ME YOU &

US
TABLE of
table OF
CONTENTS
contents
Introduction

Chapter 1
up or out
melting pot
beyond the melting pot
cultural pluralism
rainbow coalition
across the ideological spectrum
not a single event but a process

Chapter 2
Korean immigrant Interviews
Korean American Interviews
infography

Conclusion
I NTRODUCTI ON
The history of the melting pot theory can be traced back to
1782 when J. Hector de Crevecoeur, a French settler in New
York, envisioned the United States not only as land of op-
portunity but as a society where individuals of all nations are
melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity
will one day cause changes in the world (Parrillo, 1997). The
new nation welcomed virtually all immigrants from Europe in
the belief that the United States would
CHAPTER 11
chapter
UP OR OUT
“up” to native cultural standards,
or “out” of the charmed circle
of the national culture.
 “Others argue that
the melting pot policy did
not achieve
its declared target.”

Most Americans, both those who favor and those who oppose
assimilation, believe that for immigrants to assimilate, they
must abandon their original cultural attributes and conform
entirely to the behaviors and customs of the majority of the
native-born population. In the terminology of the armed forc-
es, this represents a model of “up or out”: Either immigrants
bring themselves “up” to native cultural standards, or they are
doomed to live “out” of the charmed circle of the national cul-
ture.
Here is the example of Israel on that kind of assimilation. In
the early years of the state of Israel the term melting pot, also
known as “Ingathering of the Exiles”, was not a description of
a process, but an official governmental doctrine of assimilat-
ing the Jewish immigrants that originally came from varying
cultures. This was performed on several levels, such as educat-
ing the younger generation, with the parents not having the
final say, and, to mention an anecdotal one, encouraging and
sometimes forcing the new citizens to adopt a Hebrew name.
Activists such as the Iraq-born Ella Shohat that an elite which
developed in the early 20th Century, out of the earlier-arrived
Zionist Pioneers of the Second and Third Aliyas, immigration
waves, and who gained a dominant position in the Yishuv,
pre-state community, since the 1930s, had formulated a new
Hebrew culture, based on the values of Socialist Zionism, and
imposed it on all later arrivals, at the cost of suporessing and
erasing these later immigrants’ original culture.
Proponents of the Melting Pot policy asserted that it applied
to all newcomers to Israel equally; specifically, that Eastern Eu-
ropean Jews were pressured to discard their Yiddish-based
culture as ruthlessly as Mizrahi Jews were pressured to give
up the culture which they developed during centuries of life
in Arab and Muslim countries. Critics respond, however, that a
cultural change effected by a struggle within the Ashkenazi-
East European community, with younger people voluntarily
discarding their ancestral culture and formulating a new one, is
not parallel to the subsequent exporting and imposing of this
new culture on others, who had no part in formulating it. Also,
it was asserted that extirpating the Yiddish culture had been in
itself an act of oppression only compounding what was done
to the Mizrahi immigrants.
Today the reaction to this doctrine is ambivalent; some say
that it was a necessary measure in the founding years, while
others claim that it amounted to cultural oppression. Others
argue that the melting pot policy did not achieve its declared
target: for example, the persons born in Israel are more similar
from an economic point of view to their parents than to the
rest of the population. The policy is generally not practised
today though as there is less need for that - the mass immi-
gration waves at Israel’s founding have declined. Nevertheless,
one fifth of current Israel’s Jewish population have immigrated
from former Soviet Union in the last two decades; The Jewish
population includes other minorities such as Haredi Jews; Fur-
thermore, 20% of Israel’s population is Arab. These factors as
well as others contribute to the rise of pluralism as a common
principle in the last years.
And here is also an interesting case of the politics of identity in
post-independence Latvia. There has been a spectrum of re-
sponses to the presence of Russians in the Newly Independent
States of Eurasia, from polite disinterest to seething animos-
ity. In the Baltics, Estonia and Latvia in particular, nationalizing
states disenfranchised a large number of Russians and other
non-indigenous nationalities. In order to meet the stringent
citizenship requirements, Russians and other non-titulars had
to meet historical residency requirements (typically requir-
ing an individual or his or her forebears to have been living in
the state prior to Soviet annexation in 1940), prove language
proficiency, make loyalty oaths, and satisfy other benchmarks.
Many have been unable or unwilling to meet these metrics
(which are not required of titulars). In the case of Estonia, the
Law on Aliens (1993) went beyond simple disenfranchisement
and implied that Russians and other non-citizens (Jews, Tatars,
etc.) may be subject to expulsion in the future.
As a result of this denial of citizenship, the Russian com-
munity complains of loss of jobs (e.g., pharmacists, lawyers,
firemen, doctors, policemen and elected politicians are no
longer careers open to non-citizens regardless of talent or
experience), complications traveling abroad, attempts at
forcible assimilation and other calculated policies intended
to provoke people into emigrating. Thus many Russians,
who form majorities in many areas of these states (upwards
of 95 percent in some localities), are now stateless people
without the ability to vote for their leaders or run for office,
and whose guarantee of basic human rights within their
state of residence remain tenuous. Latvia and Estonia de-
fend the actions taken against their minority communities
as an appropriate response to illegal migration conducted
under the aegis of the occupying Soviet Army.
MELTI NG POT
“Here shall they all unite to build
the Republic of Man
and the Kingdom of God.”
In America, however, assimilation has not meant repudiating immigrant culture.
Assimilation, American style has always been much more flexible and accom-
modating and, consequently, much more effective in achieving its purpose—to
allow the United States to preserve its “national unity in the face of the influx of
hordes of persons of scores of different nationalities,” in the words of the sociolo-
gist Henry Fairchild.

A popular way of getting hold of the assimilation idea has been to use a metaphor,
and by far the most popular metaphor has been that of the “melting pot,” a term
introduced in Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play of that name: “There she lies, the great
Melting-Pot—Listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling?...Ah, what a
stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, black
and yellow...Jew and Gentile....East and West, and North and South, the palm and
the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross—
how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purify-
ing flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man
and the Kingdom of God.”
The term melting pot refers to the idea that societies formed
by immigrant cultures, religions, end ethnic groups, will pro-
duce new hybrid social and cultural forms. The notion comes
to be joined after the Civil War by streams of Scandinavians
and then groups from eastern and southern Europe as well as
small numbers from the Middle East, China, and Japan. Before
The theory of melting pot
has been criticised
the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the American public gen-
erally took it for granted that the constant flow of newcomers
from abroad, mainly Europe, brought strength and prosperity
to the country. The metaphor of the “melting pot” symbolized
the mystical potency of the great democracy, whereby people

from the pot in which metals are melted at great heat, melding
together into new compound, with great strength and other
combined advantages. In comparison with assimilation, it im-
plies the ability of new or subordinate groups to affect the val-
both as unrealistic
from every corner of the earth were fused into a harmonious
and admirable blend. A decline in immigration from north-
western Europe and concerns over the problems of assimilat-
ing so many people from other areas prompted the passage in

and racist.
ues of the dominant group. Sometimes it is referred to as amal- the 1920’s legislation restricting immigration, one of the mea-
gamation, in the opposition to both assimilation and pluralism. sures reflecting official racism.

Although the term melting pot may be applied to many coun-
tries in the world, such as Brazil, Bangladesh or even France,
mostly referring to increased level of mixed race and culture, it
is predominantly used with reference to USA and creation of
the American nation, as a distinct “new breed of people” amal-
gamated from many various groups of immigrants. As such it
is closely linked to the process of Americanisation. The theory
of melting pot has been criticised both as unrealistic and rac-
ist, because it focused on the Western heritage and excluded
non-European immigrants. Also, despite its proclaimed “melt-
ing” character its results have been assimilationist.
The history of the melting pot theory can be traced back to
1782 when J. Hector de Crevecoeur, a French settler in New
York, envisioned the United States not only as land of opportu-
nity but as a society where individuals of all nations are melted
into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one
day cause changes in the world (Parrillo, 1997). The new nation
welcomed virtually all immigrants from Europe in the belief
that the United States would become, at least for whites, the
“melting pot” of the world. This idea was adopted by the histo-
rian Frederick Jackson Turner (1893) who updated it with the
frontier thesis. Turner believed that the challenge of frontier
life was the country´s most crucial force, allowing Europeans
to be “Americanised” by the wilderness (Takaki, 1993). A ma-
jor influx of immigrants occurred mainly after the 1830s, when
large numbers of British, Irish, and Germans began entering,
The melting pot reality was limited only to intermixing between Eu-
ropeans with a strong emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon culture while
the input of minority cultures was only minor. Non-white Americans
were for centuries not regarded by most white Americans as equal
citizens and suitable marriage partners.
The mixing of whites and blacks, resulting in multiracial children, for
which the term “miscegenation” was coined in 1863, was a taboo,
and most whites opposed marriages between whites and blacks. In
many states, marriage between whites and non-whites was even
prohibited by state law through anti-miscegenation laws.
Did therefore Non-white Americans not fit into melting pot
discourses at all. Intermarriage between Anglo-Americans and
white immigrant groups was acceptable as part of the melt-
ing pot narrative. But when the term was first popularized in
the early twentieth century, most whites did not want to ac-
cept non-whites, and especially African-Americans, as equal
citizens in America’s melting pot society. Native Americans in
the United States enrolled in tribes did not have US citizenship
until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and were subjected to
government policies of enforced cultural assimilation, which
was termed “Americanization.”
Since the Second World War, the idea of the melting pot has
become racially inclusive in the United States, gradually ex-
tending also to acceptance of marriage between whites and
non-whites. This trend towards greater acceptance of ethnic
and racial “minorities” by “WASPs” (Anglo-Americans and
other, mainly Protestant Americans of Northern European de-
scent) was first evident in popular culture.
Since the successes of the American Civil Rights Movement
and the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act
of 1965, which allowed for a massive increase in immigration
from Latin America and Asia, intermarriage between white
and non-white Americans has been increasing. The taboo on
marriage between whites and African Americans also appears
to be fading. In 2000, the rate of black-white marriage was
greater than the rate of Jewish-Gentile marriage (between
Jewish Americans and other whites) in 1940.
BEYOND THE
MELTI NG POT
“The point about the
melting pot...
is that it did not happen.”
Critics of the metaphor have spanned the ideological spectrum and mounted
several different lines of attack on it. Empiricists submitted evidence that the
melting pot wasn’t working as predicted and concluded, as did Nathan Glazer
and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in Beyond the Melting Pot (1963), “The point about
the melting pot...is that it did not happen.” Other critics rejected the second
corollary of the metaphor—that natives were changed by it, too—and saw no
reason that native Americans should give up any part of their cultural attributes
to “melt” into the alloy. If true assimilation were to occur, the criticism went,
immigrants would have to abandon all their cultural baggage and conform to
American ways. It is the immigrant, said Fairchild, representing the views of
many Americans, “who must undergo the entire transformation; the true mem-
ber of the American nationality is not called upon to change in the least.”

The concept of
melting pot should also
entail mixing of
various races, not only cultures.
A third strain of criticism was first voiced by sociologist Horace
Kallen in the early part of this century. Among the most prolific
American scholars of ethnicity, Kallen argued that it was not
only unrealistic but cruel and harmful to force new immigrants
to shed their familiar, lifelong cultural attributes as the price of
admission to American society. In place of the melting pot, he
called for “cultural pluralism.” In Kallen’s words, national policy
should “seek to provide conditions under which each [group]
might attain the cultural perfection that is proper to its kind.”
One of the early critiques of the melting pot idea was Louis
Adamic, novelist and journalist who wrote about the experi-
ence of American immigrants in the early 1900s and about
what he called the failure of the American melting pot in
Laughing in the Jungle (1932). Both the frontier thesis and
the melting pot concept have been criticised as idealistic and
racist as they completely excluded non-European immigrants,
often also East and South Europeans. The melting pot real-
ity was limited only to intermixing between Europeans with a
strong emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon culture while the input of
minority cultures was only minor. Some theorists developed
a theory of the triple melting pot arguing that intermarriage
was occurring between various nationalities but only within
the three major religious groupings: Protestant, Catholic, and
Jewish. Milton Gordon and Henry Pratt Fairchild proposed the
assimilation theory as an alternative to the melting pot one
(Parrillo, 1997).
Many current proponents of the melting pot are inspired by
the “English only” movement with exclusive emphasis on
Western heritage and argument against pluralism and accom-
modation and related policies, such as bilingual education.
Ideally the concept of melting pot should also entail mixing of
various “races”, not only “cultures”. While promoting the mix-
ing of cultures the ultimate result of the American variant of
melting pot happened to be the culture of white Anglo Saxon
men with minimum impact of other minority cultures. More-
over, the assumption that culture is a fixed construct is flawed.
Culture should be defined more broadly as the way one ap-
proaches life and makes sense of it. Group’s beliefs are deter-
mined by conditions and so culture is a continuous process
of change and its boundaries are always porous. In a racist
discourse, however the culture needs to be seen as a prede-
termined and rigid phenomenon that would be appropriate for
replacing the no longer acceptable concept of race in order to
perpetuate inequalities. Many multicultural initiatives aiming at
integration/ inclusion of minorities, while following the melting
pot ideal, often result in assimilationist and racist outcomes.
Melting pot would assume learning about other cultures in
order to enhance understanding, mixing, and mutual enrich-
ment; in practice it often tends to ignore similarities of differ-
ent “races” as it does not allow to include them.
CULTURAL
PLURA LI SM
Immigrants to the U.S. should
not “melt” into a common
national ethnic alloy.
Cultural pluralism rejects melting-pot assimilationism not on empirical
grounds, but on ideological ones. Kallen and his followers believed that immi-
grants to the United States should not “melt” into a common national ethnic al-
loy but, rather, should steadfastly hang on to their cultural ethnicity and band
together for social and political purposes even after generations of residence
in the United States. As such, cultural pluralism is not an alternative theory of
assimilation; it is a theory opposed to assimilation.

Cultural pluralism is, in fact, the philosophical antecedent of modern multi-

BEYOND THE
culturalism—what I call “ethnic federalism”: official recognition of distinct, es-
sentially fixed ethnic groups and the doling out of resources based on mem-
bership in an ethnic group. Ethnic federalism explicitly rejects the notion of a
transcendent American identity, the old idea that out of ethnic diversity there
would emerge a single, culturally unified people. Instead, the United States is
to be viewed as a vast ethnic federation—Canada’s Anglo-French arrange-
ment, raised to the nth power. Viewing ethnic Americans as members of a fed-
eration rather than a union, ethnic federalism, a.k.a. multiculturalism, asserts
that ethnic Americans have the right to proportional representation in matters
of power and privilege, the right to demand that their “native” culture and pu-
tative ethnic ancestors be accorded recognition and respect, and the right to
function in their “native” language (even if it is not the language of their birth
or they never learned to speak it), not just at home but in the public realm.

Ethnic federalism is at all times an ideology of ethnic grievance and inevitably

leads to and justifies ethnic conflict. All the nations that have ever embraced
it, from Yugoslavia to Lebanon, from Belgium to Canada, have had to live with
perpetual ethnic discord.

Kallen’s views, however, stop significantly short of contempo-
rary multiculturalism in their demands on the larger “native”
American society. For Kallen, cultural pluralism was a defen-
sive strategy for “unassimilable” immigrant ethnic groups that
required no accommodation by the larger society. Contem-
porary multiculturalists, on the other hand, by making cultural
pluralism the basis of ethnic federalism, demand certain ethnic
rights and concessions. By emphasizing the failure of assimila-
tion, multiculturalists hope to provide intellectual and political
support for their policies.
The pluralistic defense of cultural diversity typical of Vico,
Herder, and James has grown more powerful in the modern
world as ethnic and racial groups within multiethnic societies
have increasingly sought to exercise political power and re-
tain their cultural heritage in the face of demands for cultural
conformity. In the United States the pragmatists Horace Meyer
Kallen (1882–1974) and Randolph Silliman Bourne (1886–1918)
supplied a spirited defense of diversity during World War I. Al-
though the American political tradition of classical liberalism
championed individual rights, it failed to extend those rights
to include the right to be culturally different. Liberal rights had
wrongly assumed “that men are men merely, as like as marbles
and destined under uniformity of conditions to uniformity of
spirit,” Kallen wrote in “Democracy versus the Melting Pot” (p.
193). The right to cultural identity was essential to selfhood,
however, and Kallen called for a “Federal republic,” a “democ-
racy of nationalities, cooperating voluntarily and autonomous-
ly in the enterprise of self-realization through the perfection of
men according to their kind” (p. 220).
Similarly Bourne’s 1916 essay “Transnational America” remind-
ed dominant Anglo-Saxons that even the early colonists “did
not come to be assimilated in an American melting-pot. They
did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian” (p.
249). Bourne also called for a “cosmopolitan federation of na-
tional colonies” within which ethnic groups “merge but they
do not fuse” (pp. 258, 255). Thus an immigrant would be both
a Serb and an American or both a German and an American ,
for example, as difference harmonized with common ground.
Although both men challenged what was taken by most Ang-
lo-Saxons to be the absolute truth regarding what it meant to
be an American, Bourne went well beyond Kallen’s demand
for freedom defined simply as a private right to be different.
Influenced by the Enlightenment, Kallen assigned ethnicity to
private life while he placed the public world in the hands of
technical experts. Bourne, on the other hand, urged a nation-
al collaboration in the construction of a new national culture
by all racial and ethnic groups in terms reminiscent of Herder.
Contrarily then, Bourne’s freedom meant “a democratic coop-
eration in determining the ideals and purposes and industrial
“Life can be see
through many windows,
none of them clear or
opaque, less or more
distorting than the others.”
and social institutions of a country” (p. 252). Thus while Kal-
len’s vision served to strengthen the dominance of experts in
the public sphere of work and politics, Bourne called for a “Be-
loved Community” that placed democratic participation and
a discussion of values at the very center of public life (p. 264).
Animated by these somewhat contradictory ideals, cultural
pluralism constituted a protean movement in the first half of
the twentieth century in the United States. Particularly impor-
tant achievements include the efforts of John Collier (1884–
1968) as commissioner of Indian Affairs during the administra-
tion of Franklin Roosevelt to overturn the U.S. government’s
policy of assimilation of the American Indian. Due to Collier’s
efforts, Native Americans regained the right to their cultures,
lands, and tribal political institutions after decades of denial.
The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s also reflected the prin-
ciples of cultural pluralism. Alain Leroy Locke (1886–1954),
America’s first African-American Rhodes scholar and a former
student of William James, furnished the guiding vision of the
Renaissance and helped to achieve Bourne’s “beloved com-
munity.” Finding beauty within himself, through a rebirth of
black art, the “new Negro” would thereby achieve the moral
dignity suited to a “collaborator and participant in American
civilization” (Locke, 1925, p. 5). Langston Hughes, Zora Neale
Hurston, Claude Mackay, Jean Toomer, and others awakened
black pride and offered an aesthetically and spiritually barren
industrial capitalist America African-American wisdom and
beauty instead of the ashes of materialism.
During the second half of the twentieth century, cultural plural-
ist thought in the United States was increasingly eclipsed by
the lingering commitment of liberal intellectuals to the Marxist
notion of culture as mere superstructure or as determined by
the more fundamental struggle for power. Nevertheless, mi-
nority groups continue to struggle to achieve cultural democ-
racy in the early twenty-first century’s multicultural societies.
As the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, following Herder,
has argued, being true to oneself requires an acknowledgment
by both self and other of the indispensable role of culture in
the creation of identity. Because culture imparts those par-
ticular aspects—religion, language, traditions—that make an
individual or group unique, the forced assimilation of minori-
ties to the hegemonic standard of identity by a majority group
constitutes a form of oppression and violence of the spirit. This
recognition has led in turn to efforts to expand the political
theory of liberalism to include not only a defense of identical
universal rights but the right of groups to cultural differences
as well. Cultural pluralists therefore seek to supplant cultural
monism or absolutism with pluralism by reconciling commu-
nity with diversity in the modern world.
 RA INBOW
COA LI TION
“We are more than a melting pot;
we are a kaleidoscope.”
The multiculturalists’ rejection of the melting pot idea is seen
in the metaphors they propose in its place. Civil rights activ-
ist Jesse Jackson suggested that Americans are members of
a “rainbow coalition.” Former New York Mayor David Dinkins
saw his constituents constituting a “gorgeous mosaic.” Former
Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm characterized America’s
ethnic groups as being like ingredients in a “salad bowl.” Bar-
bara Jordan, recent chairperson of the U.S. Commission on
Immigration Reform, said: “We are more than a melting-pot;
we are a kaleidoscope.”
These counter-metaphors all share a common premise: that
ethnic groups in the United States may live side by side har-
moniously, but on two conditions that overturn both assump-
tions of the melting-pot metaphor. First, immigrants (and
black Americans) should never have to (or maybe should not
even want to) give up any of their original cultural attributes.
And second, there never can or will be a single unified national
identity that all Americans can relate to. These two principles
are the foundations of cultural pluralism, the antithesis of as-
similationism.
Multiculturalism is the acceptance or promotion of multiple
ethnic cultures, for practical reasons and/or for the sake of di-
versity and applied to the demographic make-up of a specific
Some countries have official policies of multiculturalism aimed
at promoting social cohesion by recognizing distinct groups
within a society and allowing those groups to celebrate and
maintain their cultures or cultural identities. Many critics of
deliberated, government-instituted policies believe they arti-
ficially perpetuate social divisions, damaging the social cohe-
sion of the nation-state.
However, proponents of multicultural programs argue that so-
cial cohesion has too often been achieved either by explicit
discrimination against cultural minority groups, for example,
laws that restrict the freedoms of certain groups, or by an im-
plicit discrimination which rejects other cultural forms as being
without value, for example, school programs that never teach
the historic and artistic contributions of minorities.
Critics of multiculturalism often charge multiculturalists with
practicing cultural relativism such as judging customs and
practices of other cultures in their contexts, often confusing
this with moral relativism (lack of an idea of right and wrong),
and they emphasize that not all cultural values and practices
must be held in equal regard in every given society. They warn
against special treatment that might violate the principal of
equality before the law, and emphasize that citizenship de-
notes an tacit agreement to abide by the laws, customs and
accepted value system of nation, especially in regards to those
who chose to emigrate from abroad to join their newly ad-
opted society.
Advocates of multiculturalism counter these objections by
claiming that 1) the issue is not cultural relativism but the white-
washing of history, i.e., that history has been written to play up
the contributions of the dominant group and to downplay the,
often significant, contributions of minority groups; 2) with re-
gards to cultural/artistic contributions, the claim that minority
culture is inferior is often based less on aesthetic quality than
on politically-motivated criteria; 3) the issue is often not legal
equality but simply recognition that minorities do exist in the
culture; and 4) many minority groups did not immigrate but
were either imported or previously living on the land.
Criticism of multiculturalism often debates whether the multi-
cultural ideal of benignly co-existing cultures that interrelate
and influence one another, and yet remain distinct, is sustain-
able, paradoxical or even desirable. Nation states that, in the
case of many European nations, would previously have been
synonymous with a distinctive cultural identity of their own,
lose out to enforced multiculturalism and that this ultimately
erodes the host nations distinct culture.
Other critics argue that multiculturalism leads directly to re-
strictions in the rights and freedoms for certain groups and
that as such, it is bad for democracy, undemocratic and against
universal human rights. For instance, Susan Moller Okin wrote
about this question in her essay “Is Multiculturalism Bad for
Women?” (1999).
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam con-
ducted a nearly decade long study how multiculturalism af-
fects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American
communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for
class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a
community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse
communities “don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the
local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust
institutions,” writes Putnam.

proponents of multi-
place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, busi-
nesses, neighborhoods, cities or nations. In this context, mul-
ticulturalists advocate extending equitable status to distinct
ethnic and religious groups without promoting any specific
ethnic, religious, and/or cultural community values as central.
cultural programs often
charge multiculturalists
with practicing
cultural relativism.
ACROS S THE
While all these metaphors—including the melting pot—are col-
orful ways of representing assimilation, they don’t go far in giv-
ing one an accurate understanding of what assimilation is re-
ally about. For example, across the ideological spectrum, they
all invoke some external, impersonal assimilating agent. Who,
exactly, is the “great alchemist” of the melting pot? What force
IDEOLOGI CAL
tosses the salad or pieces together the mosaic? By picturing
assimilation as an impersonal, automatic process and thus
placing it beyond analysis, the metaphors fail to illuminate its
most important secrets. Assimilation, if it is to succeed, must
be a voluntary process, by both the assimilating immigrants
SPECTRUM
and the assimilated-to natives. Assimilation is a human accom-
modation, not a mechanical production.
The metaphors also mislead as to the purposes of assimilation.
The melting pot is supposed to turn out an undifferentiated
alloy—a uniform, ethnically neutral, American protoperson.
By being compelling, idealistic,
Critics have long pointed out that this idea is far-fetched. But
is it even desirable? And if it is desirable, does it really foster
a shared national identity? The greatest failing of the melting-
the melting-pot idea has helped
pot metaphor is that it overreaches. It exaggerates the degree
to which immigrants’ ethnicity is likely to be extinguished by
to discredit
exposure to American society and it exaggerates the need to
extinguish ethnicity. By being too compelling, too idealistic,
the melting-pot idea has inadvertently helped to discredit the
the assimilation paradigm.
very assimilation paradigm it was meant to celebrate.
On the other hand, behind their unexceptionable blandness,
the antithetical cultural pluralist metaphors are profoundly in-
sidious. By suggesting that the product of assimilation is mere
ethnic coexistence without integration, they undermine the
objectives of assimilation, even if they appear more realistic.
Is assimilation only about diverse ethnic groups sharing the
same national space? That much can be said for any multieth-
nic society. If the ethnic greens of the salad or the fragments
of the mosaic do not interact and identify with each other, no
meaningful assimilation is taking place.
Melting Pot came under fire when it became apparent that the
mainstream public had no intention of “melting” with certain
“other” races and cultures. Subsequently, American immigra-
tion policies became restrictive based on race, an example
of state sponsored racism intended towards reducing the di-
versity of the melting pot (Laubeová). Much has been written
about the so-called “myth” of the melting pot theory (Frey;
Booth). However, the metaphor has persisted and epitomizes
what some Americans see as an ideal model for this country.
The melting pot theory, also referred to as cultural assimilation,
revolves around the analogy that “the ingredients in the pot
(people of different cultures and religions) are combined so
as to lose their discrete identities and yield a final product of
uniform consistency and flavor, which is quite different from

the original inputs.” This idea differs from other analogies, par-
ticularly the salad bowl analogy where the ingredients are en-
couraged to retain their cultural identities, thus retaining their
“integrity and flavor” while contributing to a tasty and nutri-
tious salad. Yet another food analogy is that of the ethnic stew,
where there is a level of compromise between integration and
cultural distinctiveness.
What these food analogies have in common is an appreciation
that each of these ethnicities has something to contribute to
the society as a whole. By comparing ethnic and/or cultural
groups to ingredients in a recipe, we start with the assumption
that each ingredient is important and the final product would
not be the same if some distinct ingredient were missing. How-
ever, in the melting pot analogy, this premise is the least ap-
parent and can be criticized for its dismissively simplistic social
theories. This is one appropriate evaluation of the weaknesses
of the melting pot and the tossed salad analogies:
In the case of the melting pot the aim is that all cultures be-
come reflected in one common culture, however this is gen-
erally the culture of the dominant group - I thought this was
mixed vegetable soup but I can only taste tomato. In the case
of the salad bowl, cultural groups should exist separately and
maintain their practices and institutions, however, Where is the
dressing to cover it all?
This criticism that the melting pot produces a society that pri-
marily reflects the dominant culture instead of fusing into a
completely new entity is reiterated by other sociologists, an-
thropologists, and cultural geographers as “Anglo-conformity”
(Kivisto 151). This type of assimilation was seen as working like
a one-way street and it was viewed as something that depend-
ed primarily on the cooperativeness of immigrants to be reori-
ented towards the dominant culture. The idea that the domi-
nant culture would be infused with new energy through the
influences of ethnic groups retaining their distinctive cultural
attributes and thereby forging a new, stronger America due
to their divergent cultural contributions was not given much
weight by early researchers (Kivisto 152-154).
It should be noted in this discussion that earlier in American
sociology history, some of these terms took on distinctly dif-
ferent flavours. This ambiguity of terminology contributes to
confusion in the current discourse. For instance, in 1901, Sarah
Simons is quoted as making this conclusion with regards to as-
similation: In brief, the function of assimilation is the establish-
ment of homogeneity within the group; but this does not mean
that all variation shall be crushed out. In vital matters, such
as language, ideals of government, law, and education, uni-
formity shall prevail; in personal matters of religion and habits
of life, however, individuality shall be allowed free play. Thus,
the spread of “consciousness of kind” must be accompanied
by the spread of consciousness of individuality (qtd. in Kivsito
153).
Furthermore, according to Peter Kivisto’s interpretation of
Chicago School sociologist Robert E. Park’s writings on the
subject, theories on assimilation originally differed from the
melting pot fusion theory in that assimilation “signals the prolif-
eration of diversity. Rather than enforced conformity, it makes
possible a greater degree of individual autonomy” and creates
“a cultural climate that is predicated by pluralism” whereby this
“cultural pluralism (or multiculturalism) can coexist with assimi-
lation” (156-157). The idea that a multiethnic society could at-
tain an interdependent cohesion based on national solidarity
while maintaining distinct cultural histories not dependent on
like-minded homogeneity was thus proposed back in the early
1900’s (Kivisto 161).
However, it is vital to recognize that coercive assimilation the-
orists often do not support the idea that immigrants should
maintain distinct cultural attributes. In the modern-day discus-
sion, coercive assimilation theories often take on a decidedly
racist overtone (Laubeova), with many assimilation proponents
urging Americentric policies such as English-only education,
strict immigration policies, stipulations of nationalistic criteria
for citizenship, and eliminating programs aimed at helping mi-
norities (Booth; Hayworth). This issue over terminology and
social metaphors is vitally important because America stands
at a critical ideological turning point. Cultural geographers
describe our current society as experiencing a “multicultural
backlash” that will drastically affect immigration legislation
and ethnic studies and possibly lead us towards a more re-
strictive and intolerant nation (Mitchell 641). The current dis-
course about cultural assimilation seeks to relegate incongru-
ent cultural attributes to the private arena so as not to disturb
the dominant society (Mitchell 642), and instead of promoting
a tolerance of diversity, we see the modern-day assimilation
proponents urging strict deportation and increasingly restric-
tive immigration policies in order to protect socalled American
values (Hayworth). The stance of many coercive assimilation
proponents smacks of racist overtones and is based on ap-
prehension of “others” and exclusionary thinking more than it
is based on preservation of core values.
The implications of this type of proposed legislation drives fear
into minority groups seeking to preserve their cultural heri-
tage against a tide of Americentric propaganda. Ultimately,
those seeking to enact coercive assimilation policies threaten
to fracture the common ground of the American dream that
they claim to be focused on protecting. Minority groups are
nearing such numbers in this country that it is projected that
the word “minority” will soon become obsolete. Enacting ex-
clusionary policies will only fracture an already delicate social
framework and potentially further disenfranchise the very
groups America needs for inclusive unity.
“ signals the proliferation
of diversity. Rather than
enforced conformity,
it makes possible
a greater degree of
individual autonomy .”
On the other hand, multiculturalism has its own set of weak
points that need further evaluation and revision. The melt-
ing pot and the tossed salad metaphors are both inherently
flawed, at least sofar in their practical application. On this,
there are many social theorists who are writing about a com-
promise between the melting pot approach and the tossed
salad analogy. One such new theory is the aforementioned
“ethnic stew” from Laura Laubeova, who hopes that such an
analogy can help bridge the gap between the two concepts to
create “a sort of pan-Hungarian goulash where the pieces of
different kinds of meat still keep their solid structure.” Indeed,
some sort of compromise between full assimilation and multi-
culturalism will be necessary to retain our multiethnic flavour
while building a cohesive society.
The bottom line is that people are people, not food. Despite
the variety of food metaphors at our disposal, the power of
this rhetoric is limited and wears thin during pragmatic ap-
plication. Food metaphors can be useful, but we do not need
more vague metaphors that lead to interpretive disparities.
What we need is an entirely new dialogue on the subject, one
that completely and clearly redefines America’s objective for
a multiethnic society that allows for diversity, not just in the
private realm, but also in the public sphere. We do not need
a coercive assimilation program that reverts back to outdated
nationalistic paranoia. We need an inclusive working social
theory that unites the disparate enclaves of this society into
a manageable entity moving in the same collective direction.
Whether Americans will ever eventually be reformed into what
Israel Zangwill called “a fusion of all races” remains to be seen
(Zangwill). Right now, what America needs is a definitive social
direction that leans away from coercive assimilation dogma
and towards a truly inclusive national identity. True American
dreamers should not settle for anything less.
NOT A SINGLE EVENT
Perhaps a new assimilation metaphor should be introduced—one
that depends not on a mechanical process like the melting pot but
on human dynamics. Assimilation might be viewed as more akin to
religious conversion than anything else. In the terms of this metaphor,
the immigrant is the convert, American society is the religious order
EVENT BUT
being joined, and assimilation is the process by which the conversion
takes place. Just as there are many motives for people to immigrate,
so are there many motives for them to change their religion: spiri-
tual, practical (marrying a person of another faith), and materialistic
(joining some churches can lead to jobs or subsidized housing). But
A PROCESS
whatever the motivation, conversion usually involves the consistent
application of certain principles. Conversion is a mutual decision re-
quiring affirmation by both the convert and the religious order he or
she wishes to join. Converts are expected in most (but not all) cases
to renounce their old religions. But converts do not have to change
their behavior in any respects other than those that relate to the new
“long-term processes that
religion. They are expected only to believe in its theological principles,
observe its rituals and holidays, and live by its moral precepts. Be-
yond that, they can be rich or poor, practice any trade, pursue any
have whittled away
at the social foundations
of ethnic distinctions.”
avocational interests, and have any racial or other personal attri-
butes. Once they undergo conversion, they are eagerly welcomed into
the fellowship of believers. They have become part of “us” rather than
“them.” This is undoubtedly what writer G.K. Chesterton had in mind
when he said: “America is a nation with the soul of a church.”
In the end, however, no metaphor can do justice to the achievements
and principles of assimilation, American style. As numerous sociolo-
gists have shown, assimilation is not a single event, but a process.
In 1930 Robert Park observed, “Assimilation is the name given to the
process or processes by which peoples of diverse racial origins and
different cultural heritages, occupying a common territory, achieve a
cultural solidarity sufficient at least to sustain a national existence.”
More recently, Richard Alba defined assimilation as “long-term pro-
cesses that have whittled away at the social foundations of ethnic
distinctions.” But assimilation is more complex than that because it
is a process of numerous dimensions. Not all immigrants and ethnic
groups assimilate in exactly the same way or at the same speed.

First, and perhaps foremost, natives and immigrants must ac-
cord each other legitimacy. That is, each group must believe
the other has a legitimate right to be in the United States and
that its members are entitled to pursue, by all legal means,
their livelihood and happiness as they see fit. Second, immi-
grants must have competence to function effectively in Ameri-
can workplaces and in all the normal American social settings.
Immigrants are expected to seize economic opportunities and
to participate, at some level, in the social life of American so-
ciety, and natives must not get in their way. Third, immigrants
must be encouraged to exercise civic responsibility, minimally
by being law-abiding members of American society, respect-
ful of their fellow citizens, and optimally as active participants
in the political process. Fourth, and most essential, immigrants
must identify themselves as Americans, placing that identifi-
cation ahead of any associated with their birthplace or ethnic
homeland, and their willingness to do so must be reciprocated
by the warm embrace of native Americans.
Having immigrants identify
The speed and thoroughness with which individual immigrants
conform to these criteria vary, but each dimension is critical
and interdependent with the others. The absence of legitima-
as Americans is,
cy breeds ethnic conflict between natives and immigrants and
among members of different ethnic groups. The absence of
competence keeps immigrants from being economically and
of course, the whole point
socially integrated into the larger society and breeds alienation
among the immigrants and resentment of their dependence
among natives. The absence of civic responsibility keeps im-
of assimilation.
migrants from being involved in many crucial decisions that af-
fect their lives and further contributes to their alienation. Hav-
ing immigrants identify as Americans is, of course, the whole
point of assimilation, but such identification depends heavily
on the fulfillment of the other three criteria.
CHAPTER 22
chapter
 IMMIGRATION KOREA & THE U.S.
Who decided to immigrate? When did you and/or your family immigrate? Did you feel satisfied with your life in Korea? Did you expect better quality of life when you decided to immigrate?

Yes
CHANGYOUNG
78% Yes
80%
CHOI

69%
No
No 20%
31% 22%
you and/or your spouse your parents older generation
56% 38% 6% 1960 1990 present
When you retire, do you want to go back to Korea?
How old are you? Why did you immigrate?
How often do you have homesick?
No
39%
Yes
61%

20s 30s 40s 50s 60s financial reason invitation from family children’s education Etc(study, marriage)
10% 13% 40% 33% 3% 19% 29% 23% 29%
never once a while often always
19% 52% 19% 10%

RELIGION Who attend services (church, temple, etc)? Do you make friends from temple or church?

90% 25%
of Korean immigrants
have a religion.
of Korean immigrants
spend more than
International
7%
KOREAN IMMIGRANT
Korean American Yes No
6hours in a week for
their religion. 90% 3% 87% 13% FRIENDSHIP
Do you keep in touch with friends in Korea?

PARENTHOOD 여보
오랜만 세요 여보
우리 이야 그동 세요 야
딸 안
뒷바라 은 올해 대 잘 지냈
Do you have close friends in the States who you know from Korea?
...
겠어 지하느라고 학들어갔어
넌 등
연락이 잘 지내고 골이 휘
있
한국오 없어 왜이 냐? 통
면연 렇
락해라 게
Where were your children born? Do/Did you send them to Korean school after regular school?

가나다
Yes 라마바 No
Korea 50% 아 50%
38% The U.S.
62% Yes No
80% 20%

Do you want them to know Korean culture? Who do you want them to date and/or marry?
Do you have close friends who don’t speak Korean?
Anyone they like to date
Korean persons preferred for dates

Anyone they like to marry

Korean persons preferred for marriage Yes No
33%
67%

No little bit pretty much a lot Yes No

4% 11% 36% 44% 56%
50%
 LANGUAGE IDENTITY Who do you think you are? How do you like people to recognize you?

Were you in trouble with figuring out your identity in your adolescene? Did you like having Korean appearance? Korean American

Korean-Americans who
understand and/or speak Korean
Korean-Americans who
speak Korean with their parents ? ?
Yes No
Korean-Americans who 14% Korean
23%
speak Korean with their siblings you people

82%
No
86% Yes
77% American

of Korean Americans
feel more comfortable
with English.

90.9%
of Korean Americans
KOREAN CULTURE

100%
think they should know
Do you watch Korean dramas, series? Have you been to Korea? Are you willing to do long-term stay in Korea?
Korean language.
지금 보실 영상은
정신과 전문의의 조언에
따라 진행된 무한도전멤버 Yes
들의 관찰카메라입니다.
카메라가 없는 자연스러운
상황에서 보이는 버릇이나
It all began on New Year’s 95%
day in my thirty-second
언행을 정신과 전문의가 of Korean Americans say they want
Yes
year of being single. Once again, No
면밀히 관찰 후 I found myself on my own.
이들의 성격 스타일
and going to my mother’s
annual turkey curry
Yes 45% their children to know Korean culture
55% and language.
77% No
23%

KOREAN AMERICAN
Do you have close Korean friends from Korea?

FRIENDSHIP Yes LOVE Who would you like to date and/or marry? Anyone you like to date

Who mostly are your close friends?

40% No Korean persons preferred for dates
Internationals 60%
22.7% Anyone you like to marry
Korean persons preferred for marriage
Americans
13.6%

Do your parents influence you on choosing who you date and/or marry? Who do your parents prefer for you to date and/or marry?
Do you feel cultural differences from them?

Koreans ? Yes
22.7% 23%

Korean Americans Date

Yes
Marriage
41% 45%

Yes No No No Korean doesn’t

matter
77% 55% 68%
50% 50% 32%