Spaces and exchanges: melting pot.

Spaces and exchanges

A melting pot is the perfect assimilation for an immigrated people, as for the salad bowl, it is a concept of multiculturalism. Should we talk about a “melting pot” or a “salad bowl” ?

We will answer this question in two paragraphs, the first will deal with the idea of a perfect assimilation of immigrants and the second with the notion of the salad bowl.

I/The Melting Pot

A/ American Values

→ Freedom is the keyword in the USA

→ American values can be recap in the american seal: THE BALD EAGLE. The seal is omnipresent in the american life: EX: The first dollar bill, american passport, military uniforms, postage stamps.

→ In the american seal we can see the american motto: “Out of many one”: it defines well the ethnic mix: people have to be all the same, in the castle in the mould.

B/ The immigrants were selected

The selection has changed, but the criteria demanded that people are close to the american values and that they can talk english.

The selection was difficult so, we can guess that the people chosen fitted well to America. EX: answer to questions in an interview, and must do a medical examination.

Nowadays, There are some reading and writing test in English, knowledge of the principles and history of the USA, so it's been more complicated now: people fit really well to the american society.

TRANSITION: AS if lots of great stories are told, bad ones exist and the integration is not always accomplished.

II/ Salad bowl

A/ Reason of immigration 

First of all, people who immigrated have lot of reasons to. Thus, each culture keeps its own distcinct qualities:

→ There were black people were descendant of slaves.

→ The Irish immigration because of the potato famine and starvation.

→ Italians crossed Atlantic to flee poverty and violence

→ Finally, we attended Jewish and Chinese immigration for progroms and antisemitism

All these examples show that people who immigrated were really different.

B/ Ethnic fighting

→ The difficult entrance for asian people: Angel Island in the Pacific saw nearly a million of asian people, but because of the exclusion act of Chinese people, a lot of Chinese people had to stay for years in the island

→ Black people exclusion: 2015: Some Policemen killed black students, in Charleston for example, but it's not the only one. Ex: West Side Story

C/ Communitarianism

As a result, NYC became a multicultural city and districts have been developed by communities: one for white people (Wasp's)/ hispanic and latinos/black people/Asian (China Town)/Italians(Little Italy)/ Jewish (Jew York)

So various american cultures were juxtaposed but didn't merged into a single homogeneous culture.

CONCLUSION:

The USA is traditionally called a melting pot because, with time, generations of immigrants have melted together: they have abandoned their cultures to become a totally assimilated into American society. However, managing cultural diversity is not always easy, some communities are still discriminated or are prejudiced (For instance Black people or the muslims)

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