Otherwise I don’t really get the solution. Don’t try to integrate different cultures, thereby continuing to exclude them?
Instead we seem to be going backwards. 2050 New York City might look more like 1900 than 2000.
If one wants to solve the injustices of the past, its important to actually acknowledge the reality of those injustices and how they feed into modern day. The "melting pot" theory I suspect was always a form of injustice in of itself, because it expected people to simply forget what happened to them and accept that they'll never get an apology have amends made for them.
My point is that this identity was expanded to be inclusive in order to build social cohesion. That was a good thing, but now let’s rename it to just “American” and include all ethnic groups, instead of going backwards.
It's extremely important to acknowledge that the barriers to social cohesion for certain races are significantly higher than others. We are in living memory where black children had to be accompanied by the military for their protection because they dared attend the same school as white people.
I’m struggling to see how your comment relates to what I’m saying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
Of course they didn’t have it as bad as black Americans, but that isn’t the topic of this discussion.
Social cohesion largely as a means of sharpening anti-Blackness and of labor control, particularly during and after the defeat of Reconstruction and due to growing relevance of the industrial organized labor movement. Du Bois did an immense amount of work critiquing pretty much exactly this.
Your "melting pot" interpretation concretely just means "they should not be different or receive different things than me".
No, it doesn’t, and that makes no sense. The melting pot idea means that everyone works toward a cohesive national identity and recognizes contributions from everyone. It doesn’t mean that every group should be separate and excluded from each other.
Lemme ask you another question since we're asking silly questions: should Telemundo and Univision be illegal to broadcast in the US because its not in English (cohesive national identity, right?)? Cause that's what you sound like.
You are being sarcastic and not engaging in good faith.
Sure, lets deescalate: are their broadcasting in America and commensurate content choices discriminatory or working against a cohesive national identity?
> You are being sarcastic and not engaging in good faith.
But I find the last bit ironic
In response to your question, yes I would hope that as Latinos continue to become a larger portion of the population, they join the overall “American” culture and influence it. Not remain as a separate group with a separate language and separate media.
If you look at the statistics, this already happens. Second and third generation Latinos identify more as American than as Latino.
Then I don't understand why your response to someone trying to create a platform to express their culture strikes you as "Fracturing."
Looking at top musicians, artists, and other cultural figures, it seems to me like this is already largely the case. Hip hop sales come in large part from white people. I want more of this cultural sharing, not isolationism.
> because we appreciate the HN community taking time to hear our story, for a short period of time, we’re making some of our original black TV shows available for free on our site
Like thousands of business before them they're marketing to an audience but it seems like they're more than happy to build a broader audience.
Just because someone is loud and inflammatory does not mean their views are widely held.
As I said, this is easy to observe from abroad, where there is no space to differentiate between black Americans and white Americans. They’re all just Americans and they mostly act the same way.
American multiculturalism up until WW2 was English, Scottish, Irish, French, Italian, Jewish and Greek. Strictly European, yet still featured plenty of discrimination within those tiers. The discrimination didn't end because people magically became more enlightened, it ended (or at least was greatly reduced) when the marginalized groups assimilated into a more homogenous "American" identity, which defaults to 'white'.
It's not clear where non-Europeans fall into this melting pot concept, because most are not racially ambiguous and cannot claim to be white. Most scripts will not have a protagonist of a specific race. But in casting, it will simply be assumed that the character in question is white. Because melting pot or not, that's what everybody's default is.
And yes, groups of white Americans that were hostile to each other a century ago are now so integrated that it’s not even thought about. An Italian Catholic marrying a German Protestant was a huge deal in 1900. Today it is nothing.
I remember that song from Schoolhouse Rock too. But if as an adult you sincerely believe the US has actually been a "melting pot" at any point in history, you are deeply misinformed. What about Native American genocide, slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow, internment of Japanese-Americans, redlining, or mass incarceration sounds like a "melting pot" to you?
Neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, literature, theaters, and religious institutions are segregated. Black people are still being harassed or worse for being in the "wrong place" at the wrong time. I assure you whatever racist events you hear in the media is just the tip of the iceberg.
I grew up in one of the most racially and culturally diverse places in the US "a true melting pot" and the neighborhoods were still segregated by race and ethnicity.
The cultural contributions you are talking about are mostly selections made by white tastemakers who vet who and what is fashionable for the time. Sometimes to improve marketability they will replace minorities to make the material palatable.
The only thing that matters in America is equity (ownership not fairness). In order for black people to have equity they need to own it.