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Fondue Anyone?

January 31, 2014 by Melissa Shallcross   

America, the “melting-pot” of culture.

Let’s travel back in time and see how the land of the free came to get its nickname. It all started after Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. The first waves of daring steps onto the new land were the feet of the British, Spanish, and French, all seeking to create colonies on the new, unknown land. In the early 1600s, a flood of immigrants came from Britain, seeking religious freedom in America. Settlements grew and grew as more people from a mix of countries got up, packed their bags, and sailed over to the Americas, leaving their homes in search of something a new beginning seemed to promise them. In the 1600s and 1700s, our country began to take a solid shape as an independent land. Throughout this time and onward, however, even after laws and bans forbidding the act, slaves from Africa were being imported and sold across the states, adding another layer of culture into our growing pot pie of people. Then we add a layer of Germans after massive crop failures and a touch of Irish culture during the potato famine, all during the 1840s. 1848 brings discoveries of gold in the west, attracting Chinese immigrants, while the end of the Mexican-American welcomes Mexicans into the U.S.  That covers a lot of the cultures that defined the early years of our country, but immigration doesn’t stop there, not by a long shot. Let’s jump ahead a few decades to the late 1800s. 1882: Ellis Island opens. Within the next century, 16 million immigrants would be admitted through Ellis Island alone.

16 million. Irish, British, German, Polish, Italian; I’m sure there has been at least one person from almost every country in the world that has passed through Ellis Island to this day.

Here’s a question for you. What are you? Sounds like a weird question. What I mean is what is your heritage? Where does your family come from? This is always a fun question to answer. Oh, I’m Polish, Italian, English… but what I get out of this answer, this listing of grandparents’ bloodlines, is that I am American. I’m not from Italy. I’ve never set foot in Poland. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania. How come I identify as all these different cultures? In America, my grandparents’ generation seems to be the last pure bloodline connecting to other countries. For me, at least, all of my grandparents’ parents were immigrants directly from other countries. Over the past century, our country has gone from a colorful, mess of a cultural stew to a kind of chili. It’s getting harder to distinguish one foreign culture with another because several generations of mixed marriages have produced this similar cultural sense, as the only people who are directly related to a country are the new immigrants who still come here every day.

So what does it mean to be American? Is this old “melting pot” metaphor still  relevant? How about the relatively new idea of the American salad bowl where everyone is distinct, but still come together to form one country?

While researching into this idea, I stumbled upon this article. What Timothy Taylor argues in the Star Tribune is that America is

America Fondue http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/213593491.html

America Fondue
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/213593491.html

neither a melting pot of cheese nor a crunchy, full salad from a buffet line. Rather, he sees America as chocolate fondue. People from different countries come to America and represent their culture, whether as a pineapple, a strawberry, a marshmallow, pretzel, or any other deliciously dippable snack. He argues that each person keeps their culture, but when they come to the U.S., they are effectively covered in America. They delve into the “American culture”, but still are the snack they were before, just with more flavor, or more experience in cultures.

This is an interesting and unique argument. I stick with my thoughts about Americans of recent generations identifying less with their lineage and more with the resultant mix of “American culture”, but I also like this idea of chocolate fondue (and not just because I love chocolate). I feel that this is a good way to describe direct immigrants and probably their children as well, but as the generations continue, this chocolate fondue turns back into that classic melting pot of culture, still delectable, just in a different way.

So what do you think? Is America the classic melting pot, a salad buffet, or more like a chocolate fondue?

 

Immigration information:

http://www.history.com/topics/united-states-immigration-to-1965

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/timeline.html


2 Comments »

  1. Andrew Strohmetz says:

    It is very interesting that you posted this for your blog because my friends and I were just trying to think of the most accurate metaphor for American culture. We all felt that melting pot and salad bowl were too extreme. Now that I saw this article, hot fudge is a perfect metaphor for American culture. The stew is a really good metaphor too. I feel US culture definitely is a blend between everyone assimilating into one culture, and everyone keeping their own distinctions from their heritage. We will probably further define this combination in the coming weeks.

  2. Amanda Reese says:

    Timothy Taylor presents an interesting argument about the cultural amalgamation of the United States. I would agree that the homogeneity of a melting pot isn’t really an accurate metaphor for the distinct cultures that are clear throughout the US. I think that the US is perhaps more like a stew, in that some groups are completely mixed in with the streamlined culture, while others maintain a more unique subculture through their ethnicity. To me, the fondue is a bit too one-size-fits-all, as some people are highly committed to completely assimilating to what they may consider the “American” way of life, while others maintain a lifestyle that is more characteristic of their lineage/country of origin. Not only does the US culture change people, but people can also change the US culture (which I talk about more in my blog.)

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