A Melting Pot no more…

While few Americans would not recognize his name Mr. Israel Zangwill  most  are familiar with his work without even knowing it. Zangwill who was an author and playwright in the early twentieth century who popularized the metaphorical phrase the “melting pot” to describe America’s assimilation of immigrants. Zangwill  was known in his time as the “Dickens of the Ghetto” and often wrote about the immigrant experience and other oppressed groups at a time when writers such as Upton Sinclair and other Muckrakers wrote about the abuse of workers in America’s factories.  

In the 1908 play The Melting Pot he wrote about a Russian Jewish immigrant family where the main character’s mother and sister were killed as a result of ethnic earning in the old world. The protagonist  hoped for a society free from ethnic divisions, and a refuge for all those suffering persecution for political or religious beliefs. Zangwill wrote, “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming… Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.”

Well fast forward one hundred years and the concept of America as a melting pot appears not only to be passé but derisively shunned by many ethnic and religious groups who would prefer to identify with their country of origin rather than embrace and contribute their unique culture to the larger “pot” which seeks to build a common culture with the shared values and identities of those who reside within our boundaries.

I find it perplexing that those who were recently protesting the enforcement of immigration laws and statutes chose to proudly fly the flag of another country vice the flag of the nation to which they immigrated while at the same time some I suspect were taking advantage of our more than generous social service program. What is even more frightening is looking at what has taken place in Europe where many of those who have immigrated have openly stated they have no tolerance for the religion of the residents of their new ”home” and have openly stated their goal is to impose their laws, religion, and customs on the citizens of their host nation. Think it can not happen here, well think again …

Where we once shared a uniquely American culture and values, we appear now headed down the path towards a fragmented nation balkanization which I saw while on active duty in both Serbia and Rwanda where the ugly results of ethnic cleansing were on full display. Neighbors were executed or were dismembered simply because their religion or culture did not coincide with those of the around them.

As the nursery rhyme goes “When Humpty Dumpy fell off the wall all of the King’s men and horses could not put him back together again.” Let’s hope that we never reach that point as a nation, but my reading of the tea leaves through history tells me otherwise.