From Melting Pot to Cultural Pluralism

To completely describe Americans in terms of culture requires a carefully constructed and open-ended definition that integrates and qualifies the terms “melting pot” and “cultural pluralism”. While both terms describe the people who either immigrated or were born into cultural subsets within the large country, neither can adequately describe the country's culture on its own.

Melting Pot - Longwood.edu

The term “melting pot” is used to describe the idea that immigrated persons are automatically American simply by adopting the freedoms and rights of the Constitution of the United States. Each immigrant now pursues happiness while being legally protected from racism, sexism, agism, and religious persecution. All flavors of religion, race, and cultural identity are absorbed into the term American much as many colors of wax crayons are melted together to form one mass of multicolored wax. However, like describing the blended colors of melted crayons by the predominate hue, constraining American culture to the “melting pot” definition strips the immigrant groups of their individuality.

The term “cultural pluralism” describes those persons who, though mixed in the melting pot of America, retain their cultural or religious individuality. They are American but they are also African, or Jewish, or Hawaiian, or Sikh. While this may better describe Americans by embodying the dual nature of the young country composed of so many immigrant groups, it could be argued that it detracts from the “American identity” by forming clearly defined borders between the cultural, religious, or racial groups.

In order to completely define America and the people who choose to live there one must use at least both of these terms. People of diverse backgrounds live together under the shared promise of personal freedom protecting their pursuit of happiness, and can define themselves by both their ancestors and their culturally dissimilar neighbors. American culture is best defined as a melting pot for cultural pluralism.  

1. Nurmi, Amanda. "English Only: A Contradiction." Published 2012 April 19, Language & Identity: Spain & Greece 2011. Accessed 2012 Nov 17. [http://blogs.longwood.edu/spain2011/2012/04/19/english-only-a-contradiction/]
2. Sadker, David Miller. Teachers, Schools, and Society, 2010. Page 151.