It has been said that the “Melting Pot” is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous. Although it is principally used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the United States but I am using it to describe the little potluck brunch we had at our building today.
I live in a building that has 7 units and although there are only 15 of us but somehow we have managed to have quite a “melting pot”. We have people of different generation, gender, race, sexual preference, religion and not to mention origins and as far as the education is concerned we have a college freshman all the way up to a Harvard graduate physician.
But If you think the ROOM was colorful, you should have seen the table: Italian, Persian, Indian, American, Chinese and Greek food had created this colorful, aromatic feast that simply mirrored the diversity of the people in the room.
As J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur put it in his “Letters From An American Farmer”: “What then is the American, this new man?… that the American is one who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds…. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world…..” (Added note: he/she and men/women)
So today, my neighbors and I unknowingly personified what Crevecoeur wrote over 200 years ago. We enjoyed this “melting pot” so much that we immediately set the date for our next get together.
You would’ve loved it; The food, the atmosphere, the subtle sense of camaraderie and THE FREEDOM…
