that one could find a person who would argue that ours is not indeed a multicultural society. One has only to walk down the streets of any major U.S. city to hear a dozen different languages being spoken. This is not in contention. What is in contention, in blunt terms, is what should be done about this fact. Many Americans believe in what has over the past century been seen as a ômelting potö ideal of the country, in which everyone comes from someone else and contributes something of their own language, customs, beliefs and history into the commonality of American culture and in return is assimilated into an average American, someone who is a multicultural hodge-podge. There are certainly some good elements to this model. It has a certain basic democratic nature to it, a sense that everyone does indeed have something to contribute to the national dialogue and the national culture. However, it does also assume that the goal of being an American means less of whatever else one is -- less Armenian, less Jewish, less Nigerian, and the enforced nature
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