Shawn Goggins
Forum 3
As Miller states, “our freedoms are a beacon to millions who came here.” In summary,
Miller explained that there is an idea that America is a salad bowl where people do not change,
they enter the U.S. and mix among others while keeping their cultural heritages. I think most
people might agree with this without searching for an explanation. This may partly be because
we look at other cultures such as the Latino community, where they are deeply connected to their
culture, and assume that everyone does this. They mix in with other citizens in the United States
but at home or when alone, they are heavily involved with their own culture.
We should be cautious however, because this type of example not set the tone for the rest
of America. Not everyone does this. In fact, many others absorb those in which they socialize
with and begin acting like their friends do. Had certain people, from the former Soviet bloc
countries in eastern Europe for example, never immigrated into America, we would have no
knowledge of polka music. Had the Hispanic community never immigrated, we would have no
knowledge of Hispanic foods. So to say that America is a salad bowl where no one truly
conforms would be incorrect in my opinion. We have and we do conform to other cultures,
eventually making them a part of our own lives and daily habits.
A more accurate description of America would be that of a melting pot, where everyone
just melts into one big country absorbing all cultural things around them. Smith summarizes
President Wilson’s view as, “the melting pot that was able to bring people from around the world
together in peace and cooperation.” In today’s world, we have people from literally almost every
country in the world who reside in or have become citizens of this country. This not only brings
the people to this country but also brings various types of foods, art, and literally anything else
that people can retain and bring with them. The possibilities are endless and it indeed makes
America greater because we are able to learn from all types of people and their experiences.
The most important part of this is that we begin to take after and incorporate these
cultural offerings into our own lives. This also allows us to better understand where our new
fellow Americans come from and what experiences they have had. This strengthens our
relationships and our country as a whole and helps us bridge the gap and get away from negative
past experiences such as slavery and segregation. I’m a strong believer in history as we can learn
a ton from the past. However, if we constantly focus on the bad things, we will never make
progress. As Metaxas says, “but if our focus is on what is ugly and evil and dark, we will
strangely strengthen the ugly and evil and dark.” America is a melting pot and we must use the
experiences and knowledge we learn from others to better ourselves and our country in order to
overcome the bad stuff in our past.
Sources
Metaxas, Eric. If You Can Keep It: the Forgotten Promise of American Liberty. New York, NY:
Penguin Random House, 2016.
Miller, Ron. “This is My Country." In SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom's Porch, edited by
Anita Crane, 199–213. Maitland: Xulon Press, 2010.
Smith, David Michael. "The American melting pot: A national myth in public and popular
discourse." National Identities 14, no. 4 (December 2012): 387-402. Political Science Complete,
EBSCOhost (accessed April 14, 2017)
Dominic Flores
DB Forum 3
In light of past issues with slavery and racism, America is unfortunately more of a salad where
people don’t change who they are, they get mixed in with others similar to their own cultural
heritage—rather than a melting pot. We all would be ignoring our history if we were to consider
America as a melting pot and overlook the transgressions blacks and minorities faced. To be a
melting pot, I think that some Americans would have to consider ourselves to be exceptional just
the way Alexis de Tocqueville first described what he experienced detailed in his book,
Democracy in America (1835), however, that case has yet to be made as Americans struggle to
live up to that “hope and promise more than 150 years before that hope and that promise took the
form of a government and a nation (Metaxas 2016, 181).” The concept of American
Exceptionalism was an idea of virtue before our founders ever compressed it into a full reality
and years throughout its early inception, there have been small assertions made with regard to
Americans living out this [idea] in its truest form. That sad part is that even our recent history
does not highlight those values and beliefs and the reality happens to be that we are all not living
in the United States together, happily mixed in.
Leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Black Americans and other minorities faced
segregation and racial oppression amidst the Great Migration (1910-1920), FDR’s New Deal
proposal in 1933, and events which led up to our participation in WWII (Library of Congress).
There could not have been any more of a contradiction to American values with regard to slavery
and racism, than the opposition forcing us into war against fascist ideals. These resentments have
been prolonged and continue to be felt today as the breakdown of families, policy failures, and
lack of justice reforms continues to sow hostility in the Black-American cultures today. To that
notion, there is even another divide there. According to Professor Miller (2018), the war on
poverty in 1964, “emasculated men that were just beginning to find themselves on the American
landscape (Securing Liberty),” thus leaving black families fatherless on such a scale that
impacted America overall. And as people out there still benefit from this culture of grievance, at
a time where I believe we all have an equal opportunity to achieve anything—steadies the issues
at hand and prevents us to this day from becoming the melting pot that America should be.
To exude the American Exceptionalism that this country was founded on and to move
beyond the past issues pertaining to slavery and racism; again, just as Professor Miller mentioned
to us—it must be approached from the bottom up. Every day citizens could look to Charles
Murray’s (2013) elements of an exceptional culture that takes industriousness, egalitarianism,
religiosity, and community life together to form a civic culture (18). The ingredients to
overcoming history could be made up of activists revisiting these communities to advocate
improvements to education, recreational facilities, and the justice system that’s often prejudice to
minorities. It’s going to take full participation at the local level where people are directly affected
by these notions which divide the economic classes compromised in race. We must do this for
the long haul and sustain efforts so that a lapse in generations can call to bear as witnesses to the
overall effort. Lastly, the church must become the guiding light to everything in between for
Americans to form that melting pot. We have made a great amount of progress thus far, but not
progress in my opinion that’s exceptional.
Resources
Library of Congress. “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom”
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html
Metaxas, Eric. 2016. If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty. New
York: Viking Press.
Miller, Ron. 2018. Securing Liberty - Achieving Continued Progress in Racial Reconciliation.
Liberty University Blackboard. https://learn.liberty.edu/
Murray, Charles. 2013. American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History. Washington, DC:
AEI Press. Kindle.
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