Myth of the U.S. Melting Pot

For all the liberals out there who have a misconstrued notion of what America has been, is, and will continue to be. America is not a melting pot. It is not multicultural.

The first naturalization law in the United States was the March 26, 1790 Naturalization Act which restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good moral character"

After the immigration of 123,000 Chinese in the decade of 1870 to 1880, who joined the 105,000 who had immigrated from 1850 to 1870, Congress in 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which specifically limited further Chinese immigration

After President William McKinley was assassinated by a second-generation immigrant anarchist, Congress enacts in 1901 the Anarchist Exclusion Act to exclude known anarchist agitators. A literacy requirement was added in Immigration Act of 1917.

A more complex quota plan replaced this "emergency" system under the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reid Act). The reference census used was changed to that of 1890, which greatly reduced the number of Southern and Eastern European immigrants.

And once they got here..

Nativist prejudice against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office..
the creation of a parochial school system, in addition to numerous colleges, that isolated about half the Irish youth from the public schools. After 1860 Irish sang songs (see illustration) about signs reading "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY", which were also referred to as "the NINA signs."..
the media often stereotyped the Irish in America as being boss-controlled, violent (both among themselves and with those of other ethnic groups), being prone to alcoholism, voting illegally, and being dependent on street gangs that were often violent or criminal..

During World War I, German Americans, especially those born abroad, were sometimes accused of being too sympathetic to the German Empire..
Several thousand vocal opponents of the war were imprisoned..Thousands were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty. One man was killed in Illinois. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith) and limited their use of the German language in public places..
he Alien Registration Act of 1940 required 300,000 German-born U.S. resident aliens to register with the federal government and restricted their travel and property ownership rights. [8] [9] Under the still active Alien Enemy Act of 1798, the United States government interned nearly 11,000 German Americans between 1940 and 1948. Some of these were United States citizens. Civil rights violations occurred. 500 were arrested without warrant. Others were held without charge for months or interrogated without benefit of legal counsel. Convictions were not eligible for appeal. An unknown number of "voluntary internees" joined their spouses and parents in the camps and were not permitted to leave.

The internment of Italian Americans during World War II has often been overshadowed by the Japanese American internment..roughly 600,000 Italians who were citizens of Italy and had not become American citizens were required to carry identity cards that labelled them as "resident aliens." Some 10,000 people in war zones on the West Coast were required to move inland. About 250 supporters of Italian Fascism were held in military camps for up to two years. Lawrence DiStasi claims that these wartime restrictions and internments contributed more than anything else to the loss of spoken Italian in the United States

~wikipedia

The lesson here is that we were all hated and mistreated when we came here, until our children forgot their tongues and culture and conformed to the in-bred blue-blood people in charge. People have been systematically barred from immigration or discriminated against upon arrival to the U.S. because of ..race,.. (I..m including white ethnics here, because they weren..t considered ..white.. when they came, although they were later considered white and so have attained over-all better chances of succeeding) religion, and creed. This also points out the myth that equality is a fundamental right of equality in America. Earlier ..white.. immigrants were considered inferior races, but after assimilation there wasn..t much in the way to tell them apart from the ..real white.. people, whereas immigrants ..of color.. could never fully assimilate into the in-bred blue-blood ideal and so have known very little in the way of equality.

I..m not saying that this is the way it should have been, it is merely the way it has been and is..so get off the liberal band-wagon and instead of espousing misinformation as to what America stands for, change what America stands for..

Make us a melting pot with all the flavors of each culture coming through in the stone soup.

Make equality possible for all by not making it contingent upon being able to ape the in-bred blue blood elites.

I am a white-ethnic, but I have every chance in the world because I retain only the most superficial aspects of my cultural heritage. Irish drink and are quarrelsome, Germans like bratwurst and sauerkraut and are Lutheran, etc. I find that unfortunate. But it could be worse. I would not have new immigrants who cannot so easily be subsumed by the ..white.. but is actually white-male-western-European culture of the United States have to throw away their cultural heritage to have a chance in this society. I would not have African Americans whose culture was obliterated upon being forced into slavery in the United States have less of a chance in this society because any of them who so chooses refuses to accept the values of a country that has so wronged them.

Do we really want equality, or do we just want to use it as a catch phrase? Do we really want multiculturalism or are we content with the conflicting notion in the media that we are and at the same time that multiculturalism is impossible to stabilize? Do we even know what multiculturalism is? Or, has the dominant culture so inflicted upon each wave of immigrants their prejudices that we are lost in an abyss of violence and recrimination?

It seems to me that we should all accept the validity of every group..s pain and the impossibility to measure or qualify that pain, and so reach over the abyss, join hands and take this country, which has been promised to all of us and never delivered..remember that before African Americans were in the Ghetto, it was German Americans, Irish Americans, Polish Americans, that Jews have been in Ghetto..s all over the world, that we are brothers and sisters in our pain no matter how trivial or severe..that we are all victimized and should stop victimizing one another so we can have a clear view of the source.

Amen.