611

DISPLACEMENT AND ASSIMILATION

Every nation tells stories about itself.

One of the most enduring stories America tells about itself is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Since the time of the Puritans fleeing religious persecution, America has presented itself as a place to begin again and find economic, social, and religious freedom.

And yet, like all myths, it’s a bit too simplistic. The reality of immigration is that it is complex—culturally, politically, and economically. Do all Americans really believe in the welcoming gesture of the Statue of Liberty? Is the new image of American immigration more like an armed border with Mexico? Do all immigrants willingly and easily leave everything behind to start a new life in America? Are conflicts between the new immigrants and the society they enter inevitable? Is America really a “melting pot,” where “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men,” as one of the texts in this Conversation suggests, or is it closer to what writer Jane Elliot observes when she says:

We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl.

In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables — the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers — to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.

These are some of the questions that you will consider in this Conversation.

While it’s unlikely that you will be able to answer with certainty these questions that have challenged people for hundreds of years, you will have an opportunity to thoughtfully consider and expand on your own ideas of immigration and enter the Conversation with your own point of view.