000 words. It was published dorsum inwards 2013 as an catch 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 accept been slugging it out inwards the challenger for most appropriate metaphor for how the cultures as well as ethnicities of America gibe together. But my preference is to recollect of America every bit chocolate fondue.

The popularization of “the melting pot” metaphor is commonly traced to a soppy, sentimental as well as rattling pop play of that cite past times an immigrant named State of Israel Zangwill that opened inwards Washington inwards 1908. The melting pot metaphor is a way of expressing “E pluribus unum” — “Out of many, one” — the already onetime proverb adopted inwards 1782 for the Great Seal of the States of America (and which yous tin come across on the dorsum of the $1 bill). “E pluribus unum” has likewise been imprinted on U.S. coins since the 18th century.

The traditional criticism most the melting pot was that what is particular most American civilization isn’t its homogeneity, but rather its powerfulness to absorb the elements of many cultures, as well as hence top them around to everyone. For example, every bit John F. Kennedy wrote inwards 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 upwards our cultural as well as ethnic identities. This critique strikes me every bit overwrought. Yes, the civilization of the province where yous alive is constraining. But what’s distinctive most 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 likewise bothers me that melting dissimilar metals together produces a desired lawsuit solely if yous adhere to a formula. Bronze is copper as well as tin. Brass is copper as well as zinc. If yous merely dump dissimilar metals into a melting pot, what comes out is probable to survive flawed as well as brittle, non rigid or useful. When supporters of the melting pot metaphor starting fourth dimension talking, it oftentimes turns out that they accept a clear mental formula for what it agency to survive American — as well as it isn’t ever my formula.

The notion of America every bit a salad bowl seems to accept been popularized past times the eminent historian Carl Degler. His mass “Out of Our Past: The Forces that Shaped Modern America” was a commonly used textbook from the 1950s upwards through the 1980s. In the 1959 edition, he wrote: “[S]ome habits from the onetime province were non discarded; inwards those instances the children of immigrants fifty-fifty into the 3rd as well as quaternary generations retained their differences. In catch 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 survive a salad bowl, for, although the salad is an entity, the lettuce tin nevertheless survive distinguished from the chicory, the tomatoes from the cabbage.”

While the salad bowl metaphor has a healthy, crunchy “eat your vegetables” outcry upwards 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 ever falling apart, as well as yous tin almost never larn all of the ingredients, inwards merely 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 likewise 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 choice of soup as well as dessert. It misses what is cohesive as well as distinctive most America to come across the province every bit a long buffet of ingredients, which nosotros all select 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 inwards America. We swim inwards America. We are coated inwards America. Because Americans tin as well as gain come upwards from all ethnicities as well as races, nosotros all await similar Americans.

Of course, chocolate doesn’t ever deliver on its promise. It tin travel grainy, rancid, burnt as well as bitter. Some people accept no sense of savor for chocolate, or are fifty-fifty allergic to it. America has oftentimes non lived upwards to its promises as well as ideals. But when I recollect consider all the human beings who accept ever lived, inwards all the dissimilar places as well as times around the world, I experience profoundly fortunate to survive living inwards modern America.

There’s an onetime flush most when heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis decided to enlist inwards the U.S. Army inwards 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 unopen up, every bit the outcome of his 2 epic fights against the High German 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 prepare 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 select to sit down amongst employment solid unit of measurement as well as friends, as well as to relish 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/