America the Salad Bowl — but some vegetables are more equal than others
As a Latina woman, I have seen these tactics first-hand. I’ve been the subject of wrongful assumptions, stereotypes — and told I’m pretty ‘smart for a Latina.’
I have held these truths to be self evident, that all men are not created equal. If my last 21 years of existence in the United States has taught me anything, it’s that this melting pot is anything but that. Rather, it’s a salad bowl where in order to remain you need the proper packaging and a stamp of freshness from Uncle Sam.
The United States of America once marketed itself as a melting pot, but in 2018 it has seemingly evolved into something reminiscent of a salad bowl. In 1782, the Melting Pot concept was described by a French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur as a group of “individuals of all nations [being] melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.” A full 236 years later, this concept seems a more far-fetched than ever before.
The Salad Bowl concept was born in the early 18th century after a wave of Slavic, Jewish, and Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. When these different cultures were exposed to the U.S. they were met with resistance and with distaste from the White Protestants/Western Europeans of the time.
The Melting Pot concept — one that suggests all groups will assimilate until differences between Americans would just melt away — gave way to a “Salad Bowl” where cultures of different shapes and sizes can coexists. But perhaps the pot analogy had some advantages. A pot is filled with warmth and a sense of belonging. A salad bowl is cold. It is a place where individuals were together but separate, and the “mix-ins” were noticeably different.
The reality is, being a salad bowl is the only way the U.S. can function. If it were to melt, it’d need to take into account religion, culture, and all the aspects that make its citizens unique. The issue with the current salad bowl is the fact that some people are getting picked out. It appears to be ever-changing, but in reality, the lettuce — the majority — remains, while the other “mix-ins” — minorities — rest unsure of their expiration date.
These “mix-ins’ get plucked out, because the majority will decide some of them are not good anymore, expired goods that would leave a bad taste in the mouth of Lady Liberty.
The current political attitude towards immigrants in the United States is not positive. “These aren’t people. These are animals,” President Donald Trump said in May 2018, as part of his call for stronger immigration laws.
Even with political attitudes as they are, it appears as if the majority of the United States is in favor of immigration. A full three-quarters of U.S. citizens believe that immigration is good for the country, according to a poll published by the New York Times in June 2018.
How does the salad bowl fit into this? Most people seem to be okay with immigration as long as it is done legally, but with the government being so vocally anti-immigration, it brings out the side of the country that prefers a bowl with limited mix-ins.
The reality of the matter is these mix-ins are now becoming the majority, and most white Americans are blinding themselves to this fact, by making it so that society views them as expired and “unhealthy” for the country. Being a Latina woman in modern-day America, I have seen these tactics first hand. It is socially constructed through in the media. If you’re a man, you’re made to seem like a criminal, a loser or some type of lovable servant. If you’re a woman, you’re painted as a gold-digging wife, a submissive maid, or a porn star. If you type in the hashtag #Latina in Instagram, you will be met with hundreds of images of half-naked women, ads for prostitution, and the occasional video parodying what we are supposed to act/look like.
Being told from a young age “you are smart for a Latina,” or “ you belong here,” and “you act different from the other Mexicans” (even though I am Dominican) is evidence of an attitude that is attributed to the deep hate and misconstruction many people have for minorities in this country. The fact is that in America, being a minority has been made to seem as a crime. The American dream is preached to everyone worldwide, but once you are here the veil is dropped the and wizard is not behind the curtain. In his place lies a tall man with a vest stamping you as expired and shipping you back to where you came from.
There is a problem with how immigrants are treated in the United States. Immigrants are met with a plethora of challenges that make it difficult to assimilate and be accepted into society. The attitude is to leave your culture at the door and to conform to American standards and values.
Currently there has been a spike in anti-immigration attitudes, in particular the situation regarding the caravan from Central America heading towards the Mexican-American border. Trump and other like-minded Americans have described them as criminals. In reality, they are only guilty of fleeing the streets of their danger-laden homelands where the rich get richer and the poor wind up dead.
The idea of open borders will never manifest into reality, and it would be foolish if it did. There is no denying that there are bad people trying to do harm to the United States, and thus some border control is to be expected. But I suggest interviewing each asylum seeker instead of blaming a whole group of individuals for the actions of a few. Instead looking at them as a whole, see that there is a commonality between “us” and “them.” They are coming for the promise of security, the promise of hope.
Slowly but surely, there has been a shift in what is considered the majority in the salad bowl that is the United States. These mix-in — non-white Americans — are now a significant portion on the United States. By 2020, more than half of the nation’s children are expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group, the Census Bureau said in 2015. That trend will continue, and it is one that some white Americans find unsettling.
If America fails to integrate the next generation of immigrants — perhaps with some metaphor that goes beyond both the pot and the bowl — the costs may mount. If they do, they will add up to major social and economic upsets far into the future.
