Salad Bowl

Melting Pot The United States has not moved from the "melting pot" to the "salad bowl." Those who suggest that this is the case are entirely unaware of the nation's history, which shows that every new generation of immigrants brings its own language, culture and traditions. It is only over the passage of time that their children and grandchildren adopt the norms, language and common culture of the nation. Evidence from the past shows that this has always been the case.

It is only because people see the contemporary period as somehow unique because they are experiencing it, and past starts to blur once we move past a generation or two that anyone would think of the past and present differently. This paper will show that the melting pot paradigm existed in past generations, and that the patterns of settlement and cultural assimilation are basically the same today as they ever were. The Concepts It is important to understand the concepts with which we are working.

The melting pot theory has been around for at least one hundred years, and serves to explain the pattern of cultural assimilation for new immigrants to the United States. Writing in 1915 in The Nation, notes that the melting pot reflects when people assimilate to the dominant culture -- in this case it was successive waves of immigrants from different European countries. They come to speak English, adopt local clothes and customs and political attitudes as well (Kallen, 1915). Over time, the melting pot concept has been challenged by academics.

It was, of course, rather quaint and that era was not necessarily known for having the same high standards of scholarship that we have today. Bisin and Verdier (2000) note that there are a number of different patterns by which immigrants retain elements of one culture, and adopt others. Such intergenerational transmission of ethnic and religious traits can occur with marriage or intermarriage between groups, and the rates at which new immigrants become economically integrated. These rates can differ between immigrant groups.

For example, Irish immigrants in the 19th century often -- or even typically -- spoke English. This gave them some advantages, but they were economically disadvantaged (Kallen, 1915). German immigrants might have had more language barriers, but came with more money. In most cases, religion is one area where the melting pot does not occur at all, and people retain their religion for many more generations than they retain other cultural traits.

When scholars seek to move discussion away from the idea of melting pot to salad bowl, that terminology reflects the idea that immigrants retain much of their original culture. The United States, instead of trending towards cultural homogeneity, is instead trending towards heterogeneity (D'Innocenzo & Sirefman, 1992). The manifestation of this is the belief the immigrants to America today retain their cultures, and do not trend towards the dominant culture.

Dominantly Held Assumptions The dominantly held assumption is that in the past assimilation into the melting pot was the norm, and that at some point in recent decennia this changed, and there is now a trend towards increasing diversity. There are a number of reasons for this belief. First, the dominant culture tends to overlook a lot of what occurs outside of its bubble. This explains why for some reason people today think that, for example, German or Czech immigrants in the late 19th century did not speak their languages.

This is patently false -- they learned English but retained their own language for another generation or two. During this time, there were over 800 German-language periodicals in the United States, especially concentrated in regions with high numbers of German settlers (About.com, 2014). The same can be said for any language group. One of the big differences, and the source of dominantly-held assumptions, is that people from the dominant cultural group had little to no exposure to this.

People of the time would have been aware that there were many German-speakers, but wouldn't read those papers. It is no different today with the number of Chinese-language periodicals in places like San Francisco. We know they exist, but they are outside of the sphere of influence, so are generally ignored. There is a high level of exposure to immigrant cultural groups today, however. You see and hear other languages more because there is more interaction.

Businesses serve customers in Spanish -- note that they would have served them in German in 19th-century Pennsylvania -- but nowadays we see that. The dominantly-held assumptions are also fed by greater differences between immigrants. Earlier generations were perfectly aware that immigrants brought with them their own religions, but as long as everybody more or less looked the same and built churches, the psychological impact of diversity was less.

Today, when people come from all over the world, and they might be building mosques or temples, the diversity is more prominent. Another dominantly-held assumption is that there is a baseline "American" culture to assimilation into in the melting pot. One of the reasons why the melting pot concept had its zenith 100 years ago is because there remained the sense among the nation's dominant class that there was a definitive culture that was based on English heritage.

At that time, the process of assimilating other European groups was only beginning, there was minimal Asian immigration and most of that confined to the distant West Coast, and the new states of the southwest might have been full of Spanish-speakers, but few people from the country's population centers ever went there. The reality was a little bit different than the perception. Further, each wave of immigrant group shifts to some extent what baseline American culture is.

To some extent, this is one of the reasons why some people struggle with American culture and identity today. A rapidly-growing population of immigrants from a variety of collectivist cultures -- not just Spanish-speaking but African, South Asian and Southeast Asian -- is starting to influence the very understanding of baseline American culture. It was never as baseline as was perceived at the time, but the baseline is also influenced by each successive wave of immigrant.