The Melting Pot (Part 1)

The truth of the matter is that Americanism promotes the idea and belief that immigrants should come together and cast off their national and ethnic heritage in favour of a "better", "more perfect" identity that is American.
Why, I ask, should people who choose to live in this country be pressured to do such a thing? My 8th grade history teacher has all the answers.

"America is a society where people come and live together, work together, associate. If conflicting beliefs and customs impede this, newcomers cannot assimilate and become part of the greater society."

Elizabeth Goldstein was a fanatic about not discriminating or prejudging. She pushed all of her already diverse and equal-minded students through a "Tolerance Unit" at the end of the year, which, in itself is not bad - in fact, it's wonderful - but her strongly voiced views about a better American society were ill-founded and stank terribly of the stereotypical (but almost typical) views of Americans, dating back to the end of American protectionism. My grandmother is the exact same way. Even in other countries, she naïvely tries to communicate in ways that best suit her, rather than trying to adapt to her surroundings. (I can't even begin to tell you some of the stories I have of her, from Germany to Japan). She has total, complete confidence in the establishment, and believes that it would have already failed if there was something wrong with it. In my eyes, it has failed.

Ms Goldstein would tell us how the prevalent "Melting Pot" theory of how America should be is the best one, and how Chinese immigrants, not willing to "melt" into society were targeted by anti-immigrant reformers to explain why the borders should be closed to middle-to-lower class Chinese. It worked. They did close the borders to Chinese, only to open them once more in the face of anti-discrimination protests.

I do feel that the Chinese can try inexplicably hard to stay away from other ways of life, and believe that, even in America, they must create ghettos for themselves in order to maintain their culture. I don't like this, or agree with it, but I feel that they did, in the past, have to do that for themselves, because they saw themselves presented with two choices: isolate yourselves, or assimilate. That's absurd and untrue, most of the time. I think that, maybe, if the Chinese immigrants in years past had been given a more welcome place in the United States, it wouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately, I also believe that not assimilating is imbedded in the Chinese (or more broadly, Asian) mindset.

Before I continue, I want to point out that I live in San Marino, California, home to WASPs and Asians. My school is 70% Asian. I'm not writing this to show why Asians should all be targeted for murder and why they're inferior, but to make a point regarding the melting pot. I don't have anything against Asians in general; one of my best friends is Chinese. It's just that their mindset, to study at unreasonable levels the various maths and not learn to speak English is what drives me up a wall. In my honours geometry class, one of the students goes to see her tutor for 17 hours a week. And guess what? It's all math! Not one little bit of English, Science, or foreign language (other than Chinese). She's taken geometry at her tutor three times already. Another Chinese classmate of mine has already taken calculus.

I'm not saying it's inherently wrong to try and get ahead, but this is outrageous. It pushes the standards for everyone else up way too high, and creates an ultra-literal, super-competative learning environment, which is absolutely NOT GOOD.

I think that all of that could be avoided if these first and second generation Chinese immigrants would take the time to learn about the culture and learn the language of their new home (which, in Southern California, is increasingly becoming Spanish).

That's all for Part 1; Part 2, which is the brighter side of the story, is next.