Greg brings up a very good point in his blog post about America : “The cultures in America, while retaining connection to their roots, are unable to avoid mixing.” I believe that America today is indeed a mix. This idea is completely separate from the common belief that America is a “melting pot”. The phrase “melting pot” would imply a fusion or merging of heterogeneous things in order to form a cohesive and homogeneous end product. This, however, is not the case. Like what Ashley said, America is more of a salad bowl. The individual components, such as the tomatoes, lettuce and croutons, can be easily seen and picked out. Yet, although, the salad consists of parts; it still works.
These parts, on a more symbolic level, represent the different cultures and backgrounds that so vividly characterize America. I think the idea that ToniAnn focuses on about how there is “technically no ethnic group called ‘American'”, is very accurate in this case. When I hear the word American, there is no distinctive image that pops into my head of how an American should look like. This is why I also believe that immigrants never assimilate completely. If this were the case, America would easily be defined. There would not be a mix languages, styles, foods and cultures because there would be one general norm. This yet again goes back to the idea of a salad bowl.
Personally, I feel that I have assimilated well into American culture, but I still keep some of my Chinese heritage intact. I would consider myself Chinese-American. My older sister, however, probably sees herself in a different light since she was raised in China much longer than I was. If you asked her what ethnicity she is, she would also answer Chinese-American, but she definitely would consider herself more Chinese than American. The hyphen, I think allows us to not exactly put a label on what we are. It acts as sort of a spectrum. I would lean more toward the right side of the hyphen, while my sister would lean to the left. I think this is a unique characteristic of America that no other country can boast of having. The answer is not set in stone and so we can essentially chose what we want to be.
