When one has a melting pot, one usually has SLUDGE on the bottom of it.

No, what???
 

Chaos,

No, what??? You always trying to start some chaos. You already got my man, TruGreek going bananas. Not me Chaos, nope. :)

Now that's deep.

No, you're wrong.

Interesting links "Melting Pot":
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_...lting_Pot.html

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/melting%2520pot.html

http://encarta.msn.com/thesaurus_/melting%2520pot.html

And for those whose interest is in food:
http://www.meltingpot.com/

Salad Bowl is a better term.

Melting pot implies that you add different ingredients that become ONE entity at the end that is comprised of all of them. This is clearly not what America is, as we have many distinct racial, ethinic, religious groups in this country that are very different than each other.

Read Reinventing the Melting Pot, it's good. One guy uses the term "alloy", like metal alloy, as a metaphor. I think thats a good explanation.

Actually, I like "pot of stew" better.

My polysci teacher talked a lot about how during the period that "melting pot" was really used we were much more of a stew/salad and these days so much more of culture and race blends over into each other. They're not irrelevant or completely intermeshed but we're more mingled now than we ever have been in our country's history.

Perhaps the best "melting pot" idea would be melting metal (as someone else said) or something solid enough that they don't mix completely but wherever two different types touch there's blending.

All this talk about race and culture is making me extremely hungry.

reminds me of seafood gumbo...but I prefer clam chowder :p

to me, melting pot sounds like fusing things together, which may not be the best term to descibe our country. More like every single culture co-exist here, but not fuse and blend in. When you talk about fusing or blending, that simply implies that ones culture blends into another and lost its original form, which is not the case here. Every culture here preserves their own traditions, like Chinese people do the lion dance, irish people uses four leaf clovers as a symbol during st patrick's day.

The blending comes when "everyone" becomes Irish on St. Patrick's day or entire cities celebrate the Chinese New Year etc. I agree that they all coexist but they also mesh into each other and back out again.

I demand a free meal everytime I click on this thread.

As long as no one types "tossed salad."

Precisely.