The myth of the Melting Pot

It's always seemed to me that the American "melting pot" is a myth.  It's the kind of myth that some liberals like because it elides the issues of ethnic and cultural conflict.  At the very least, it's a simplistic metaphor for the complex, gradual process of cultural assimilation.

Look at New York City, past and present.  When did Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans and Italian-Americans get "melted"? What makes New York such a great city is the variety in its many ethnic communities.  It's appropriate that the United Nations has its headquarters there.  (Los Angeles also comes to mind.)

Lately, the Melting Pot has become a harmful myth.  Those intolerant of immigrants invoke a dim, nostalgic memory of a time when immigrants were assimilated overnight.  Never mind that eighteenth-century Pennsylvania had German-language newspapers!

Unlike these people, I look at "multiculturalism" not as something imposed by government but as something going from the bottom up.  Some people disapprove of bilingual education, but does it matter if Jose learns math in Spanish, so long as he learns it?  They prefer the "sink or swim" method, under which kids are expected to learn English by themselves, but too many are already sinking.