Growing up in America I have been taught that everyone is part of one big melting pot. For those who are not familiar with the metaphor, the melting pot is when different types of cheeses come together and melt as one new and original form of cheese. It's analogous to various cultures coming together to form one new and original identity called American. I agreed with this metaphor until I took a history course during my junior year of high school. My teacher was a thinker, and he made me think. He introduced a new concept and since then I am thinking about whether he had any truth or substance to what he said. He opposed the melting pot and favored a salad bowl. The problem with the melting pot is that we decimate where we orignally come from. We let go of our original cultures and traditions, and we gradually adapt to a new ethnicity, a new identity. On the contrary and quite the opposite, the salad bowl is when different ingredients with their own charactertistics and textures come together to form one salad. In essence, the salad bowl suggests that different people with their own original cultures and traditions combine to form one distinct America. The salad bowl allows people to retain their original cultures and traditons. The truth of the matter is that the only individuals who are native to this land are the Native Americans. Besides them, everyone residing in the land of promising opportunities and freedom is not native. They are "something American." It may be that you are Italian American, Indian American, Irish American, Chinese American, or whatever it may be. A person's heritage, culture, and tradition make up his or her identitiy, and no one can take that away from him or her. Being only an American is not possible because it is inevitable to forget about a person's origianl ethnicity. Lous Dobbs, former news anchor for CNN, states,
"But you know, one of the things that screams at me, every St. Patrick's Day, every Columbus Day- and I'm going to get lots of e-mails and letters for saying this- but I see people celebrating a distant history and their lineage, presumably, that has nothing to do with celebrating America, and I find that astonishing. Frankly, I resent those kinds of holidays." (www.alternet.org. "It Turns Out the Irish are the New Irish")
Dobbs needs to understand that it is inescapeable and absolutely unavoidable to decimate one's lineage, heritage, custom, culture, and tradition because that is what makes up an identity. America is a land of opportunities, so shouldn't she let people live their true identity? America is a land where people can dream, but if she takes away one's identity how can one dream? As far as the DREAM Act is concerened, dreamies, or individuals who can benefit from the passage of the DREAM Act, don't have an identity. They don't know who they are because they are "drifting away like a fether through air" with no direction. (Nujabes. "Feather.") The broken immigration system is playing a negative role for America because there is so much potential out there that is wasting away.
Believe it or not we will never be American; we will always be something else and American.