The limits of immigration are set not by economics but by political psychology—by backlash unconcerned with net benefits.
On October 5, 1908, a hammy melodrama made its début in Washington, D.C.: Israel Zangwill’s “The Melting-Pot,” a four-act play that introduced the dominant metaphor for the American immigrant experience. The plot is thin—a New York tenement romance threatened by an Old World blood feud is mended by the salvific power of patriotism. Mostly, it’s a pretext for pontificating about a new American religion. “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!” the protagonist, a struggling Jewish composer named David Quixano, proclaims. “What is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!”
The critics were mainly contemptuous. “Sentimental trash masquerading as a human document,” the New York Times judged. Across the Atlantic, the Times of London declared the play’s “rhapsodising over music and crucibles and statues of liberty” to be “romantic claptrap.” But when President Theodore Roosevelt attended the première he was utterly smitten. (“That’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that’s a great play!” he is said to have shouted.) The vivid allegory—of “souls melting in the Crucible” and divine fires purging inherited rivalries—imprinted something indelible on the American psyche.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 12, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 12, 2023-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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TRIPLE FAULT
A meal is never just a meal in a Luca Guadagnino movie; each bite is a prelude to a kiss, every feast a form of foreplay.
NIGHT MUSIC
“Stereophonic” and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on Broadway.
LITTLE OLD HER
Is Taylor Swift doing too much?
BEASTLY MATTERS
Where the logic behind the concern for animal welfare begins and ends.
PULSE
He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm, and tugged the door shut.
TOWER IN FLAMES
What kind of right is academic freedom?
THE BATTLE FOR ATTENTION
How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
ON NATIVE GROUNDS
Deb Haaland faces the cruel history of the agency she now leads.
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Can converting office towers into apartments save empty downtowns from ruin?
HOROSCOPES WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER
Your zodiac alignment this month is governed by Venus, the planet of intuition, something my daughter Bess seems to lack.