The Myth of the Melting Pot
Allison Bergonia
English 100
20 September 2013
Myths of the Melting Pot Modern America is considered to be a melting pot, in which a variety of races, cultures, or individuals gather into a unified whole. The ideas of being a new American for people who have migrated from their homeland to America are to leave behind all their past cultures and practices and embrace their new American ways. Is that what really happens? If it was, would there be still racism in America? The number of people immigrating to America has risen over the years, but so has the number of active hate groups. The idea of unity in the melting pot of America is a myth because of racism, stereotypes, prejudice, and cultural segregation of its people. Most people would say that racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race. It’s more than that. It’s the belief that those characteristics of each race determine whether or not the race is superior or inferior to the other races. Racism has dated back to hundreds of years in the past. Even former president Thomas Jefferson said, “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (Jefferson, 502). To Thomas Jefferson emancipated slaves as well as the owned slaves and their physical and mental characteristics were not up to par with their white owners. Not just because of their status as slaves, but because what race they were. Only because they were a bit different from the white people that owned the land at the time.
One of the most interesting, yet unsettling facts was that many of America’s founding fathers practiced the principle of ethnocentrism and did not seem to consider this an act of racism. Ethnocentrism has been defined as “a generalized rejection of all out groups on the basis of an in group focus”
English 100
20 September 2013
Myths of the Melting Pot Modern America is considered to be a melting pot, in which a variety of races, cultures, or individuals gather into a unified whole. The ideas of being a new American for people who have migrated from their homeland to America are to leave behind all their past cultures and practices and embrace their new American ways. Is that what really happens? If it was, would there be still racism in America? The number of people immigrating to America has risen over the years, but so has the number of active hate groups. The idea of unity in the melting pot of America is a myth because of racism, stereotypes, prejudice, and cultural segregation of its people. Most people would say that racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race. It’s more than that. It’s the belief that those characteristics of each race determine whether or not the race is superior or inferior to the other races. Racism has dated back to hundreds of years in the past. Even former president Thomas Jefferson said, “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (Jefferson, 502). To Thomas Jefferson emancipated slaves as well as the owned slaves and their physical and mental characteristics were not up to par with their white owners. Not just because of their status as slaves, but because what race they were. Only because they were a bit different from the white people that owned the land at the time.
One of the most interesting, yet unsettling facts was that many of America’s founding fathers practiced the principle of ethnocentrism and did not seem to consider this an act of racism. Ethnocentrism has been defined as “a generalized rejection of all out groups on the basis of an in group focus”
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