I walked by a lovely cathedral in Milwaukee and then another of the same faith one block away. Then I noticed someone I knew and asked her what gives. She pointed out that the two cathedrals were built by people divided by their ethnic groups. How far have we traveled! These days we happily rub shoulders with people from all different backgrounds.
The melting pot started with the beginnings of our country. The Frenchman Hector St. John de Crevecouer wrote in 1782 that immigrants wanted to become Americanized and “melted” into Americans. In a 1909 novel, Israel Zangwill wrote “Into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.” And indeed the melting pot is how we created America and Americans. We are all products of that pot. It was the melting pot that made this a great country, rising above the petty jealousies and foolish fights of the Old World.
We invented the public school as the common school where we all went, mixed, learned and made friends. We work together, laugh together and we've made America great together. We've made America great together because all our ancestors have contributed to the extent of their skills, character and sometimes their genius. We've benefitted from everyone.
And we're safer because of it.
At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Americans focused on Americanizing the hordes of immigrants arriving on our shores. What did they do? They used the common public schools. And the corporations and the military played a part. They had soldiers and workers who didn't speak the same language, share the same customs or celebrate the same holidays. Greeks celebrated Christmas but they did it weeks later which created problems for the factories. Business and the military created Americanization classes and some held a ceremony with a huge pot – the immigrants walked in on one side. On the other, out came the Americans!
The military tried separate units by language but by World War I they put people together in the same tents. Soldiers coming home from the two world wars fixed each other up with their sisters and cousins. Suddenly the melting pot went national.
Many of us fought for integrated schools because we know it makes America stronger, makes our kids stronger and safer. We still fight for integrated schools and communities. But we have just lived through a campaign about divisions, denigrating people for where they came from and how they pray. We have spent eight years watching the most vicious refusal to cooperate with one of the most decent men to occupy the White House on Pennsylvania Ave. because he had an African father.
With Thanksgiving in a couple of days it’s worth stopping to remember that the melting pot is well worth a celebration, well worth giving thanks for, for ourselves and for our country. And it’s worth stirring too.
Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran. Steve maintains a blog: constitutionalismanddemocracy.wordpress.com
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.