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Comment on Why do i see so many americans obsessed with the concept of "this is a thing that [Ethnicity] does"

America is a nation of immigrants and mixed cultures. In the early 1900s, there was great pressure to acculturate to the “American” way of doing things. Immigrants changed their names, clothes, foods, and language to match the “mainstream.” There was a push to build a “colorblind” society.

By the 1960s-70s, younger people began to realize that “acculturation” really meant erasing cultural heritage and acquiescing to white, Anglo, male-dominated culture. So there was a movement to preserve, celebrate, and empower differences between people.

This gave rise to the Black Power movement, creation of the term “Hispanic” and the Latin American ethnicity, Women’s Lib, Gay Pride, and even the rise of pizza delivery chains (which was regarded as a somewhat exotic ethnic food at the time).

That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.

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fieryhamster007@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The melting pot idea was all over news and media back in late 70s and 80s. Gen X has forgotten what it was like when America was great and not this demon filled hellhole that was elected.

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- Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  America wasn’t great, it was just a lot cheaper to live in.
  
  The economy tanked when Nixon kept paying for the Vietnam War by printing money without raising taxes. That and the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 crashed the American Dream. Jimmy Carter hired Paul Volker to fix things. Jimmy got kicked out before the plan started kicking in and Reagan got the credit. Then Ronnie turned the money spigot on extra high for the rich and that’s how it all went to hell.
  
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  - fieryhamster007@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I lived through it. I would much rather that era than the antiChrist led one of today.
    
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    Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    smithsonianmag.com/…/hard-hat-riot-1970-pitted-co…
    
    Remember the Hard Hat Riot of 1970?
    
    That’s another piece of history we’ll soon relive.
    
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wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.

This is the crux. It’s a uniquely American take on how you deal with a country that has seen dozens of waves of immigration (starting with the illegal immigration of colonization) from many different places over a fairly short timeframe. American culture is kind of like a fork, with a unified base that has integrated but very distinct tines (bear with me… combining the “melting pot” and “salad bowl” tropes is HARD!). At their best, memes and jokes like that can be an invitation to genuine dialogue. At their worst… well… not that. A lot depends on who is putting them out and with what agenda in mind.

Statistically, most European countries seem to be estimated at somewhere between 80%-90% “white,” likely to mean “of exclusively European extraction beyond any sort of family memory,” and I wager the vast majority of those people are from the core borders or frontiers that might well have shifted in the last few centuries. America hasn’t had that sort of percentage for over 40 years, and even then the white population was more “assorted crackers.” Even back into that era, most areas will have had at least two and likely three to five statistically significant populations that would have been visually and culturally distinct (not that this in ANY way implies that these groups were treated equally by the power structures… OMG far, far, FAR from it). These people don’t have to give up their distinctiveness to remain American, and when considered in good faith, particularly by those who mostly live in the base of the fork, the sorts of things you’re describing can be more celebratory than divisive.

I’m not going to suggest Americans are particularly good at multiculturalism (another understatement), but we’ve been at it a long time and specific practices and trends have grown up around it. The balancing act of racial and ethnic awareness without descending into judgment is probably one of the more complicated aspects of navigating American culture, regardless of whether you were born to it or looking on from the outside. So much so, in fact, that certain small-minded people think we should just snap the tines off the fork and pretend the nub was always a spoon.

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