I was taught - and I believe - that calling America a "melting pot" is a negative description, implying that people lose their ethnic identities into a stew of mediocre American-ness. The better metaphor is to call America a "mosaic," where many ethnic cultures live side-by-side to create a beautiful whole. I am a lifetime Pittsburgh resident, and this city manifests a cornucopia of ethnicities, many of which can be identified by ethnic churches (built in ethnic neighborhoods) - almost all Catholic Churches - that were built by, for example, Polish immigrants, German immigrants, Italian immigrants, Russian and Greek immigrants ("Catholic Orthodox" churches), Slovak immigrants, Hungarian immigrants, and so on.
Although my own personal ethnicity is all over the lot, I was raised in the family homestead with my Grandmother who was Irish, and I was raised as an "Irish Catholic." We loved Irish food (which ain't too good, to be candid), Irish music and dancing, and over-consumption of alcohol on days ending with 'y'.
The whole cornucopia of faux ethnicities (almost no one was actually born in the country that they celebrate) allows almost everyone to believe that they are better then other people.
And it is clear that the African-American community lacked that option, being many generations removed from, and totally isolated from, their own ethnicities and all that included. Which is why we have the African American community constantly seeking to create an analogous ethnicity, with middling success - Kwanzaaaaa being a rather preposterous and insidious example of the phenomenon.
Although my own personal ethnicity is all over the lot, I was raised in the family homestead with my Grandmother who was Irish, and I was raised as an "Irish Catholic." We loved Irish food (which ain't too good, to be candid), Irish music and dancing, and over-consumption of alcohol on days ending with 'y'.
The whole cornucopia of faux ethnicities (almost no one was actually born in the country that they celebrate) allows almost everyone to believe that they are better then other people.
And it is clear that the African-American community lacked that option, being many generations removed from, and totally isolated from, their own ethnicities and all that included. Which is why we have the African American community constantly seeking to create an analogous ethnicity, with middling success - Kwanzaaaaa being a rather preposterous and insidious example of the phenomenon.