How to explain the "American melting pot"

The United States is a multi-cultural "melting pot", and it will not evenly integrate various cultures, beliefs and values without bias. In fact, the core culture of the United States has not changed because of the arrival of different immigrants. Like Samuel? Huntington in Who Are We? As written in the book: For nearly 400 years, Anglo-Protestant culture has been the core of American culture and has become the core component of national identity and national characteristics.

It can be said that the "melting pot" of the United States has a strong function of remodeling and transformation, and the process of remodeling and transformation is often one-way. When a new immigrant sets foot on American territory, the process of his integration into American mainstream society is actually the process of his constant identification with American core culture and constant acceptance of transformation. We say "change" because the process of becoming an "American" is not entirely spontaneous and active. Who Are We? Samuel? Huntington recorded the views of the founding fathers of the United States on multi-ethnic coexistence. For example, Washington once warned that if immigrants live together, they will keep their own language and the creed they bring, but if they "live with our people", they will "become the same people". Franklin also called on immigrants to "spread more evenly among English-speaking people." Therefore, in 18 18, Congress rejected the application of Irish-Americans to set aside a piece of land for Irish immigrants.

It can be seen that for these American political elites, the integration of different races and the peace of different beliefs actually means "assimilation" and "melting" of other races and other beliefs, which means changing other cultures, beliefs and values to adapt to American culture, beliefs and values. Statistics show that by 2005, nearly 60% of Americans are still Protestants, which is a powerful guarantee for American national cohesion. It is not accurate to compare the United States to a "melting pot" of various cultures, because this "melting pot" is not to make different cultures "peaceful", but to transform the culture of later immigrants into an "Anglo-Saxon model".

Nowadays, with the increasing number of immigrants, the digestion ability of the "melting pot" in the United States has begun to have problems. More and more new immigrants live in specific communities; With the development of communication and transportation, these new immigrants have also maintained closer ties with their motherland. For the transformation of these new immigrants, the United States began to feel a little powerless, and a kind of "insecurity" also emerged. Huntington's worry is that when "assimilation" and "melting" encounter difficulties, the cohesion and national identity of the United States, that is, the core cultural position of Anglican Protestantism, will be threatened.

From Huntington's warning, we can easily see that it is a dangerous thing for some elites in the United States to coexist and gradually merge on the basis of equality. Because equal coexistence and continuous integration will inevitably mean mutual transformation, and both sides will adjust themselves to make the other side more adaptable. In this case, the superiority of Anglo-Protestant culture is out of the question. The result of this worry is, "if I don't want to be transformed by others, I must transform others first."

In the process of the formation of immigrant countries, some Americans (especially the representatives of the so-called core culture) have not learned how to live in harmony and equality with other ethnic groups. On the contrary, their accumulated experience is more about how to transform and reshape other ethnic groups in order to integrate them into the so-called "mainstream" culture and values.