By Emi Gruender
This land is your land,
This land is my land…
…This land was made for you and me.
“The Great American Melting Pot” has remained the affectionate nickname for the monolith USA since its founding, and even still rings true today. One of the most diverse nations in the world, the United States is home to 370+ independent religions, 1,500 ethnicities and nationalities, and over 400 languages. With recent controversy debating whether or not immigrants have a positive impact on America as a nation, xenophobia has been prodded into the spotlight once again. Do our differences make us stronger? Or does our diversity make us disunified and weak? Should America be more homogenous or heterogeneous?
Since the very dawn of this nation, America was built upon a diverse foundation of ethnicity, nationality, language. Within the pantheon of our Founding Fathers, for example, a significant portion were immigrants, such as Alexander Hamilton. For many immigrants, the opportunity to “pull oneself up by their bootstraps,” regardless of station in life or personal identity, was the main reason they decided to immigrate. As a result, ethnic enclaves formed in little communities all around urban areas: such as Little Saigon in San Jose (home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam) or Mulberry Street in New York (home to a historic Italian community). While some may argue that these small communities—these ethnic enclaves—-discourage assimilation into a larger American society by allowing “ethnic immigrants” to continue their way of life in America, the lines drawn are not so clean-cut.
In the San Jose Bay Area alone, restaurants of all different origins pepper the streets. Korean bibimbap neighbors rows of Mexican food trucks, Mediterranean stalls, and good old American food alike. Some restaurants, like the Latin-Asian-Fusion Kitchen, reflect the highly diverse ethnic makeup of San Jose in their cuisine, too.
Since the 1960s, the amount of interracial marriages in America have exploded, too. According to brookings.edu, the percentage of interracial marriage stagnated around 0.4% in 1960, until it exploded to a whopping 15% today. In tandem, the amount of interracial citizens has increased 276%: in the Bay Area, even greater. (17%)
Instead of “weakening” the American identity, the multicultural “melting pot” with several distinct flavors serves to increase xeno-tolerance. Personally, as a Vietnamese-German fusion, I am very aware of my existence being due to the growing diversity of the USA. Instead of choosing one ethnicity over the other, I serve as a living bridge between the two cultures which never may have rubbed shoulders. And perhaps that’s what makes America so strong to begin with: our robust combination of flavors like nowhere else in the world.