It’s Apparently World Chocolate Chocolate today. For years I have been purporting that America’s days as a melting pot, where all ethnicities eventually blend and merge into a pot of homogeneity, are over. In the early 90’s the “salsa” metaphor took over, claiming the Americans retained individual aspects of their cultures, and the flavors do not so much merge as they work in concert. While student teaching many moons ago, I hosted a lively debate with high school sophomores over which metaphor they found to be the most apt. At the end of the debate, they asked me which side I really believed was true. My answer: neither. American is a bubbling, chocolate fountain. Americans, depending on the origin, arrival, and desire to immerse into American culture are the vehicles for the chocolate, the tasty goodies if you will.

Take for instance the town where I grew up. The Catholic parishes were still divided along ethnic lines. There was a German parish, an Italian parish, and an Irish parish. Each had their own festivals, cookbooks, and sense of superiority over the others. In truth, almost all of the parishioners were 2^nd or 3^rd generation. My friend’s grandma who used her mother’s sauerbraten recipe, a pretzel passed through the fountain so many times that you could barely see the original form. My friend whose parents owned a local pizza shop and had immigrated from Italy, they were like pizelles who reluctantly drizzled chocolate because they felt they had to do so or perhaps. They still kept their Sunday family dinners, insisted on Italian in the home, keep plastic on the furniture, and refused to let their daughters out of the house.

Americans and those who are living here are CHOOSING how much to immerse themselves into the fountain. There are some who shun the fountain altogether, and there are lots of groups who perhaps just don’t mix with with the chocolate well because of who they are. I see myself as an American of Eastern-European descent who is trying to reclaim part of my heritage. Maybe I’m a chuck of babka that’s heavily coated in dried up chocolate and I’m trying to chip it away. With my children I realize that they will be dipped, but I am trying to not to drop them into the pool of delicious, but all consuming chocolate. In the end, they may choose, like each of us, how much they want to immerse themselves.