At Stardate 20030621.0817, Jan Coffey wrote:
We are the melting pot of the world.
I remember a Geography book we used in school (over twenty years ago) that had two interesting pictures in it about this "melting pot". The first one showed a big pot with people from all over the world jumping into to it at the top, and standard-issue Americans (who all looked the same) coming out at the bottom; George Washington sitting on a chair beside it, apparently being quite happy with the process.
The second picture showed George Washington coming out of his chair, his eyes wide open, looking very surprised: suddenly the melting pot had stopped working, and what went in at the top came out of the bottom unchanged.
My point here being: just like whoever wrote that book, I don't believe your melting pot exists anymore. If it were, you'd have a homogenised society, where everyone has become "American" and has adopted the same values, culture etcetera. Yet that is not correct: values and cultures differ greatly throughout your country, even within cities and neighbourhoods.
Like it or not, the US is very much a multicultural society.
Jeroen van Baardwijk
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