Trouble With the 'Melting Pot'

Most newspaper reports on the president's State of the Union address last week focused on either its generally good reception, the very fact that it occurred, or the plan for Social Security President Clinton announced in the speech. What interested me most, however, was his proposal for federal programs to "help immigrants."

Praising new immigrants for "energizing our culture" and "building up our economy," he said that they "must be part of our one America." "We have a responsibility to make them welcome here," Clinton explained, "and they have a responsibility to enter the mainstream of American life. That means learning English and learning about our democratic system of government." He then asked Congress to support his budget that earmarked funds to help immigrants to meet this "responsibility."

There are two problems with Clinton's new kinder, gentler immigration policy: first, the idea that immigrants should become part of the mainstream, and second, the assumption that immigrants can become part of the mainstream.

Saying immigrants have a responsibility to become part of the mainstream implies that America should be homogeneous. This not only contradicts Clinton's general policy of encouraging diversity, but also assumes that sameness is a good thing.

Clinton's statement strikes me as an outdated model of the "melting pot" in which everyone who enters America can assimilate himself or herself into one, uniform identity. Other models have lately come into vogue: the "salad" model, for instance, in which different people can be tossed together in the same bowl without dissolving into one another. One of my friends likes to think of America as a "chunky soup:" Cultural sharing occurs, but the borders of individuals or groups remain intact, though permeable. Clinton's statement that immigrants should join "the mainstream," however, obscures these more recent (and better) models of American society.

Clinton's statement also brings up the question of what exactly the mainstream is. Judging by the last election, "the mainstream" consists of white, middle-class, heterosexual men and women who watch the Disney channel with their soccer-playing children. If this is indeed the "mainstream," does Clinton want all new immigrants to become Disney parents? Such thinking inherently downplays the contribution of minorities to American society and the value of using minority communities as models. Pushed further, such thinking takes the form of white supremacy.

Second, Clinton's belief that immigrants can enter mainstream American life by learning English and studying America's "democratic" government is naive.

Historically, a command of language and understanding of American politics has not necessarily meant everyone in America has been treated as an equal citizen.

The history of African Americans in this country provides one counter-example: blacks have been in this country, learning English, for three and a half centuries. Still, this attempt to "enter the mainstream of American life" did not stop slavery or Jim Crow laws.

And what about the 70,000 Americans of Japanese descent and 42,000 Japanese resident aliens sent to internment camps during World War II? Even if they were citizens, even if they had sworn to uphold the Constitution, they were removed from their homes and treated like outsiders.

Such sentiment has not gone away. In the 1980s, there was a rash of Japan-bashing whose rhetoric affected not only Japanese Americans but other Asian Americans who were grouped with them. The 1997 campaign-finance scandal involving Chinese American John Huang also demonstrated that the fear of "yellow peril" persists. I don't think the scandal would have been half as pernicious if the donor had been, say, a German American.

To a large degree, where you are from is still more important than where you are at. I may spend a good deal of my time reading American literature, writing in English and studying American history, but new acquaintances will often ask me explicitly, "Where are you from?"

If I am feeling obtuse, I say "New Jersey," knowing what they want to hear is "China." Even if my parents left that country decades ago and I myself have never been there, I am still Chinese to them, or, at best, Chinese-American. Though I am happy to own that hyphen, I don't think I could efface it if I wanted to.

So although I applaud Clinton's efforts to make immigrants feel included in American society, the way that he articulated his new plans last week shows he does not understand how minorities in America have functioned historically and function today. Much of America's strength comes from its heterogeneity and multiplicity. To force everyone to abandon marks of distinctiveness takes away from the distinction of America itself.

Jia-Rui Chong '99 is a history and literature concentrator in Kirkland House.