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Melting Pot” a Unifying Factor in the Chinese Experience

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Melting Pot” a Unifying Factor in the Chinese Experience The Journal of School & Society 21 ISSN 2575-9922 6(1) 21–33 ©Author(s) 2019 earth. Comparative philosophers David L. Hall Diversity, Harmony (he and Roger T. Ames, however, help to dispel what they call the “myth” of Han identity as ), and the “Melting Pot” a unifying factor in the Chinese experience. While it is unlikely that China will ever be the Jim Behuniak robustly multi-racial society that America is, it is Colby College not as homogenous as it might seem. The Han people are indeed the principle ethnic group in China, comprising over 92% of On Columbus Day in 1915, President Theo- the population. What remains are some fifty- dore Roosevelt gave a speech before a largely odd minority ethnic groups. Despite this ethnic Irish-Catholic group belonging to the fraternal imbalance, however, several demographic forc- organization, the Knights of Columbus, at Car- es—regional, cultural, linguistic, and econom- negie Hall in New York City. The topic was the ic—conspire to “create strains on the presumed emergence of so-called “hyphenated American- harmony of the Han Chinese.”1 Generated ism.” within this tension is a rather fervent need to The phrase referred to Americans who had define and retain “Chinese-ness” as a pervasive immigrated to the United States but who still quality in the face of an inexorable and multi- identified with their own cultural backgrounds, scalar dynamism. e.g. those who might call themselves Irish- Such dynamism is a feature of most natural American, Mexican-American, or Chinese- systems, and it is nothing new. For two and a American, meaning to retain some continuity half millennia, Chinese thinkers have been re- with the former term. “There is no room in this flecting on how best to sustain order in the country for hyphenated Americanism,” midst of such dynamism. The concept of har- boomed Roosevelt. “There is no such thing as a mony (he) is at the center of such reflections. hyphenated American who is a good American. Juxtaposing this ancient Chinese ideal with clas- The only man who is a good American is the sical American thinking enables us to appreciate man who is an American and nothing else.” how the ideals that operate in each tradition are This speech was delivered over a century ago, connected—and how such ideals offer an alter- but it sounds like one that could be delivered by native to homogenization as a desirable social an American President today. end. At issue is how American diversity works. America has a tendency to regard homoge- Is “America” one thing or many things? How nization as a social end. Six years prior to deliv- are its parts related to the whole? This piece will ering his “hyphenated Americanism” speech, argue that John Dewey and William James have Roosevelt was in Washington, D.C. for the city resources to address such questions. In what premier of Israel Zangwill’s play, The Melting Pot follows, these resources will be recalled and (1905). The play, which was dedicated to Presi- bolstered alongside the classical Chinese con- dent Roosevelt, portrayed itself as “The Great cept of harmony (he ). American Drama,” an adaptation of Romeo and It might strike readers as odd that Chinese thought should be evoked in a discussion about 1 David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, The Democracy of the American diversity. China is normally regarded Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China as one of the most homogenous societies on (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), 49. The Journal of School & Society 22 ISSN 2575-9922 6(1) 21–33 ©Author(s) 2019 Juliet set in contemporary New York City. Da- Ford Motor Company was established in 1914 vid, an immigrant Russian Jew, falls in love with to facilitate their assimilation into American life. Vera, an immigrant Russian Christian. Togeth- Through the “Ford English School,” immi- er, they unite as Americans to overcome the grants learned to speak English and to practice Old World prejudices that challenge their love. “proper” American habits in areas such as food Naturally, they succeed. Watching as the preparation, etiquette, hygiene, and manners. setting sun gilds the (originally) copper flame of Upon graduation from the Ford English the torch on the Statue of Liberty, the protago- School, a ceremony was held in which the stu- nist declares: “It is the Fires of God around his dents would wear costumes reflecting their na- Crucible! There she lays, the great Melting tive lands and, one-by-one, descend into an Pot—Listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the enormous stage-prop “Melting Pot,” only to bubbling? There gapes her mouth, the harbor emerge in Western suits waving little American where a thousand mammoth feeders come flags. The “Melting Pot” idea thus fit hand-in- from the ends of the world to pour in their hand with industrialization in the United States. human freight.” As David proclaims, “America The Ford Motor Company were not only mass- is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where producing automobiles, they were mass- all the races of Europe are melting and reform- producing “Americans.” Ford’s demographic ing . God is making the American!”2 David proclivities as well as his racial and ethnic pref- and Vera embrace as the curtain falls, and a erences did not go unnoticed on the world burly Teddy Roosevelt could be seen protrud- stage. He would be the only American deemed ing from his loge shouting to the playwright, worthy of praise in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. “That’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill. That’s a John Dewey never liked the “Melting Pot” great play!”3 idea. “The theory of the Melting Pot always Indeed, there is something beautiful and gave me rather a pang,” he remarked.4 It grated moving about Zangwill’s storyline. It reminds against his aesthetic sensibilities. The idea, one that parochial differences between particu- however, had become central in American po- lar cultures can be overcome and deeper loyal- litical discourse and Dewey had to contend with ties realized. Really—what is there not to like? it. Henceforth, the image of America as a “Melt- In the years surrounding the First World ing Pot” would be used to represent to our- War, questions about democracy and ethnicity selves our social ideal. loomed large in the United States, as did con- Not, however, without some disturbing cerns about national loyalty. Dewey was critical- manifestations. The “Melting Pot,” for in- ly engaged in these discussions. Having “lulled stance, became one of Henry Ford’s favorites ourselves to sleep with the word ‘Melting-Pot,’” ideas. Three years after Zangwill’s play premi- he observed, “we have now turned to the word ered, Ford revolutionized American industry ‘hyphenate’ as denoting the last thing in scares with the Ford Model T. Immigrants began with a thrill.” Some were advocating compulso- flocking to Detroit for jobs on the assembly ry military service as a means of forging a lines. The “Sociological Department” of the common national identity among disparate groups in the United States. 2 Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot: Drama in Four Acts (New York: Macmillan Company, 1932), 33, 184-185. 3 Guy Szuberla, “Zangwill's The Melting Pot Plays Chi- 4 “The Principle of Nationality,” Middle Works of John cago,” Melus 20, no. 3 (1995), 3. Dewey, 10, 289, capitalization added. The Journal of School & Society 23 ISSN 2575-9922 6(1) 21–33 ©Author(s) 2019 Dewey rejected that idea. “My recognition America’s original seer here is Walt Whitman. of the need of agencies for creating a potent As Americans, we turn to him to reconnect sense of a national ideal and of achieving habits with our national spirit. 1855’s Leaves of Grass is which will make this sense a controlling power a quintessentially “American” document. In- in action is not ungrudging,” Dewey allows. stantly and almost unnervingly intimate, the “But the primary question is what is the nation- poet cuddles up against the reader to recite a al ideal, and to what kind of national service love song to the human race—a stream of un- does it stand related?” To use military training varnished particulars, each human being a po- to foster a national identity among diverse em inside a poem. The teeming diversity of groups would only “reduce them to an anony- Whitman’s New York City is delivered una- mous and drilled homogeneity,” he submits, bridged. “I speak the password primeval . I “an amalgam whose uniformity would hardly give the sign of democracy,” he exclaims. “By go deeper than the uniforms of the soldiers.”5 God! I will accept nothing which all cannot The intelligent approach to the problem, have their counterpart of on the same terms.”8 according to Dewey, would be to address to- This is an elusive ideal, however, and even gether the means-and-end of forging a national Whitman wavers.9 American diversity is a puz- identity. As Dewey says, “We must ask what a zle because it evokes the age-old problems of real nationalism, a real Americanism, is like. For “Whole/Part” and “One/Many.” As a poem, unless we know our own character and purpose America embraces the entirety of the human we are not likely to be intelligent in our selec- race: “I am large . I contain multitudes.”10 6 tion of the means to further them.” The first question to ask then is what is the distinct charac- 8 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Mineola: Dover Publica- ter of America as we find it? tions, 2007), 39.
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