When I was a child, I remember a teacher who used to rail at my class,
"Remember, children, America is not a melting pot of culture!" It was
always a troubling concept because the "melting pot" has meant exactly that: it has evolved
generally into meaning some homogeneous cultural stew. That is a
disservice to the nation and its people. It should be thought of in its
original meaning.
The term was first used by a Rabbi Samuel Schulman, who spoke of America as "the melting pot of nationalities" in a 1907 Passover sermon at his New York temple. The vision was that of multiple individual cultures joined at their collective hips by a common revolutionary national vision and commitment, a country of apriori equality, freedom and individual responsibility. This equality that did not have to be earned but was granted, by definition, by citizenship, along with its attendant responsibilities.
There was a play around the same time called "The Melting Pot" by Israel Zangwill. In it a Jewish composer and his lover, the daughter of an anti-Semitic Russian nobleman, overcome those old European mores and conflicts in the new America. That may expect too much. The pot is not a crucible. America will not purify its people; it will not cure stupidity and bigotry. Indeed, America will allow you to continue with your cultural specialness, your historical group individuality which you may guard jealously. You may keep your cultural identity as separate as you desire.
But there is one thing you must share: You must share the belief in America's special preoccupation with equality, with freedom, with individual responsibility. That, from every language, origin and culture, is in our "melting pot,"
The term was first used by a Rabbi Samuel Schulman, who spoke of America as "the melting pot of nationalities" in a 1907 Passover sermon at his New York temple. The vision was that of multiple individual cultures joined at their collective hips by a common revolutionary national vision and commitment, a country of apriori equality, freedom and individual responsibility. This equality that did not have to be earned but was granted, by definition, by citizenship, along with its attendant responsibilities.
There was a play around the same time called "The Melting Pot" by Israel Zangwill. In it a Jewish composer and his lover, the daughter of an anti-Semitic Russian nobleman, overcome those old European mores and conflicts in the new America. That may expect too much. The pot is not a crucible. America will not purify its people; it will not cure stupidity and bigotry. Indeed, America will allow you to continue with your cultural specialness, your historical group individuality which you may guard jealously. You may keep your cultural identity as separate as you desire.
But there is one thing you must share: You must share the belief in America's special preoccupation with equality, with freedom, with individual responsibility. That, from every language, origin and culture, is in our "melting pot,"
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