An Acquired Taste

The “melting pot” and “salad bowl” analogies, as applied to diversity in America, are somewhat played out, so apologies for rehashing them.  It remains a useful metaphor, up to a point. 

A melting pot kind of blurs everything together into mush, which is at its best bland and at its worst a not so subtle message from the “assimilation” crowd that coming to America means shedding your past distinctiveness and conforming to “our” way of life. 

In a salad bowl, individual ingredients are allowed to be themselves.  Indeed, that’s what makes good salads good: differences, in taste and texture and color, rather than all of one or two things. 

But to continue the analogy, I think some would argue that that’s the point and problem with America sometimes, is that there are individual ingredients that I don’t like, and I’d rather they not be in my salad.  I don’t share this perspective, and in fact find it abhorrent.  But nor am I going to change the mind of those who believe this, simply by espousing analogies of melting pots or salad bowls.

Leave aside the notion that “I got here first so I get to say who else can come after me.”  Leave aside the notion that America was founded on an ideal of acceptance and shelter and egalitarianism.  Stay with salad for a second. 

There are some ingredients that, if you are not used to them, really stand out, and not always in a good way.  Our palates are simply not used to them, and in fact may default to rejecting them.  Who among us has never picked something out of a salad, or avoided it altogether, just because of a single stray ingredient? 

Some ingredients are acquired tastes.  We may not take to them right away, but given a chance they grow on us.  Some may even become surprising favorites.  At the very least, over time they are not longer to be avoided or picked out. 

You may think our country is irreparably damaged, and you might be right.  You may think we have too many immigrants, and the government needs to act aggressively to change that.  You may think we have too few immigrants, and the government should be ashamed of its treatment of the ones we do have.  I choose to hold out hope for what I believe to be a singularly American ideal, of an acceptance and shelter and egalitarianism that is not only morally right but also makes for a damn good salad.