We are one?

America is a land of immigration. Over time, there have been different theories how all the different cultures and identities would relate to each other.

"Where do you come from?" "What's the difference, I'm here now."

(from the 1986 movie And the Pursuit of Happiness)

The earliest and most famous theory is the Theory of Assimilation, better known as "Melting Pot". The idea behind the Melting Pot was that, once the migrants had arrived in America, they would deny their ethnic difference and forget their cultural practices. The result would be a homogeneous American society.

One big problem with the Melting Pot theory was that it is a theory created to explain only identity changes of immigrants. Native Americans, however, are technically speaking not immigrants. They were seen as too different to be easily assimilated. In order to teach them the American way of live, the reservation policy was introduced. Native Americans children were taken away from their parents and educated in boarding schools. They were not allowed to use their native language and they were taught Western values such as ownership and punctuality.

In the 1960s, a  new theory was established - the Mosaic or Salad Bowl Theory. In a salad, the single ingredients keep their form, but together they form something completely new and delicious. Similarly, a mosaic cosists of single pieces that together form something new and beautiful. Unlike the Melting Pot, where everything is mixed into a homogeneous pulp, the Salad Bowl Theory does not deny ethnic differences. Even though this is a progress, the Salad Bowl Theory has its issues. Pieces of a mosaic are "closed" objects, they never change their form. Even though a mosaic piece, in other words a culture, touches another piece, another culture, it would never interact or be changed by the contact, according to this theory.

The most recent theory is the Theory of Hybridity, a theory from postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha. Hybridity allows difference, but pulls towards sameness and fusion. According to this theory, the relation with another culture, another identity, always changes something in ourselves.