I was born in March 1958, eventually to become the middle of nine children in a loving, close-knit Catholic and Polish-Irish American family in Detroit. We were taught to take pride in America, our faith, and our ancestry while respecting people of all other races, creeds, and cultures. Mom and Dad taught us America's great strength from her Constitution, her free markets, her laws, and the idea of America as a great “melting pot.”
My parents inspired us by regularly telling us we were Americans and we could do anything! My Father, a B-17 US Army Air Corps navigator during World War II, often used the stars to set the flight path for his crew when returning to their home base in England at night. As children, my Father would usually take us outside on a clear night and show us the North Star and constellations like Orion’s Belt and Cassiopeia’s Chair. At the end of his lesson, he reminded us that we could accomplish anything with hard work and strong character and encouraged us to “reach for the stars.” Later in college, I realized my Mom and Dad had been parenting us, probably unintentionally, through the words of the famous American advertising executive Leo Burnett. Burnett advised America, “When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud, either.” We truly believed work and a strong moral compass could secure almost anything.
The melting pot metaphor was well-established in my mind as I began to create my own American Dream, as that reality held sway around our dinner table in my high school classes at Detroit’s Redford St. Mary’s and beyond. My reading extended the metaphor as a blend of people of varied races, cultures, strengths, and skills, a benefit celebrated even at its founding, and contrasting greatly with the uniformity of many other nations. Indeed, this apparent contrast lay behind the powerful metaphor but may also have suggested its limitations. However, at the time, I saw chiefly its great strength in creating a unified nation.
The phrase “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many One) was suggested by Pierre Eugene Simitiere in 1776 as the motto for the Great Seal of the United States to objectify the metaphor—perhaps for the first time. Ralph Waldo Emerson changed the metaphor a bit in 1845, calling it a smelting pot, though his comment wasn’t published until 1912.
However, it was Israel Zangwill who popularized the melting pot metaphor. He was an author, playwright, and immigrant born in London, though his parents were from what is now Latvia and Poland. In 1908, after writing several successful books, Zangwill wrote a play called The Melting Pot about a Russian/Jewish immigrant family, giving rise to the popularity of the metaphor. David Quixana, the protagonist whose mother and sister were killed in a pogrom, yearned for a society free from ethnic divisions that would serve as a refuge from persecution for political and religious beliefs.
Zangwill wrote, “America is God’s crucible; the great melting-pot where all races of Europe are melting and reforming…God is making the American.”
Teddy Roosevelt attended Zangwill’s play, reviewed it, and supported its vision. This hastened the popularity of the metaphor while raising a few more questions about its perfection. Some began to question whether new immigrants could rightly be seen as going into the pot and instantly becoming brand new creatures with uniform “American” qualities. Though there was real truth in the melting pot notion, it also fell short of the real promise of 1776 that immigrants’ differences would be protected.
When I now consider my present vision of America and her success, especially in righting the injustice of slavery and championing women’s suffrage, I think of Dr. David E. Fry, whom the world lost in December 2023. I met David in 1976 when he left the classroom and began his long career as an administrator at Northwood University. Fry served as Instructor, Professor, Dean, Chancellor and eventually President. I was a new freshman then and would later also serve at Northwood as a Professor, Dean, and Vice President—for several years under his mentorship.
David Fry had a singular gift as a speaker and motivator. He always helped us feel better about ourselves and our potential. He could raise all boats, as they say. He reminded us often how fortunate we were to offer our free enterprise education in a place where it would be realized and have immediacy. An extraordinary percentage of our alumni become entrepreneurs and important contributors to their communities because of his vision.
It was no surprise to me that David would “take on” the melting pot metaphor, not the least because he came to see that it was antithetical to the vision of a free and prosperous society. And it did not show us what really happens in America. America, David told us, is not a melting pot but a glorious, bountiful garden salad. Some of us were field greens and some romaine lettuce. There were croutons and olives and cheese, chicken, peppers, pine nuts, and many more offerings. Nobody thought putting them in a blender would be a good idea. They contributed their individual value, but they remained separate contributors. Gloriously, they were brought together by a delightful dressing. And the whole was better than its contributors.
I saw instantly that David’s new metaphor worked. He saw that we were all different and that our differences were essential to the greatness of America. Pipefitters, carpenters, Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, chemists, engineers, Pakistanis, Germans, Kenyans, Koreans, chefs, restaurateurs, pilots, park rangers, each of us offers something different. We share the food and drink and stories of every nation, culture, and faith.
Many of our prominent citizens today came here and are part of the salad we enjoy. I think of McCoy, Einstein, Carnegie, and Tesla among thousands of people in our history. There are many American leaders today, such as Sergey Brin, who came here from Russia and co-founded Google, and Elon Musk, who migrated from South Africa and founded SpaceX and Tesla and co-founded PayPal. Perhaps just as important, our immigrants' second, third, and fourth generations moved our country forward from the 1500s. Dr. Fry’s dear wife, Claudia, came here from West Germany, and my wife’s grandmother (her Sittee) from Lebanon. Almost every family can tell immigrant stories going back a generation or two, and the stories illustrate the garden salad with our Constitution based rule of law and free enterprise system; the dressing.
We are truly blessed in this nation.
Today, especially during these challenging times, I think it is important for Americans to once again celebrate Dr. Fry’s assertion that “it is our differences that make us interesting and useful to each other.” Though we may not always agree, let’s renew the American tradition of respecting each other and our differences. Good and decent people should be able to disagree and still get along. It’s an American tradition.
Dr. Timothy G. Nash is Sr. Vice President Emeritus and director of the McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Northwood University.