Sure, you guys get a lot of migrants from different countries every year but from what I understand, their children mostly become Americans in cultural sense and can even not know their parents’ language.

36 comments

  3. Not really. It’s multicultural in the limited sense that people of different backgrounds can assimilate (although of course they can keep some traditions*), but not in the sense that there are multiple competing cultures that coexist without broadly integrating like Canada.

    Generally speaking, the US is a melting pot, not a salad bowl.

    *and tasty recipes

  5. “Mostly become American in a cultural sense” would need an explanation. Do you mean lose all their cultural traditions from their home country? Do you mean maintain some of their cultural traditions and embrace others from cultures they encounter in the US? Are you talking about food, language, clothing? Maybe dating, marriage and parenting styles?
    It’s been 60 years since I was aware of the shift towards multiculturalism. Some people are accepting of living in a multicultural nation and some are not.
    What I mean is living alongside people whose culture may be different than mine in a mutually respectful manner.

  6. Multicultural isn’t how we typically describe it. That makes it sound like there are several cultures competing for dominance or something.

    We call ourselves a melting pot. Which basically means we mix every culture that someone brings with them together and it all becomes American culture.

    For example in the neighborhood I live in is a Jewish Synagogue, a Catholic church and a Methodist church. Within 2 miles there is also a Mosque and a Baptist Church.

    The family that lives 3 houses down from me moved here from Honduras a few years ago. They were setting off fireworks in their yard and cooking out on the 4th of July (American Independence Day).

    It’s very common to hear foreign languages, find ethnic business (Mexican Groceries, Indian fashion shops, Turkish coffee shops, etc etc).

    You can find ethnic communities coming together and still practicing things from their original culture too.

    Everything here just kinda blends together.

  7. As much as people here like to disagree, there are broadly different cultures in the US. Where I live people don’t have to assimilate to be accepted and besides burgers, hotdogs, and civil disobedience I don’t know what would be considered American besides things that people brought here and didn’t have to or weren’t allowed to assimilate made. I very happily live in a salad not a melting pot. I would never willingly choose to live in a place that wasn’t.

  8. I lived in Seattle and there was a neighborhood south of it that boasted the most languages spoken in a six block region in the nation, I think it was 114 different languages regularly spoken at home. These kids learn English and some from every language they’re exposed to, which to me is fantastic. These kids get an education I could only dream of. I guess it depends on how you look at loss and gain.

  9. Oh it totally is!! I teach at a high in a relatively small community of 100,000 in the Midwest (not typically a huge huge area for immigrants I don’t think) and I have Asian, Hispanic, even middle eastern students.

  10. So it’s both a mosaic in some places and a melting pot in others. In a melting pot, that’s when multiple cultures mix to make a new culture. So like there is latin music, german food, maybe chinese cultural festival is a popular attraction to go to every year, there are even redneck American farmer traditions, and they all mix together. And sometimes the melting pot takes something and changes it a bit. So like Chinese food isn’t food that they actually eat in China. It’s food made by Chinese-Americans that’s heavily inspired by traditional Chinese food but using the resources in America and adjusted to the American market’s taste. That’s truly the melting pot.

    Then a Mosaic is where there are pieces and sections that fully maintain their culture but are smaller. So go to New York there’s a little Italy, or Chinatown. In LA there’s a Koreatown. Like in my city, DC, you can be born here live your whole life here and never speak English. There are people that were born in a predominately Spanish neighborhood, teachers and school was in Spanish, friend’s spoke Spanish, so they don’t need to speak Spanish. But in the neighborhood next door they all are Jewish and speak English and Hebrew and do Jewish things.

    So America is mutlicultural just not all in the same way. Even in the places where they are isolated like in Wyoming or Idaho or whatever. Like you’d be surprised at what traditions or things they do that are a mix of other cultures.

  11. USA is quintessentially multicultural and it’s growing more so. It’s farcical to find otherwise, IMO.

  12. Migrants from many different cultures. They come to the US. Would that make the US multi-cultural?

    Take all the time you need with that one.

  13. Language is usually retained for a generation or two. If the language was Spanish, it might last longer just because of how prevalent it is.

    But I think you’re misunderstanding what “multicultural” means, at least in regards to US. It doesn’t mean multiple cultures preserved and coexisting. That does happen, to an extant, when a large number of immigrants emigrate from the same place to the same place and it sticks for a couple generations, generally.

    What it really means is American culture absorbs every culture it comes into contact with and becomes stronger and better as a result. Our culture takes characteristics of new cultures, especially food, and makes it part of the whole. It’s constantly evolving and becoming more.

  14. Yes and No

    Joining the military after growing up in NYC was a shocker because I realized the US was alot less diverse then I thought. I didnt have a single friend who spoke only 1 language growing up and here I was meeting people of 3 different races who only spoke English and had the same culture.

    If your comparing it to the rest of the western world though then it is very diverse.

    The thing is that the US does not have a true multiethnic society we have a melting pot. You wont find a situation like in Switzerland where there are multiple language and ethnic groups that maintain their cultures and languages for centuries. In the US almost all immigrant groups loose their language and most of their culture after 3 generations. The only groups that I can see that are the exception are maybe the Amish and certain Jewish groups.

  15. People make fun of Americans for how long we stay on to our culture. Since you are from Poland — my housekeeper is Polish. Her grandkids speak Polish, celebrate Polish holidays (and Holidays in the Polish ways), and eat Polish foods.

    Cultures are ever evolving (even yours, you don’t do things the way your Grandparents did things) and they probably move quicker when they are exposed to new ideas, but theirs elements that remain.

  16. A lot of cultures blend into the American melting pot, but there’s lots of people who are first and second generation and also families who keep a lot of their culture/tradition. In my experience a lot of children will be taught/pick up on their cultural language. Not all but a good amount. So I’d say the US is both a melting pot and a salad. Another way to put it is that most of us have our culture be made up of a structural US base that is filled with our dominant cultural heritage and such, which could be more American or it could be more German or Indian or whatever.

  17. Are you a fan of Star Trek? America is the Borg. We absorb new people in, take the best parts of thier culture, mix it with what we already have to become better.

    Resistance is futile.

  18. I’m not sure what you think “American in culture” means but there is a lot of diversity that might not immediately be obvious, like in physical appearance or wearing different clothes. Like, I have been friends with people I dress like and speak like and maybe we watched the same TV shows and liked similar music – but we have wildly different religious beliefs and eat completely different cuisines at home.

    I live in a small city and within easy walking distance of my house there are a mosque, a synagogue, and the following churches: Catholic, Lutheran, Mormon, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian Scientist, and I think Unitarian Universalist or smth.

  19. Since there seems to be a bit of a debate between melting pot vs multiculturalism/fruit salad or whatever the hell, allow me to explain why America is, ultimately, a melting pot OP. I will do so using a quote from my favorite game, Fallout NV.

    “How do I put this basically enough? It’s a philosophical theory, the kind you might encounter if you took time to read some books. The fundamental premise is to envision history as a sequence of “dialectical” conflicts. Each dialectic begins with a proposition, a thesis…which inherently contains, or creates, its opposite – an antithesis. Thesis and antithesis. The conflict is inevitable. But the resolution of the conflict yields something new – a synthesis – eliminating the flaws in each, leaving behind common elements and ideas.”

    Some immigrant cultures are already nearly perfectly compatible with the broader Western-American culture of our nation. For example, Mexico and most of Latin America. Other immigrants from other backgrounds do indeed experience friction when they settle here, and tension does happen from time to time. In the end, so long as they don’t break the law, they remain and impart the best of their culture and in return receive the best of ours.

    Chinese Americans creating “Chinese” food (much better than local mainland cuisine) is one example. Chinatown itself is a synthesis of Chinese and American cultures. The Chinatown in NY or the Little Vietnam in Houston simultaneously feel alien to Willy the hillbilly from Arkansas, but it also feels alien to Túyèt from Ho Chi Minh City. But that’s what makes it home to the children of those immigrants.

    Edited for spelling

  20. Come to Brooklyn, everyone brings their home with them and mixes it in. Near me is a little spot called Syko, where a Syrian and a Korean got together and made a take out spot….halal bowls with bulgogi and kimchi.

    Or pastrami dumplings with spicy mustard.

  21. It’s a melting pot, which is honestly one of our greatest strengths. Immigrating to America takes a certain personality that relies on self reliance, risk taking, adventure, hard working, ingenuity, and various forms of intelligence. The United States gets all of those people and Americans are all essentially descendants of those kinds of people, which bleeds into the culture. The various cultures people bring to the US end up “competing” and the best elements of those cultures rise to the top and becomes apart of overall American culture.

    Also, immigrants usually lean more towards the culture they originally came from, but their children almost always assimilate and become “American”. From usually what I hear, that is one of the benefits immigrants see when moving here, that their children will be American and be accepted among the population as an American.

  22. There is a lot of social pressure to “melt” from the dated description of the US as a “melting pot” of many peoples from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

    Unless you move into a minority-majority area, being alone and speaking non-English invites prejudice.

    Not that speaking English well is proof against that. My SIL is 3rd generation American and her shitty teacher tried to claim there was a language barrier.

    Florida teacher probably makes less than a Seattle gas station attendant.

  23. In some countries you can speak the language, live there for decades, marry a local, celebrate the local holidays and customs, and even become a citizen but you will never culturally be considered “From” there, and some people will treat you as if you just got off the boat and are gonna leave any day now.

    In the US, if you’re a citizen, you’re an American full stop. I’d even go so far as to say if this is your home, regardless of documentation/citizenship, then you’re an American. I know I’ve met some people whoare undocumented who have a deep love and appreciation for this country, and its a country they’ve struggled and sacrificed to be in.

  24. People move here to integrate, not to setup the Old world in nminiature. The ethnic enclaves evaporate within a generation for the most part. They’re temporary.

  25. There are a ton of subcultures living together in America. At times they mix: music, pop-culture, unity & division in politics, food, etc.

    One good thing about the Internet is that it has exposed people to other subcultures more easily.

  27. We do not consider ourselves primarily multicultural, no. We consider ourselves a melting pot and everyone here is an American. That being said of course there are multicultural aspects of America but no for the most part we consider ourselves all Americans and that entails a mixture of many cultures, not multiple cultures coexisting uniquely side by side (but again; that of course does happen and is a part of American life as well).

    It’s fairly complicated but also fairly simple at the same time. I imagine for Americans it’s fairly simple intuitively but maybe difficult to explain.

    This is also why America is a place that immigrants can come and actually fully become Americans. As much as people will argue this is actually fairly unique in the world in the way America views it and enacts it.

    You can view it even in the most extreme case: even the most vehement racist weirdos don’t think the people they hate aren’t Americans. They may not want them to be Americans, but they still, even through all their hate, view them as fellow Americans. It’s like this idea is so deeply engrained in America and Americans that even when people go off the deep end of beliefs they still can’t shake the basic American idea that is: if you are an American then you are an American, no questions asked.

  28. In Europe, they get angry when the immigrants don’t become exactly like them. In the US we become like the immigrants and they become like us. We appropriate their culture and they appropriate ours and everything becomes all mixed up and lively and lovely.

    We also don’t care if someone does things differently. We don’t freak out if they take their coffee differently or put different things in grit food. Those things become our food and our food becomes theirs too.

  29. No, we like to call it diversity. It’s like different cultures blending together to make new sub-cultures.

  31. Yes 100 Percent!

    I see from your flair you are from Poland! And Texas has the oldest Polish community and population in America, whith a common last name that is of Polish Origin being “Kowalski”

  32. I am a US-born child of Filipino immigrants. English is my first language and I don’t speak my parents’ languages. Culturally, I’m simultaneously American, Filipino, and Filipino American — all of these cultures are distinct — and myself and others who share similar experiences know what it feels like to navigate all of these cultures at once.

    I’m also from the Mid Atlantic. When I lived in California (Bay Area), I quickly discovered how different the culture of that area from that in which I’d spent most of my life. In this way, cultures don’t have anything to do with race, ethnicity, or non-US country of birth. Confronting and acknowledging this understanding of culture is both more and less challenging than the ones I described in my first paragraph.

    So yes, we are multicultural, and in many ways. It can mean both “not being [something]” and “multiple [somethings]” all at once.

  33. Yes and no. We are moving to what I call post cultural.

    You are exposed to a lot of cultures and pick what you like. There is no longer any requirement that you be tied to your ethnicity.

    So, my kids read Japanese books, listen to Japanese and Korean music, and watch TV shows from around the world. I don’t ask them to eat boiled cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day.

    It works well.

  34. I think it’s incredibly multicultural, especially where I live (Colorado). Lots of people speak Spanish. My neighbors across the street are from Nepal and speak Nepali. I still know quite a bit of Prussian German (AKA East Low German) thanks to that culture being passed down through my family. I also have a few friends who emigrated from India roughly 15 years ago, and speak Hindi at home.

    Everywhere I go, I see various cultures from all over represented in more ways than just restaurants, and most people I know (including myself), have not forgotten where they came from.

  35. Yes. It depends on where you are and how much the various immigrants chose to Americanize.

    Around many big cities there are pockets where immigrants settled, all from the same area. Chicago for example has a Greektown, Little Italy, Chinatown, Little Poland, and I forget what else. In each place you can find the different languages, fabulous cultures, and _amazing_ food.

    Some people did their best to blend in for fear of being accepted, but I personally think our diversity is our greatest strength.

  36. I think the main difference is that in the USA, once you’ve lived there for a long while or have obtained citizenship you are American. No questions asked. I’ve lived in the UK for many years, obtained citizenship a while ago. I speak with a 100% native English midland accent, and yet for most people, if not all people, I’m just an Italian with a British passport. In my experience that’s the same in most European countries. That’s the difference.

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