Steinberg and Walzer both address the concept of the “melting pot”, the term used to describe immigrant assimilation into American culture. Each author presents contrasting views on the extent to which immigrants are “melted” into American society. While Steinberg suggests that assimilation is inevitable, Walzer argues that assimilation will only lead to a “cultural nonidentity”.
Steinberg’s “The Melting Pot and the Color Line” discusses an argument that claims that the melting pot only exists for white people. Ethnic pluralists argue that European Americans are able to assimilate because of their “common whiteness”, supposedly leaving people of color excluded from the melting pot. The argument is based on the idea that people are divided by race rather than nationality or religion, and the idea that American society is now more tolerant of ethnic diversity. Steinberg points out the flaws in this argument, citing research that shows that today’s Asian and Hispanic immigrants are assimilating at an even faster rate than the earlier European immigrants did. He points out that marriage across ethnic and racial lines has become common in today’s society, and that most Asians and Hispanics who do intermarry do so with whites. This leads to the theory of a possible “mestizo” America in which minorities are being blended and fused to create a new combination, rather than simply being “absorbed by the American majority”.
Walzer presents the pluralist view in “What Does it Mean to be an American?”. He discusses how the children and grandchildren of immigrants do not consider America their “homeland”; rather, their ancestor’s homeland is in another country. These Americans retain their nationalities and remember “what else they are” besides being American; they are “insert nationality here”-American, which is the essence of the pluralist view. According to Walzer, being an American has nothing to do with nationality or religion. To become an American, a person only has to be dedicated to the political ideology of “liberty, equality, and republicanism”. Walzer argues that pluralism exists, although only in terms of ethnic pluralism – not racial pluralism – because America is more tolerant of ethnic diversity. To further prove the point that pluralism exists, Walzer notes that “American” is not listed as an ethnic group on the census – therefore, to be only American is to be ethnically anonymous. American citizenship is anonymous because it doesn’t require a full commitment to any nationality, including American. “American” is a mixture of various ethnicities, and is not an ethnicity in and of itself.
Steinberg and Walzer present two arguments that seem to clash. Steinberg’s argument upholds the idea that assimilation is happening and will continue to happen, no matter how diversity-tolerant American society becomes. Walzer, on the other hand, argues that assimilation will lead to cultural and ethnic anonymity. He instead agrees with the pluralist view that immigrants do not have to be fully committed to either nationality, and can instead fall somewhere in between. I personally agree with Walzer’s idea of pluralism, and his depiction of the hyphen as an addition sign, or a sign of equality. Neither nationality is more important than the other, and a person is free to choose which side they identify more with. In this way, their ancestor’s culture is retained while embracing the American culture.
