The document discusses the history of immigration and assimilation in the United States. It notes that over 350 years, some 45 million people have migrated to the US, far more than the original American population in 1776. While some hoped ethnic differences would disappear, enforced homogenization is actually divisive. True unity comes from embracing cultural diversity, not demanding assimilation to a single culture.

1. At the annual Lower East Side Jewish Festival yesterday, a Chinese woman ate a pizza slice in front of Ty Thuan Duc’s Vietnamese grocery store. Beside her a Spanish-speaking family patronized a cart with two signs: “Italian Ices” and “Kosher by Rabbi Alper.” And after the pastrami ran out, everybody ate knishes.” --New York Times, 23 June 1983

2. Every nation has had its immigration and emigration problems. But the mass immigration that took place to the United States is unmatched elsewhere. In the more than 350 years since the English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown, some 45 million people have migrated to these shores. This figure is many times greater than the American population in 1776. It is several times the number of people now living in the eight Rocky Mountain states. The people of America adds up to the greatest migration of all time, dwarfing all other population movements before or since. --Andrew Kopan, “Melting Pot: Myth or Reality”

3. “ For good reasons, educated Americans have for a long time hoped that ethnic differences would weaken and disappear...” “ The truth is the reverse. What is illiberal is homogenization enforced in the name of liberalism. What is divisive is an enforced and premature unity, especially a unity in which some groups are granted cultural superiority as models for the others.” Michael Novak, “How American Are You?”

4. Because we have little use for history, and because we refuse the comforts of a society established on the blueprint of class privilege, we find ourselves set adrift at birth in an existential void, inheriting nothing except the obligation to construct a plausible self. --Lewis H. Lapham, “Who and What Is an American?”

5. “ Among all the nations of the earth, America is the one that has come more triumphantly to terms with the mixtures of blood and caste, and maybe it is another of history’s ironic jokes that we should wish to repudiate our talent for assimilation at precisely the moment in time when so many other nations in the world...look to the promise of American democracy. --Lewis H. Lapham, “Who and What Is an American?”

6. “ Why do we cling to an adversarial, victim-focused identity that preoccupies us with white racism? I think because of fear, self-doubt, and simple inexperience. ...I believe we carry an inferiority anxiety that makes the seizing of opportunity more risky for us, since setbacks and failures may seem to confirm inferiority. --Shelby Steele, “Individualism and Black Identity”

7. “ We are inextricably bound together in a single garment of destiny. Red, yellow, brown, black and white, we are all precious in God’s sight. We have come a long way from where we started.” --Jesse Jackson, Speech before the Democratic National Convention