Acid cauldron or mosaic?

photo by author

Many discuss the differences between cultural assimilation, integration, and multiculturalism; and they raise the question of whether the US is in fact a melting pot of cultures.

Assimilation means that immigrants must adopt the host culture as their own, and when they do this they will also be fully assimilated by the host culture as “new members” of that culture.

This was the unwritten norm for many years in the United States. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” and I will turn them into Americans who will espouse our Anglo-Saxon values and forsake their foreign origins.

This basically meant that immigrants should transform themselves into Americans, or leave. ”America: love it or leave it!”

And many did just that. Mexicans, Italians, Dutch, Swedes, Germans… they all become flag-toting Americans more patriotic than any Yankee. I’ve always been amused by the fact that many senior officers in the American military have foreign surnames like Rodriguez, Schultz or Odierno.

Those immigrants who did not assimilate the Anglo-Saxon values were rejected and tended to form ghettos: isolated communities where they continued to hold on to their original culture values, behaviours and language. They lived in the United States, but pretty much like little islands in an…