the great american potluck
a special discount + thanksgiving reflection from the archives
In this week that is marked by gratitude, I want to first thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. Whether you’ve been following TCL for years, you’re following along as I write my first book, or you just subscribed this past week, I am incredibly glad you’re here. I do not take lightly the opportunity to occupy a line in your email inbox or show up on your phone as a notification. It truly is an honor.
The image of thanksgiving often reminds me of the potluck. While there are always a handful of staples on the dinner table, each year a friend or relative always brings something a bit…experimental. Whether it is from a TikTok video or a dish buried deep in the archives of AllRecipesDotCom, the dishes we bring to the Thanksgiving feast tell a piece of our story.
Although far from perfect, the image of the potluck has been one I’ve leaned on when describing how we might embrace the diversity and difference found in each of our communities. At the potluck (or thanksgiving feast), we bring the best we have to offer so that those around us might experience joy and gladness.
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“The Great American Potluck,” Sojourners, 2021.
“My grandmother came from Russia, a satchel on her knee / my grandfather had his father's cap he brought from Italy / They'd heard about a country where life might let them win / they paid the fare to America and there they melted in / Lovely Lady Liberty with her book of recipes and the finest one she's got / is the great American melting pot.”
I remembered watching this video in a middle school history course, waiting in anticipation for the song to mention my homeland, India — waiting to see Black and brown immigrants portrayed in the video. But as the song continued, the primary focus was on countries and immigrants who were white.
The lack of non-white immigrants depicted in the video reflects the greater reality of the melting pot — one of death, silencing, and erasure. These, too, are ingredients for the melting pot. The song calls students to “go on and ask your grandma, hear what she has to tell [about] how great [it is] to be an American.” However, students will find a stark contrast to this light-hearted tune if one’s grandmother suffered under Jim Crow or was placed in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. It was not so great to be an American for all of our grandparents.
Beyond the catchy melody and optimistic cartoons, the melting pot is a disarming appeal to diversity that projects an innocent history of America. By subsuming all identities into a homogenous thing while erasing the histories and experiences of Indigenous, African, Asian, and other minority experiences, the melting pot perspective treats minorities like seasoning meant to be added to a soup. But when the soup is whiteness, there is no amount of seasoning that can make it edible.
When I watched the “Great American Melting Pot” again this week, my heart sank as cartoon immigrants, one after another, fell from the sky and optimistically dove into the melting pot. In contrast to my sadness, the song joyfully continued, “You simply melt right in, it doesn't matter what your skin. It doesn't matter where you're from or your religion, you jump right in to the great American melting pot.” But it does matter, I thought. It does matter.
…
Once we imagine and embrace this country as a potluck, the idea of the melting pot grows increasingly unappetizing. If one were to take everything at a potluck and throw it into one large pot, it would ruin each dish. More than that, it would ultimately dishonor the craft, beauty, and history of each unique dish brought to the table. Each dish is a story meant to be heard in its fullness, not to be thrown into a big pot and boiled down into one substance. Nobody wants to eat that.
…and for those who feel the post-Thanksgiving tension of wanting “Christmas” but not Christmas, here is a playlist to get you through the next few weeks:
We who are white need to hear the perspectives of people of color over and over and over. At some point, it may sink in and we'll begin to understand.