Melting pot vs. cultural diversity

I remember, as a boy growing up in Arkansas, the wonderful smell of food that would wake me up every morning, even on those mornings I wanted to sleep late. I grew up back then in a traditional extended family, living until I graduated from high school with my mom, dad, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt and uncle. The men worked outside the home to make money, the women inside the home to raise me, take care of the house and cook the food. And it seemed like they were cooking or cleaning up the kitchen so they could cook again all the time. One of the tastiest dishes they made was beef stew. It was always amazing to me how they could take beef, broth, onions, carrots, celery and potatoes and turn it into the mouth-watering treat it was that didn't taste anything like any of the individual elements it was made of.

That's a metaphor for the way the United States used to Americanize immigrants. Regardless of the countries the immigrants came from, we would put them in a big pot with other immigrants, stir them up really well, and then pour them out in to a bowl. When we did, they weren't who they used to be; they were now Americans.

But the melting pot theory of immigration eventually gave way to the idea of multiculturalism; a concept that not only allows immigrants to hang on to their past but encourages it. So now immigrants can come to the United States or to practically any other country in the world and maintain the dress, religion, language and the general way of life from where they came. So there's a big difference between the melting pot and multiculturalism.

The melting pot is primarily a conservative position to take and multiculturalism a liberal perspective. I don't side with the conservatives on a lot of issues but this is one where I do. I've always believe that 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' and that still seems to make sense to me. Immigrants today, regardless of what country they immigrate to, want to take advantage of the riches and opportunities of their new land while holding on to everything they can about the land they left and that has never seemed right to me. If they liked their old country so much they should have stayed but, because they didn't, they're expected to become one of us instead of remaining one of them.

Much of the hostility we're seeing in this country and others around the world, especially in Europe, stems from this very thing and, because it does, we are being exposed to religious and cultural battles literally waged in the streets of major cities with scores of people murdered because they hold different values and attitudes than others.

Based on everything I've read and studied, it appears that most Muslims reject the terrorist practices of radical Muslim groups as much as we do but it's also true that the core principles of these terrorist groups are religiously based, no matter how erroneously they interpret the Koran. So when Muslims move in next door, people get worried. In a vast majority of cases, these worries are unfounded, just like 'white flight' was unfounded back in the '50s and '60s when whites would move out of a neighborhood as soon as a black family moved in. They were taking the actions of a few and using those behaviors to stereotype the entire black population and that's what we're doing with Muslims today too. The reason we do that is we can't tell a good Muslim from a terrorist Muslim and no one wants to deal with that concern every day of their lives. The Melting Pot would have made a difference; multiculturalism doesn't and therein lies the problem.

Most people are not racists or religious bigots. Most people just want to live their lives, raise families, go to work, earn a livable wage, and not be preyed upon by others. But it's in our nature to suspect those people we don't understand, like I was concerned about a person sitting across from me in first class when I flew back to Arkansas a few months ago. He was perspiring profusely, he whispered prayers for the entire flight and he bowed several times in his seat. In the end, he was obviously just practicing his religion but because his religion is different from mine and a perversion of his religion makes self-identified martyrs out of some, I was worried that he might want to be a martyr too.

Fear often breeds panic and unclear thoughts as the lynch mobs of the old western days of this country displayed. And even though I have always been for fairness, equal rights and opportunities for everybody, it seems to me the melting pot worked much better and more effectively at encouraging people to decide who they wanted to be and where their loyalties were than multiculturalism does.