Horace Kallen and the Myth of the American Melting Pot

Horace M. Kallen

1924

I

That the image of these United States as a “melting-pot” might be a delusion and its imputed harmony with democracy a snare was not an idea which, prior to the Great War, seemed even possible to Americans, whether of the philanthropic or the academic or the business community. The spontaneous invincible egotism of the group was too impenetrable…

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Fears that immigrants would overwhelm native-born Americans fueled restrictive laws and nativist warnings about “race suicide.” Yet similar anxieties also inspired campaigns for “Americanization,” promoting education and assimilation. Political leaders and intellectuals debated the goal: should immigrants fully surrender their cultures in a melting pot, or, as Jewish thinker Horace Kallen argued, should America celebrate diversity as its strength? Defying nativist ideas, Kallen envisioned a nation enriched—not threatened—by immigration, warning that without new voices and traditions, the American experiment would stagnate and lose its vitality.

Creator Bio

Horace M. Kallen

1882–1974

The social philosopher Horace M. Kallen was born in Silesia, the son of a rabbi, but came with his parents to the United States in 1887. He was educated at Harvard and taught there, at Clark University, and at the University of Wisconsin. In 1919, he helped to found the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he taught for the rest of his life. His best-known contribution to American thought was his theory of cultural pluralism. Rejecting Israel Zangwill’s vision of the United States as a melting-pot, he compared American society to a symphony orchestra, to which each immigrant group contributed its own distinctive sound. He opposed efforts to force the homogenization of American society and urged immigrants to cultivate and take pride in their national origins. Not surprisingly, he was a supporter of Zionism.

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