The Melting Pot

England is full of Englishmen. France is full of Frenchmen. Italy is full of Italians and Russia is full of Russians. So what is America populated by? This little mental exercise points out one of the amazing things about the way America was envisioned by the forefathers. When you think about it, America stands out as most unique of all the nations of the world because we are not the homeland of an ethnic people. Now, we do have our ethnic population in the form of the American Indian native population which we value and prize as much as any population that lives here. But “America” as a nation is remarkable not for the dominance of one ethnic group but for the lack of one ethnic group that defines what it is to be American.

This is why we are called “The Great American Melting Pot”. It’s a good illustration because when you imagine a big pot bubbling over a stove or campfire, all of the ingredients all mix together to make one delicious meal. That is truly what America is. Our many ethnic subcultures mix and blend and add spice to each other until that resulting personality, that thing we call “an American”, is truly a wonderful blend of all of the ethnic groups that make up this great country.

In fact, the way Americans view ethnic diversity is unique in the entire world. We do honor the ethnic background of all peoples. In almost any big town or city in the country on any given weekend you might come across a festival celebrating the ethnic heritage of a people in that community be they Irish, Greek, German, Scottish, Native American, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Mexican, or any of the other many ethnic groups who call America home.

Over the centuries we have had waves of immigration from particular areas of the world that have added their particular flavor to the big melting pot of America. Sometimes in larger towns you can drive from neighborhood to neighborhood and each one will have the unique atmosphere of the home country of the ethnic group who calls that neighborhood home. But that spirit of celebrating the authenticity of every American is not used in this country to drive people apart. It is to honor the uniqueness of all Americans and actually bring us together. So as citizens of Chinese origin dance the Chicken Dance at a German Oktoberfest or as Americans of African heritage happily try on quilts at the Scottish Festival to be Scottish for a day, we enjoy the ethnic background of each other’s heritage. In doing so, we become one people from many.

In fact, American society continues to strive more and more to make ethnic background a source of pride but not division between our own people. So when it comes to where we work, who we keep as friends and who we socialize with out and about, to an extent, Americans actually do not care what another persons ethnic background is. This kind of attitude is virtually unthinkable in the majority of the world’s populations where each country is populated by a single “tribe” as we mentioned earlier. The American outlook of being ‘color blind” about such things is a bold experiment in how to run a society. But the American experiment in social order is one that is so successful that it is mimicked by dozens of nations all around the world.