USA: melting pot or salad bowl?

[Raeph]

At a local Chinese buffet in the town near where I live they have Pizza, Mac and cheese, frozen yogurt, hot and sour soup, baked ham and a moderate salad bar with ice berg lettuce along with the usual standard fair you would expect.

Not sure what the United States is really anymore; food is good though.

[Damajin]

The real question is - will it blend?

Those were great videos haha.

As to the topic, it's neither at this point, more like a marinade bag filled with lots of bad ingredients.

[breadisfunny]

Well, at most there are only 2 major cultures and languages on North America. Compared to the myriad of cultures and languages on Europe, Africa, Asia. Also there is less white guilt in the US, so I would say it is more secure in its own Western and English speaking roots, where as Europeans are more timid of affirming their own culture.

because it's not like the chinese,hmong,russian,polish,french,porteguese speaking latins,japanese,laotians,germans,etc living here don't all have their own languages...nope it's just english and spanish.

[PC2]

because it's not like the chinese,hmong,russian,polish,french,porteguese speaking latins,japanese,laotians,germans,etc living here don't all have their own languages...nope it's just english and spanish.

Only the last 2 are major languages in the US.

[belfpala]

Just heard an NPR thing on this. Comparing Canada and the US. The piece suggested Canada considers itself a mosaic, where each element can be seen and is important, whereas the US considers itself a melting pot, essentially assimilate or go away.

[Kaleredar]

Not much assimilation. USA seems very divided right now, especially by race, among other things.

Multiculturalism is a disease and a failure.

Quite the contrary. In college and high school and middle school and elementary school I had classmates that were white, latino, black, middle eastern, and asian, and everyone got along more or less fine. And if they didn't get along, it wasn't because of racial differences.

Japanese kids were friends with Chinese kids. Kids from England were friends with kids from Mexico. And I lived in a town that was primarily Asian (~70%,) and no one forced me to learn Mandarin or Japanese and the schools weren't required to have some huge emphasis on Asian-American history.

An anecdote? Yes. Are there places in the United States where people are bitterly divided by race? Sure. But those areas are few and far between.


So for you to pretend that "multiculuralism has failed" because you hear about some disgruntled black people or the fact that Europe seems to have their panties in a wad about brown people is quite trite and knee-jerk. And what credence there IS to those stories stems from a lack of people addressing the main issues at hand. In other words, don't ignore a fire and then complain about the ashes.


Having populations composed of multiple races is not something that is just some far-flung possibility. It's happening, and it's going to continue happening. So I'd advise that you... well, deal with it.

[Tierbook]

I'd say melting pot, when someone asks an American "what they are" it's normally another American asking the question, at which point ancestry is the assumed request rather than their personal allegiance.

[Abajaba]

From my limited experience I'd say salad bowl feels more apt. Some ingredients go together and work to make a flavor profile that is, overall, unified and distinct at the same time. I guess the prevailing fear for some as applied to this metaphor is that at some point immigrant chocolate syrup will come along and refuse to mesh with the garden salad we have going on. As for what I think on that matter, I don't rightly know.

An anecdote? Yes. Are there places in the United States where people are bitterly divided by race?

The way I see it, salads don't have ingredients that are bitterly divided. I see people who hold on to their cultures but work toward making a United States at the same time. We can have tomatoes living in China Towns or croutons in Little Havanas and cucumbers living off in the midwest and they don't conflict. It feels very salady to me.