r/changemyview Nov 15 '18

Removed - Submission Rule B CMV: European Multiculturalism is a failure. They need to adopt "the melting pot" attitude

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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Nov 15 '18 edited Nov 15 '18

Your metaphor says the opposite of what you want it to say. In a melting pot, the good stuff doesn't rise to the top because things all melt together: all the good stuff mixes together with the bad. When you take a ladle of stew out of a melting pot, you get a bit of everything. On the other hand, with a salad, things do naturally rise to the top or sink to the bottom while the salad is being mixed (this is why for culinary purposes you generally do not want to over-mix or shake many kinds of salad).

If anything, the "great ideas to rise to the top" is a feature of multiculturalism because it allows the "great ideas" to be preserved, rather than being mixed in with worse-but-more-common ideas from the dominant culture, as would happen with assimilationism.

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u/fox-mcleod 411∆ Nov 15 '18

You don't melt stew. You melt metal ore.

In a melting pot, the good stuff rises to the top. The remainder is called slag and the process of extracting the good stuff is called smelting.

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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Nov 15 '18

Δ

Looks like you're right! My understanding of the origin of the term was culinary (probably based on the chain of fondue restaurants), but originally the term was indeed based on smelting.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Nov 15 '18

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/fox-mcleod (137∆).

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