Melissa Sandifer

An America Defined By Metaphors

            If asked to define America in one word, I would say diversity.  America is made up of so many different races, religions, and cultures that it does not seem fair not to honor the diversity that makes America great.  Due to the immigration of people into America, there are many ways that people have chosen to describe America throughout the years.  Most of these descriptions of America are done in metaphors.  Some metaphors that are used to describe America are: the quilt, the pot of stew, the ethnic rainbow, a mosaic, the salad bowl, and the famous melting pot.  The most popular and well known metaphors in this list are the melting pot and the salad bowl. There are many differences between these two metaphors and many people argue as to which one describes America today. 

“My grandmother came from Russia

A satchel on her knee,

My grandfather had his father's cap

He brought from Italy.

They'd heard about a country

Where life might let them win,

They paid the fare to America

And there they melted in.”

These are just a few lines from the School House Rock song entitled “The Great American Melting Pot.”  This is a great description of the melting pot, because that is exactly what it was; immigrants came from many places because they heard of a country that would help them succeed, and they melted into the dominant culture once they arrived.  The concept of the melting pot was originally an idea that J. Hector Crevecoeur, a French immigrant developed in 1782.  Crevecoeur did not have a name for his theory, but he explained that he saw America transforming into a nation consisting of an entirely new race, which would do great things for the world (Gloor).  It was not until 1908 that the metaphor of the melting pot was popularized by Israel Zangwill with his play entitled “The Melting Pot.”  The play was about two people who fell in love one being a Russian Jew, and the other being a Russian Christian.  They overcame their religious differences among a few others and stayed together (Booth).  The title comes from a line the protagonist said in the play.

“It is the fires of God round His Crucible. There she lies, the great Melting Pot-listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling…Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross--how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God” (Zangwill)

The process of the melting pot has been compared to cultural assimilation.  The metaphor suggests a melting of cultures and/or intermarriage of ethnicities.  By describing America as a melting pot, one is basically saying that immigrants will eventually assimilate to the dominant culture, leaving their culture, traditions, and ethnicity behind them- i.e., everyone melting together to become one nation made up of exactly the same type of people.  For immigrants assimilation can be one of the fastest routes to acceptance by the dominant culture.  If you dress, act, and speak as the dominant culture they will not be able to tell that you are different.  The only problem with this is what part of them and their heritage are they letting go in this process of “melting” together.  Another problem with the melting pot theory is the fact that some races of people have no interest in melting with other races (Gloor).  This theory has been strongly criticized because it includes a mixing of immigrants from Europe, but fails to include African Americans or Native Americans (Friedman).  African Americans were brought here by the dominant culture and enslaved, they are not immigrants, but they are Americans.  Same can be said for the Native Americans who were depleted, dislocated, or enslaved during the colonization of America by the Europeans.

The metaphor of the salad bowl is strikingly different from the one of the melting pot.  Some feel that the image of a salad bowl is more politically correct than that of a melting pot.  The salad bowl theory projects the idea of a mixing of cultures and ethnicities together but not melting them into one another.  The basic thought is to mix the best features of every culture to make the most of the American society.  Each ingredient in the bowl is important and without a certain ingredient the mixture would not be the same (Gloor).  Some immigrants want to come to America and maintain their cultural identity.  For example Maria Jacinto in South Omaha who moved to America in 1988 from her village in Mexico, with her husband Aristeo Jacinto chooses to speak Spanish instead of learning English.  They have five children who are bilingual and for the most part have assimilated to their surroundings.  Maria feels that she is Mexican, not American and wants to hold onto her culture and traditions instead of assimilating to the American culture (Branigin).  She says, “When my skin turns white and my hair turns blonde, then I’ll be an American.”  Some people would cringe at hearing her say this because they would rather think of our society all blended together as in the melting pot theory.  There are those in the dominant culture who believe everyone should speak English in America and would question her loyalty to America if she does not consider herself an American.  The whole idea behind the theory of the salad bowl is that immigrants can hold onto their culture and differences and add something special to this great country we call America. 

“They brought the country's customs,
Their language and their ways.
They filled the factories, tilled the soil,
Helped build the U.S.A.
Go on and ask your grandma,
Hear what she has to tell
How great to be an American
And something else as well”

Granted this is another part of the School House Rock song The Great American Melting pot, but this song alludes to a little more than a melting together (Sullivan).  “Go on and ask your grandma, hear what she has to tell How great to be an American and something else as well.”  Some say that this “something else as well” could be the culture of where the grandma came from.  True she is an American now because she immigrated here, but she was not always an American and should be allowed to hold onto that part of her life as well as the new American part.  This is what the salad bowl metaphor is all about.

In conclusion, America is a great country made up of millions of different people.  Some have chosen to melt into the dominant culture and live their lives quietly in amongst the “normal” Americans.  While others have taken a different path and chosen to hold onto their culture and traditions while at the same time becoming an American.

Works Cited

Ahrens, Lynn. "The Great American Melting Pot." School House Rock. 1977.

Booth, William. "One Nation Indivisible: Is it History?" Washington Post 22 February 1998: 9.

Branigin, William. "Immigrants Shunning Idea of Assimilation." Washington Post 25 May 1998: 8.

Gloor, LeAna B. "From the Melting Pot to the Tossed Salad Metaphor: Why Coerc." Hohonu A Journal of Academic Writing (2006): 3.

Sullivan, Danny. Daggle. 3 May 2006. <http://daggle.com/the-melting-pot-versus-the-salad-bowl-111>.

The Melting Pot. By Israel Zangwill. New York. 1908.