Watching the American Sesame Street was my first view of a world so different from mine, where children have different skin colors and facial features. It was the America I learned about in school later, the country referred to as the New World, a melting pot of cultures and peoples. In the summer prior to my freshmen year at university, I traveled to the U.S. for the first time. The 3-month trip opened my eyes to looking at the world from a new perspective, comparing my own upbringing and traditions with that of others, and for the first time realizing how special me being German seemed to be to others.
After marrying my American husband and officially immigrating to the United States almost 20 years ago, and while traveling the globe for leisure and business, I only became more intrigued by the idea of a melting pot that collects diversity and creates a common identity. I have witnessed racism in more than one country, but still believe that the American ideology of the founding fathers can overcome discrimination of all kinds.
At a luncheon I hosted in my house a few years ago, a big discussion started around the topic of immigration, and whether borders should be closed or not. Thinking back, all participants where either first generation immigrants (like me), second generation immigrants (like a lot of my friends), married to a foreigner and/or have lived and traveled abroad for years. A very diverse group indeed. My good friend from Taiwan, who had immigrated the same year I did and was married to an American, compared the U.S. to a "mixed salad", rather than a melting pot. I thought it was an interesting metaphor and I knew what she meant. We are all tossed in together, not always melting, but rather co-existing and making the experience just so much more "delicious".
My small neighborhood consists of about 300 households, and it resembles a multicultural microcosm, which is exemplified every morning at the school bus stop, when parents and children mingle for a few minutes. The comfort level at which each of us reaches out to the one that looks different, speaks differently and dresses differently, ranges from "very comfortable" to "very uncomfortable" and everything in between. It is the children that share the bus and school experience every day who have overcome that invisible barrier and are showing us how a melting pot can still exist in a world that sometimes makes it hard for us to see the good in it.
There are two images that keep coming to mind:
1) Two muslim teenage girls, wearing Santa hats on top of their veils during Christmas time, waiting for the school bus to come.
2) A group of young men playing cricket on my son's high school basketball court in the afternoon as I am waiting to pick him up from his band practice. The young men interrupt their game, gather in a corner near the fence, kneel down facing east and pray.
I would have never seen this in my little town where I grew up. And I am happy that my children are growing up in a diverse community, which I hope will enrich their lives on a daily basis as it does mine. Sesame Street is Sesame Street, no matter which language it is broadcast
in and no matter who the big stuffed animal is.
