Some Observations on Minority Integration in American Mainstream

Abstract

Many Americans believe in the melting pot, but in practice they apply the cookie cutter. For those who could fit the mold, socioeconomic advancement in a class society was possible based upon one’s individual efforts. Status was earned or determined by what one did. After the changes of 1960s assumptions retained by Americans for hundreds of years were examined by the great majority. At the peak of the questions was the letting pot assumption of how one enters the mainstream of the American society. Laborers and blacks wanted the equitable share or quality of the socioeconomic pie. However, they could not give up their differences to fit the cookie-cutter mold as white laborers did. The price of entry was extremely high and impossible. With the assertion of black identity the civil rights movement of 1960s became qualitative and is the basis of all identity movements since then. Women’s Liberation, Chicano Liberation, and all other such movements affirm the right to be different and still have their fair share of the American pie.