One of the arguments that stood out to me while reading Steinberg’s “The Melting Pot And The Color Line” was the fact that “America’s melting pot has been inclusive of everybody but blacks.” Although Steinberg explains that other “people of color” from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have actually assimilated at a reasonably faster rate than earlier immigrants, he holds that African Americans are still an exception. Intermarriage has become more common over the years, yet intermarriage among blacks has scarcely increased.
Initially, the claim that the melting pot is “for whites only” seems like a bit of an exaggeration, but I realized it is a harsh reality to accept. As Steinberg notes in his article, “black and white Americans are as residentially segregated as ever.” Although this may largely be the fault of whites along with years and years of prejudice and racism, I might suggest that blacks themselves could be contributing to the sharp divide themselves. African Americans may have not initially chosen to segregate themselves in the ghetto, but because the black ghetto has evolved into a “crucible for ethnic development and building and…an integral part of the everyday lives of black people,” many blacks have remained residentially and culturally separated from other Americans and immigrants. I agree that the ghetto has certainly fostered a “vitality and dynamism that is generally lacking among the ossifying cultures of the nation’s immigrant groups” but maybe it has also locked blacks into a sealed-off community where the melting pot and multiculturalism cannot exist.
Ultimately, in order to achieve a utopia void of all racism, or a “post-ethnic future” as Steinberg notes, it will require both sides, or all the “ingredients” that belong in the melting pot to cooperate with one another. With some modifications to the way whites still view blacks today, the elimination of basic social inequalities and if blacks proactively seek integration and a place within the melting pot, then the miscegenation and utopia Steinberg discusses may someday exist.
