Political Identity and Culture

“No reverberatory effect of the great war has caused American public opinion more solicitude than the failure of the ‘melting- pot.’”.

The purpose of the melting pot was to allow immigrants to assimilate into the American culture. Immigrants were being forced to integrate into the American culture. They run away from political  distress, religious persecutions, unemployment, famine, and many other issues within their native country. Immigrants come from all over the world to America to be free and receive more opportunities for jobs and an education, not knowing that they are coming to be integrated into a system that is completely western. These new immigrants were not coming to fully assimilate and  strengthen American nationalism, but instead holding on to their traditional beliefs, which was becoming a conflicting matter with traditional American beliefs. Immigrants in America are being coerced into the western culture indirectly because they cannot get by speaking their native tongue (getting a job or even going to school). “If we come to find this point of view plausible, we shall have to give up the search for our native ‘American’ culture.”  The United States of America does not have an “American” culture of its own; it is simply just an amalgam of many different cultures blended into one. They must inhabit the ways of the western culture and adopt its customs in order to be considered “American”. “Failure of the melting pot” refers to the anglo saxons preventing America from reaching its diversity of various cultures because “there is no distinctly American culture”, as Randolph makes known throughout his essay. Americans were trying to integrate the cultures of immigrants into their own disregarding the fact that not everyone wanted to be assimilated. Hence the relation between “Americanization and Anglosaxination''. The true meaning of American culture comes from the a society that has been established that allows everyone to show their own identity. America is made up of many pieces, not just one particular group, which is something that cannot be said of other nations like the European countries. Either way the idea of ‘American culture’ is artificial because people either assimilate to that culture which is considered Americanization or maintain their own customs and beliefs. American itself does not have a culture of their own, it’s ideas and customs established from multicultural dimensions. 

The reason I chose this quote was to shed light on the notion that American beliefs and values, that are being held dear by its people (anglo saxons), are becoming major factors in changing nationalism. Randolph was right about America failing to be a melting pot because those who come here and go to school or get a job become inevitably influenced by the western culture and gradually yeild away from their native culture.