American melting pot

             The American melting pot
             Melting Pot describes a model of ethnic relations in which a nation-state's constituent ethnic groups engage in a process of reciprocal fusion. This can take either of two forms: 1) all ethnic groups acculturate to a universalistic set of values and symbols with no ancestral connotations, or:
             2) there is two-way influence between ethnic groups in the society such that no ancestral group achieves symbolic dominance.
             In structural terms, the American melting pot certainly did not come to fruition until the decade of the 1960's, when the immigration quota system was removed, African-
             Americans achieved civil rights, electoral districts were reapportioned and Anglo conformity subsided. Since then, progress towards a melting pot in the United States has been rapid: inter-ethnic marriage has become a national norm (except with respect to African-Americans and some Asian and Hispanic groups), and most ethnic groups have achieved socioeconomic parity with British Americans. (Battistella 1989: 134-140)
             The demographic data on inter-ethnic marriage has also breathed new life into melting-pot ideology since the 1960's, particularly among American neoconservatives, but also among liberals opposed to multiculturalism in education, government and the universities. (Salins 1997, Fukuyama 1995: 320, Schlesinger 1991, Sollors 1986,
             This is not to say that the melting pot is the dominant ideological or heuristic paradigm in the United States. Political opponents of the idea, whether of the neonativist right or communitarian left, are especially scathing in denouncing the abstract, cultureless society that the concept may bring forth. (Novak 1972; Bellah 1985; Brimelow 1995)
             Scholarly critiques, meanwhile, have tended to emphasize resistance to the melting pot from ethnic elites and social movements. They also point out that intermarriage does not necess
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American melting pot. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 13:46, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/16864.html