“On the boats and on the planes, they’re coming to America.
Never looking back again, they’re coming to America.” - Neil Diamond
Words from a rousing anthem that induced pride in country a generation back.
The melting pot. The idea was such that a schoolkid could understand it. Take a bunch of people of different colors, ethnicities, and geographic origins, put them in a cauldron like a stew. Season with American values—individualism, freedom, and equality among them—and in a couple of generations you have a diverse society, but a singular national identity. An American nation.
Did it work? There are good arguments on both sides of the question.
Well, I’m a second-generation citizen in this country, half-Greek, half-Turk. My Jewish grandparents from peasant beginnings came to the U.S. during the huge wave of immigration in the early 1900s. They came with a dream, like the majority of immigrants do—to pursue a better future for their children and grandchildren. They worked menial jobs and insisted that their families count themselves as Americans first.
At the same time, as they got along in years, we’d pick them up on Sunday afternoons and take them to a special little park at Redondo Beach in the L.A. area. A place where people from the old country would socialize. We kids were immersed in ethnic music and served amazing food. My mom tried hard to recreate those dishes but never quite got there.
Memories I still treasure.
I grew up knowing my roots, and I still appreciate my heritage. But if you asked me who I was back then, the answer was always the same…an American. The story was similar for Karen, my wife. Her countries of origin were Yugoslavia and Scotland.
The dreams of a better future for their families were realized, but it took commitment and hard work. My father earned a modest wage, held back only by his personal distractions in life. Still, he owned a home, as did my grandparents eventually, which they never could have envisioned back in their villages. I went on to earn two college degrees (the first in my family I might add) and carved out a successful corporate career that would have made both sets of grandparents proud. My son is a teacher at a prestigious high school in San Marino, California. If they were here today, his great-grandparents would say the promise of the melting pot delivered for them.
Descendants of immigrants continue to assimilate into a broader American culture. At the same time, we enjoy the food and music of other cultures. But detractors of the melting pot idea say it’s outdated, a synonym for white, European culture. One person described it as “a compartmentalized storage unit, with whites in the biggest compartment.”
The preferred policy now in most institutions is DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion. Social justice advocates say this is what we should strive for, with the emphasis on equity. In their view, it’s a superior outcome over equality. What’s the difference? Equality offers the same individual opportunities to everyone. Equity seeks to make group outcomes more equal than they are now.
Critics say equity has led to identity politics favoring race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. They warn “…not all disparities among groups are due to oppression, and intervening to help may well be doomed utopian social engineering.” *
The subject is complex, to be sure.
Equity versus the melting pot. One is here to stay, perhaps in need of refinement. The other seems to have been thrown onto the policy heap of past efforts to ensure America remains the land of opportunity for all.
Once thing is certain. Like Neil Diamond said: “They’re [still] coming to America.”
*Andrew Prokop, senior politics correspondent at Vox, May 2023.