Ishmael Reed Quotes

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

I'm proud to be an American. I'm proud to be an African American in America. I've had some interesting experiences: some great, some not so great, but I love it here.

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.

The greatness of Americans is that we are mosaic - we are diverse.

American literature has always been immigrant.

Everyone should be proud of who they are and where they come from because America is a big melting pot of diverse ethnicities. It's great to be part of this wonderful country.

We hear a lot in this country about family, and 'American Family' just shows us a portrait we haven't seen as much of yet. 'American Family' lets us know that being American isn't about the color of your hair or eyes or skin: it's really a state of mind.

I've been marching in every single ethnic nationality parade all throughout the City of New York. We're all Americans first and foremost, but people understand their heritage and it's good to see.

To be an American is to be part of the world because America, all the people of the world come to America.

I love the diversity of America. I love the plain, normal sense of humor Americans have. It is not wicked, like in some countries. And I also love how new America is.

Americans are the pick of the more adventurous and people of all races.

No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.

New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures. There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum — out of many we are one.

All American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction.

I am proof that, as Americans, we can embrace our differences.

I've always seen myself as an all-American kid, you know. You're not just white or black or Asian or Latino. We're in the melting pot of America.

We're a country of many different cultures, and that's always what has made this country stand out. It almost feels like making diverse movies is the most American thing you can do.

We are a part of this unique, complex, and complicated fabric of what it means to be an American. Americans come in all colors, creeds, and colors of the rainbow, and we can celebrate this together.

Happy World Poetry Day: 'The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

And he [Louis Brandeis] talks to his young acolyte, Horace Kallen, who wrote this beautiful book called Cultural Pluralism, and he comes to believe that by being better Jews, or better members of our ethnic group, we can be better Americans, because America is like an orchestra in which identity is defined by the diversity of perspectives that we bring to the table.

I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration. We fundamentally have been a culture that's been put together from the explosions of other cultures. But it's hard for us to see. We have blinded ourselves to the reality of what our country is.

Since the 1960s, we have seen the failure of the melting pot ideology. This ideology suggested that different historical, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds could be subordinated to a larger ideology or social amalgam which is "America." This concept obviously did not work, because paradoxically America encourages a politics of contestation.

Of course I'm a black writer... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American.

The cultural mix that's happened in the United States is wonderful! Funny enough, one of the most wonderful things about it is that there is no American race.