In class today we discussed the idea of presenting America as a Salad Bowl rather than a Melting Pot. In the Salad Bowl the different "flavors" of American all mix together to create something unique and something to celebrate. A Melting Pot rather melts everything down to the same (boring) kind of culture...maybe it's supposed to create a new kind of culture, but I think the class mostly agreed that the dominant groups in our culture would rather have just squelched the others to make a larger dominant group that agrees with its own values, culture, language, etc. I've always thought of the proverbial Melting Pot as more of a laundry bin where "clothing" of all different colors (cultures) is tossed in, bleached, starched, and returned to the pile where all are neatly matched and agreeable. I think perhaps the reason it is so difficult to choose between the two is because neither are correct. The Melting Pot doesn't exist because the larger dominant group is too concerned with pretending to uphold the myth that they celebrate a diverse America, when the one they want is a bland, one note, everybody-agrees-on-everything kind of America. The Salad Bowl isn't quite the complete story either (it would be if we didn't have the kind of ethnic and racial struggles we've discussed in class). Of course we have a whole lot of diversity to be celebrated in our country, but we can't just leave it at that. What about all of the action (both legal and otherwise) that has been taken to try to stomp out the cultural aspects of certain groups in order to make way for larger numbers in the dominant group? We can't leave out things such as European missionaries whose tactics were, let's say, less than Christian. And we can't exclude the dehumanization and attempted culture-robbing committed against African slaves. American Indian Boarding Schools are a perfect example of the American government attempting to remove culture, language, and familial bonds from Indians in order to "kill the Indian, save the man." The question is, how do we get school kids to learn a proper representation of history without making them run out of the room crying? How to we teach them about racial oppression, discrimination, prejudice, and general struggle while still preserving their innocence and excitement for learning? Feel-good history is far from the truth, but it's what keeps kids excited to participate in their President of the United States pageants and proud of their country.
I remember watching Schoolhouse Rock videos in elementary and even junior high school. Those videos are the perfect representation of what our country hasn't been, but what kids have been taught to believe it is. Who is going to feel comfortable telling 4th grader that their hero Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and participated in one of the largest atrocities against humankind in our world's history? I'm not saying I have the answer--I definitely don't. But history is full of emotion. When we learn about the slave trade, or Japanese internment camps, or Indian Boarding Schools, we learn about the pain that these people went through. You can't learn these things without investing some kind of emotion in them--and they aren't happy emotions. When we emerge from our little cocoon of elementary through high school and moved on to college history courses, we learned more about the "real" history of our country. Some of us felt angry, tricked, lied to, or just plain disappointed. But that's because the true history isn't a pretty one for the most part. It's ugly. And we have to figure out how to teach our children the truth, while fostering a respect for diversity as well as a desire to learn more about our history and how we can use its lessons to reshape our society.
Here's the Great American Melting Pot Schoolhouse Rock Video:
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