Editing Melting pot (section)

==United States==

=== Melting pot "methods" ===
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| quote = The [[baseball field|[baseball] field]] is the real crucible, the melting pot wherein the rival races are being mixed, combined and molded to the standards of real citizenship and the requirements of the true American.
| author = W. A. Phelon (1910)
| source = <ref>{{Cite web |last=Goetsch |first=Diana |date=2011-03-02 |title=Baseball's Loss of Innocence |url=https://theamericanscholar.org/baseballs-loss-of-innocence/ |access-date=2024-10-03 |website=The American Scholar |language=en-US}}</ref>
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There were a number of ways that the melting pot is considered to have worked throughout American history. For example, [[baseball]], whose unifying powers were first perceived in the aftermath of the 1860s [[American Civil War|Civil War]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Casway |first=Jerrold I. |url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dNUkDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1 |title=The Culture and Ethnicity of Nineteenth Century Baseball |date=2017-05-15 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-2596-6 |language=en}}</ref> was often said to play a significant role in [[Americanization (immigration)|integrating immigrants]] in particular.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Missimer |first=Katy |date=2019-03-18 |title=American Immigration and Baseball: A Parallel Pastime |url=https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/the_histories/vol5/iss2/5/ |journal=The Histories |volume=5 |issue=2}}</ref> In New York City, where the [[Knickerbocker Rules|modern version of baseball began]], immigrants invented [[Variations of baseball|variations of the game]] in the streets at the turn of the 20th century in their rush to integrate themselves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baker |first=Kevin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OV_DEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA163 |title=The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City |date=2024-03-05 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-375-42183-9 |language=en}}</ref> In an international context, the sport played a role in some of the United States's early intercultural encounters.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mania |first=Andrzej |url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=a7X2CwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA308 |title=The United States and the World: From Imitation to Challenge |last2=Wordliczek |first2=Łukasz |date=2010-01-15 |publisher=Wydawnictwo UJ |isbn=978-83-233-8280-5 |language=en}}</ref> Baseball also [[Race and sports in the United States|improved race relations]]: [[Jackie Robinson]] was a major black baseball-playing icon who crossed Major League Baseball's [[Baseball color line|color line]] by 1947, which helped to reduce racial segregation.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Black Man and Baseball: A Melting Pot Is Dented |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/09/archives/black-man-and-baseball-a-melting-pot-is-dented.html |work=The New York Times|date=9 May 1976 |last1=Voigt |first1=David O. }}</ref>

===Multiracial influences on culture===
White Americans long regarded some elements of [[African-American culture]] quintessentially "American", while at the same time treating African Americans as second-class citizens. White appropriation, stereotyping and mimicking of black culture played an important role in the construction of an urban popular culture in which European immigrants could express themselves as Americans, through such traditions as [[blackface]], [[minstrel show]]s and later in [[jazz]] and in early Hollywood cinema, notably in ''[[The Jazz Singer]]'' (1927).<ref name="Rogin">{{cite journal|last=Rogin|first=Michael|date=December 1992|title=Making America Home: Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation in the Transition to Talking Pictures|journal=The Journal of American History|publisher=Organization of American Historians|volume=79|issue=3|pages=1050–77|access-date=2011-05-14|doi=10.2307/2080798|jstor=2080798|url=http://www.library.eiu.edu/ersvdocs/4455.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807164904/http://www.library.eiu.edu/ersvdocs/4455.pdf|archive-date=2011-08-07}}</ref>

Analyzing the "racial masquerade" that was involved in creation of a white "melting pot" culture through the stereotyping and imitation of black and other non-white cultures in the early 20th century, historian Michael Rogin has commented: "Repudiating 1920s nativism, these films [Rogin discusses ''The Jazz Singer'', ''[[Old San Francisco]]'' (1927), ''[[Whoopee! (film)|Whoopee!]]'' (1930), ''[[King of Jazz]]'' (1930) celebrate the melting pot. Unlike other racially stigmatized groups, white immigrants can put on and take off their mask of difference. But the freedom promised immigrants to make themselves over points to the vacancy, the violence, the deception, and the melancholy at the core of American self-fashioning".<ref name="Rogin"/>

====Ethnicity in films====
This trend towards greater acceptance of ethnic and racial minorities was evident in popular culture in the combat films of World War II, starting with [[Bataan (film)|''Bataan'']] (1943). This film celebrated solidarity and cooperation between Americans of all races and ethnicities through the depiction of a multiracial American unit. At the time blacks and Japanese in the armed forces were still segregated, while Chinese and Indians were in integrated units.

Historian [[Richard Slotkin]] sees ''Bataan'' and the combat genre that sprang from it as the source of the "melting pot platoon", a cinematic and cultural convention symbolizing in the 1940s "an American community that did not yet exist", and thus presenting an implicit protest against racial segregation. However, Slotkin points out that ethnic and racial harmony within this platoon is predicated upon racist hatred for the Japanese enemy: "the emotion which enables the platoon to transcend racial prejudice is itself a virulent expression of racial hatred...The final heat which blends the ingredients of the melting pot is rage against an enemy which is fully dehumanized as a race of 'dirty monkeys.{{'"}} He sees this racist rage as an expression of "the unresolved tension between racialism and civic egalitarianism in American life".<ref name="Slotkin">{{cite journal|doi=10.1093/alh/13.3.469|last=Slotkin|first=Richard|date=Fall 2001|title=Unit Pride: Ethnic Platoons and the Myths of American Nationality|journal=American Literary History|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|volume=13|issue=9|pages=469–98|s2cid=143996198|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_literary_history/v013/13.3slotkin.html|access-date=2008-07-15|archive-date=2011-11-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111130121443/http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_literary_history/v013/13.3slotkin.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Olympic Games====
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the [[2002 Winter Olympics]] in [[Salt Lake City]] strongly revived the melting pot image, returning to a bedrock form of American nationalism and patriotism. The reemergence of Olympic melting pot discourse was driven especially by the unprecedented success of [[African Americans]], [[Mexican Americans]], [[Asian Americans]], and [[Native Americans of the United States|Native Americans]] in events traditionally associated with Europeans and white North Americans such as speed skating and the bobsled.<ref>Mark Dyerson, "'America's Athletic Missionaries': Political Performance, Olympic Spectacle and the Quest for an American National Culture, 1896–1912," ''International Journal of the History of Sport'' 2008 25(2): 185–203; Dyerson, "Return to the Melting Pot: An Old American Olympic Story,"  ''International Journal of the History of Sport'' 2008 25(2): 204–23</ref> The 2002 Winter Olympics was also a showcase of American religious freedom and cultural tolerance of the history of Utah's large majority population of [[the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]], as well as representation of [[Muslim Americans]] and other religious groups in the U.S. Olympic team.<ref>Ethan R. Yorgason (2003). ''Transformation of the Mormon culture region''. pp. 1, 190 {{ISBN|978-0-252-07771-5}}</ref><ref>[[W. Paul Reeve]] and [[Ardis E. Parshall]], eds. (2010). ''Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia''. p. 318 {{ISBN|9781598841077}}</ref>