I can recall hearing the phrase “America is a melting pot” for the first time in a social studies class in middle school. The melting pot analogy provides a simplified statement used to help children learn about the diverse demography of the United States, but like the elusive American Dream, it doesn’t seem to quite hold up under scrutiny.
In Gary Gerstle’s article “American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century”, he describes how the ideological and social tension between civic nationalism and racial nationalism shaped American history. After all, the United States was a country that had the ideals of freedom and equality at its core, yet espoused the concepts of racial superiority and inferiority. It was President Franklin Roosevelt’s simultaneous rhetoric of political and social equality as well as racial inferiority that inspired Gerstle to coin the term “Rooseveltian nation”. Ultimately, Gerstle claims we must find a new creed to guide the nation, one that is not as contradictory or exclusive.
As a response to this racial nationalism, the immigration paradigm was formed. Donna Gabaccia outlines how scholars used human movement to create the “nation of immigrants” narrative of US history in her article “Is Everywhere Nowhere? Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of United States History”. She cautions that the typical view of the United States as an exceptional nation built by migration is overstated, and also neglects the history of African American slaves as well as Native Americans. Her aim is to call into question the “tyranny of the national” in order to include minorities in discussions of history as well as to emphasize how history is shaped by diaspora and transnationalism.
In his article “Nation of Migrants, Historians of Migration,” Adam Goodman claims it is essential to shift from an immigration paradigm to a migration paradigm when studying, interpreting, and teaching history. The mythology of the melting pot is rife with stereotypes and cliché, and it frames European migration as direct assimilation to “make Americans” while ignoring the migration of minority groups completely. By shifting the paradigm and recognizing migrants’ agency, we will be able to understand history more fully.
When it comes to my project, I know that these are ideas I will want to consider and explore in a local context. The “push and pull” of migration is certainly relevant to the Congolese immigrants in the area, who were drawn to the US by the opportunity for education as well as to escape the war in their country. Additionally, it is important to note that nations and communities are indeed socially constructed. How does one build community in a new place when they do not know many people? How does this built community integrate with the larger existing community and to what extent? These are questions I will want to explore.
As a final note, we must always be wary of (as Gabaccia phrases it) “history written from a sedentary point of view.” I believe that it is essential to teach history through different cultural lenses in order to improve understanding among people and their history.