Salad Bowl vs Melting Pot

719 Words3 Pages
#1357 1 Unfying the American Identity Imagine walking down a busy market full of street vendors in San Francisco, what do you think you’ll see? More than likely, you’ll see people selling different knick-knacks relating to their family’s culture. The uniqueness of the American society is that although we come from different backgrounds we all join together to form a heterogeneous society, as it has been since the start of our country. However, upon observation, immigrants from different countries tend to flock to where their own cultures thrive in America. This then results into what can be described as the salad bowl theory. This can cause many problems, one being cultural segregation (Kozol, Jonathan. "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid” Harper's Magazine V.311, N.1864 01 Sep. 2005).The melting pot theory which opposes the salad bowl theory is the perspective that different foreign cultures merge together to form an American identity. The melting pot theory is best for the American society because it unites all our different cultures, integrating everybody into a universal society. What’s unique about the American society is that after the many years immigrants have assimilated, they’ve been able to mold themselves into the American identity but at the same time preserve their foreign culture. As Douglas Rivelin has said, “Immigrants come and change America and are changed by America”. From the very start of our nation, immigrants have flooded in from different countries in search for a better life in America, taking bits and pieces of their home country with them. This then results in a heterogeneous society of different cultures becoming more homogenous by adapting to
Open Document