Salad Bowl vs. Melting Pot

Debate


I used to be in one of those little Asian cliques my freshman year. Now I hang out with Americans and don’t talk to them anymore. Well, I’m convinced that America is a salad bowl. Not a particularly good one, but that’s not the question.

Take my friend Sam for example. His favorite pastime activity is prank calling, and when he does that, he employs an alternate personality. He has two of them. One is a Hispanic gardener, and the other is a woman in a heavy ebony accent. He is a white American.

When I talk to my American friends, I don’t like to emphasize my Korean heritage. They do enough of it for me.

In a salad, if you are a piece of tomato, you probably don’t know what lettuce, onion, cheese, or Italian dressing tastes like.

My other schoolmate, Will, assumes that I haven’t seen Titanic or Independence Day because I’m from another culture. I have seen both movies more than twice each. Will is a white American, too.

This ignorance of cultural difference can be seen everywhere. Go to Google and type in the word “why.” The second suggestion is “why are black people so loud?” Go to your school’s cafeteria. You’ll see a Caucasian table. An African-American table. An Asian-American table. Would you still say America has successfully merged its diverse cultures together?



I <3 informality