While slowly writing a long poem about America as the nation of many nations, I've been reading widely about the peoples who have come together to form the American people - the numerous tribes of indigenous American Indians of course, and then a vast, continuing, 400-year migration of East Anglian Puritans, West Country Cavaliers, Dutch Calvinists, North Midland Quakers, German Pietists, enslaved Africans, British convicts, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, Irish Catholics, Norwegian and Swedish Lutherans, Jews, Italians, French Canadians, Portuguese, Finns, Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Japanese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Mexicans, Cubans, Brazilians, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Hmong, Lebanese, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Ethiopians, Nigerians, and folks from every other nation of the world.
Although there is some truth to both the monocultural "melting pot" and multicultural "salad bowl" metaphors, lately I've become fond of the "gumbo" metaphor: a delicious stew containing many ingredients that cooks for a long time to yield a classic American dish from the great state of Louisiana. Naturally, no metaphor completely captures reality, but perhaps the "gumbo" metaphor does greater justice to the reality of American life - and, appropriately enough as a description of what Albert Murray called the inherently mulatto culture of America, the word 'gumbo' is likely of African origin.
One factor that speaks in favor of the "gumbo" metaphor is the phenomenon of ethnic attrition. In his 1781 essay "What Is an American" in 1781, J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur noted the emergence of a sort of an original American "stock", formed at that time from English, Dutch, Swedish, Welsh, German, Scotch, Irish, and French immigrants. Aside from the Amish (who still call everyone else "the English"), few if any people whose ancestors came to America 200+ years ago can be said to be ethnically Dutch or Welsh or German (etc.), primarily because of widespread intermarriage but also through the simple course of time, the passing of generations, the loss of personal connections to the old country, etc. Moving forward to 1920, in his essay "Trans-National America" Randolph Bourne drew attention to "vigorous nationalistic and cultural movements in this country among Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians, and Poles", yet those too have disappeared for the same reasons. Metaphorically speaking, as we cook more ethnic "ingredients" for hundreds of years, the basic American "stock" becomes ever more tasty yet it's ever more difficult to distinguish each contributing flavor.
I see no reason why these trends won't continue. Just as today there are no 20th-generation Dutch-Americans or 10th-generation German-Americans, and not even many 5th-generation Mexican-Americans, so (if the USA lasts until its quincentenary) 250 years from now it will be rare to find a 10th-generation Cuban-American, Indian-American, or Nigerian-American. In the meantime, these people from all over the world are continually adding to the inimitable stew that is American culture.
Here's to the gumbo!
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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