Not long after we immigrated to the United States I was taught as a child about the Melting Pot. In those days, the mid 50s, it was a phrase that denoted pride in the ability of the United States to absorb multiple cultures with the demand that one subsumes your previous culture, usually European at that time, and join the great American experiment. It was not seen as divisive, it was seen as a means to unify, to leave those fractious Europeans behind and willingly join this new world.
America is indeed distinct from Europe. Yet for all this distinctness, there remains an abundance of similarity, ethnically and culturally. We could consider it, in its origins and metaphysical trajectory, still an extension of European civilization. The immigrants of that era were ethnically and culturally akin to the host population, sharing the same rootedness in Christian and classical antiquity. It was precisely this shared civilizational abundance, together with the limiting of quotas and flow, that made assimilation possible.
Yeah I think that is generally true, and assimilation isn’t always easy if we witness the troubles with Catholic (Christian) or Irish migrants... or my Russian father, but this is nitpicking I think.
I very much enjoyed your essay, it cleared the table, in a good way, for the people I shared it with.
Not long after we immigrated to the United States I was taught as a child about the Melting Pot. In those days, the mid 50s, it was a phrase that denoted pride in the ability of the United States to absorb multiple cultures with the demand that one subsumes your previous culture, usually European at that time, and join the great American experiment. It was not seen as divisive, it was seen as a means to unify, to leave those fractious Europeans behind and willingly join this new world.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
America is indeed distinct from Europe. Yet for all this distinctness, there remains an abundance of similarity, ethnically and culturally. We could consider it, in its origins and metaphysical trajectory, still an extension of European civilization. The immigrants of that era were ethnically and culturally akin to the host population, sharing the same rootedness in Christian and classical antiquity. It was precisely this shared civilizational abundance, together with the limiting of quotas and flow, that made assimilation possible.
Yeah I think that is generally true, and assimilation isn’t always easy if we witness the troubles with Catholic (Christian) or Irish migrants... or my Russian father, but this is nitpicking I think.
I very much enjoyed your essay, it cleared the table, in a good way, for the people I shared it with.