American Myths Part Two: Progress

There are three American myths that define "Americanness." The frontier, the melting pot and the "self-made man." They're concepts that define how we are to think about transformation, progress and possibility in America. They also rarely hold up. Heike Paul, author of The Myths That Made America, is our guide to the stories we tell about how it is in this country (even when it isn't.)

American Myths Part 2.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

American Myths Part 2.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix This transcript may contain errors.

Hannah McCarthy:
You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

Nick Capodice:
I'm Nick Capodice.

Hannah McCarthy:
And this, my friends, is part two of a two-parter on American Myths. You can listen to it all by its lonesome, of course, but I strongly recommend you go back and give part one a listen. Get to know our desperately clung to origin stories. In this episode, we're going to talk about three myths for America's future, for progress, for transformation, all of which are laid out so very beautifully in a book called The Myths That Made America by Heike Paul, a professor of American studies at Friedrich Alexander University in Bavaria. So quickly, what are we about to learn today? That would be the frontier myth, the melting pot myth and the myth of the self-made man. Myth number one.

Archival:
Lovely Lady Liberty with her book of recipes. And find this one she's got.

He's the great American melting pot. American melting pot. The great American melting pot.

Heike Paul:
We have various versions of the melting pot today. When we think melting pot. We find it often a faulty model because it means that we get rid of difference. And we've been cultivating difference and we've been respecting difference. And we think melting means. Erasure means getting rid of or it means pretending that differences do not exist. So in this in this dominant logic, melting pot has become equated with a kind of a more oppressive idea of Americanness of American identity.

Nick Capodice:
Just for those of you out there who haven't heard the term the melting pot of America, this is the concept that in the United States, all these varied cultures and traditions come together and assimilate into one slurry, one mono culture, one homogenous America. And this expression has come under a lot of scrutiny, specifically in the last 40 years. Some Americans see it as a core to who we are, and others, you know, see it as a kind of a violent idea, the elimination of others essence in order to be one harmonious America and to bring up Henry Ford here because he used to have all his new employees at the Henry Ford plant where all of their, quote unquote, like, you know, ethnic clothing and doing the dances and playing the music and they would get into an actual melting pot. Henry Ford had a giant pot and you would kind of climb in behind it and had steam coming out of it. And you would come out in a Ford uniform. You had assimilated into being an American.

Hannah McCarthy:
But what I didn't know, Nick, is that when the term was in its heyday in the early 20th century, in part because there was a play by a Jewish immigrant Zionist called The Melting Pot, that this term melting pot was actually kind of between two comparatively radical ideas. One of those ideas was cultural pluralism.

Nick Capodice:
What is cultural pluralism?

Hannah McCarthy:
That's very basically just the coexistence of multiple cultures in one place, like multiple perspectives and practices.

Nick Capodice:
What's interesting to me is that sort of a modern day notion of the melting pot is not how everybody is smashed together and becomes this one homogenous thing, but all these people sort of spice the soup of the pot like we as Americans become better because different cultures are added to the stew or salad or whatever, you know, analogy you prefer.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, and we'll get to a version of that in just a second here. But that idea of cultural pluralism, right, of all of these cultures existing, while you could say a lot of people ostensibly understand that and are kind of with it today and it pretty much rejects the melting pot as a melter, it was a little too advanced in the 19th century. It was too radical. People couldn't quite agree on that. But then there was another extreme, and these were people who in the 19th century rejected the idea of the melting pot, but not for the reasons that a lot of people reject it today.

Heike Paul:
Voices that went into saying that we cannot have immigration at all or we should not have difference in this country, we should not cultivate it, and we should not get rid of it by melting, but we should get rid of it by, you know, things like eugenics, even, you know, we should be very selective whom we let into the country. And then we need to make sure that our white stock of white majority does not diminish or does not disappear.

Hannah McCarthy:
Heike pointed out, by the way, that this particular point of view did not entirely go away, and in fact, it has experienced a renaissance.

Heike Paul:
So the anxieties around that time in the early 20th century are very current as well. I guess, you know, so the revival of ethno nationalism and all of that, I think that comes straight out of the playbook of the eugenicists at the beginning of the 20th century.

Hannah McCarthy:
But then Heike talked about another concept that can be found in the melting pot. I hadn't heard this one, and I think it's a lot closer to what you were describing, Nick.

Heike Paul:
This idea of trying to to move towards each other, trying to have a melting of the minds or having have kind of a meaningful exchange, you know, can do without it. Of course, you know, at the level when it becomes existential, we may want to reject it.

Hannah McCarthy:
In other words, overcoming the distance between us without destroying the differences between us. But it's kind of a high minded concept and not exactly easy to nation build on that idea. So instead, we have the more direct idea of the melting pot. In her book, Heike talks about the fact that E Pluribus unum, out of many, one has effectively become the tagline of the melting pot. This idea that in America you shed your old skin, you climb into foreheads, melting pot, you take off the clothes of your homeland and you have a new homeland. Your various backgrounds assimilate into a single new American race.

Nick Capodice:
Basically turning the United States from a country of immigrants into a country of one type of people.

Hannah McCarthy:
Which is what makes it one of those transformation future blueprint myths. Another blueprint myth that we sketched out. That's the frontier myth.

Heike Paul:
So the frontier myth, I think, is one of the most well known myth of of American in American history. I think for some people, it is the super myth of the one that transcends all the others because it connects so well to certain historical figures. You know, Columbus, the cowboy, the settler. You know, so the frontier myth really is kind of a very, very much kind of an overarching story, which had Slotkin is one person who says that this is the master myth of America. This is this is all we need to know. It's the frontier. And then we can explain pretty much everything about about Americans.

Nick Capodice:
What's interesting about the frontier myth, and I'm just postulating here, it's kind of like a catchall for all the other ones we've talked about so far. The promised land, the harmonious land grab, the birth of a new nation, transforming everything that's different or quote unquote, unsettled into capital a America.

Heike Paul:
Of course, it is a myth rooted in the late 19th century that is using an idea of geographical determinism, namely the settling of America from the East to the West, mostly by Europeans, and the transformative processes they undergo in that kind of very idealized setting that this is Americanness is produced by certain kinds of encounters that happened happen when you're moving westward. Right. And so this is the idea of the frontier, as this line, Turner calls it, the thin line between civilization and savagery. And of course, both of these terms, civilization and savagery, are completely overdetermined, highly loaded, highly charged.

Hannah McCarthy:
Now, the West, as this important foundational, mythic idea, was really formally set in stone by this guy named Frederick Jackson Turner. He was an historian in the early 20th century.

Heike Paul:
In Turner's version, there is this idea of this experience of being alone on the frontier, having to secure your own survival, having to adopt certain skills to survive, showing off your individual expertise and aptitudes in the process. You know, that's all what what goes into the Americanness that Turner then constructs now. And he's very worried at the end of the 19th century because he says, you know, we've reached the West, we are now at the Pacific from sea to shining sea. So what will happen to us as Americans when we no longer have the frontier experience? And there is some anxiety in his wording about the end or the closing of the frontier. And of course, that many more recent scholars have pointed out that this is the beginning of sort of the empire abroad US influence US interventions outside of the North American continent.

Hannah McCarthy:
Late 19th century. That is when we started messing around in Latin America, in part to prevent European powers from sneaking in and benefiting financially so that we could sneak in and benefit financially. And that is a whole episode. But the timing is pretty interesting, isn't it? Because it was so important to us that we had this perceived unsettled west, this land that would satisfy Manifest Destiny, that we had somewhere to go and spread what we are.

Nick Capodice:
And here comes the Promised Land myth again, right? I mean, literally, it's like the Puritan. We are ordained by God to take all this and impose ourselves on it for the benefit of everyone.

Hannah McCarthy:
Right? And so once the West was one, we set our sights on spreading the West. This concept further out. It's the bedrock for justifying bringing Americanness to any nation that's on momentarily unsteady footing, or that we see ourselves as more powerful than okay. Next, we've got one last myth coming up. But first, we're going to take a quick break.

Nick Capodice:
But before we do, Hannah, we must remind our listeners that we have a newsletter. It's fun. It comes out every week. It's called Extra Credit, and it's full of the stuff that didn't make it into our episodes. And it gives Hannah and I an excuse to kind of goof around a little, you.

Hannah McCarthy:
Know, which is all we really want to.

Nick Capodice:
Do. Oh, we want to do in the first place. You can sign up at our website, civics101podcast.org.

Hannah McCarthy:
Okay, We're back. And you're listening to part two of a two parter on American Myths from Civics 101. We're speaking with Heike Paul, author of The Myths That Made America. And myth number three, The Final Future Myth.

Archival:
Yes, sir. In my case, an accident of birth. But you, sir. You're a self-made man.

Heike Paul:
The self-made man is about social mobility. Upward mobility. Right. Vertical rather than horizontal. And in this process, he usually is depicted as somebody deserving. He earns what he gets, and he becomes a successful entrepreneur. And the shorthand, of course, is the from rags to riches narrative that you can start at the bottom of the social ladder and work your way up to become at least middle class, but mostly upper middle class or even kind of upper class successful individual in America. And so the idea I think that is connected to this particular myth is to say that the US is a classless society.

Hannah McCarthy:
And Heike also explained that this contrasts to Europe, right? Because Europe is based on a feudal system with an aristocracy. And then you have the indentured servants or the farmers or the clerks. And the US wants to caste itself in a very different light. You can own land and property and make your own way. And your future is not decided by your birth or situation.

Nick Capodice:
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Mccarthy.

Hannah McCarthy:
The thing that really gets me about the self-made man myth is that everyone uses it. You hear the kind of jokey like, Oh, she was born on third base, but she thinks she had a triple, right? The idea they are being like someone is born into wealth and privilege, but they think their wealth and privilege is because of what they did right. They worked so hard for it. And then what that does is that it totally erases the socioeconomic context that a person is born into.

Nick Capodice:
It also tells this lie that everybody's responsible for their own success, right? That that money, location, whiteness, family history, community, none of that is the reason for achieving the American dream. It's all because of you. What you all by yourself do.

Heike Paul:
Emphasizing individuality as the myth of the self-made man does also leads to the idea that there is a fair chance for everyone, and you just need to take that chance and make something out of your life. It also, in doing so, it places very little emphasis on the idea that you are part of a collective, where you share solidarity, where you care for each other, and where you help and support each other.

Archival:
Well, I think that every day we are benefiting from someone helping us. That's why I said earlier, there is no such thing as a self-made man. I mean, when you think about it, you're born and you need your parents to raise you. You need your teachers to teach you. You need your coaches to do sports.

Heike Paul:
In the dominant version of the myth of the self-made man, we have a strong sort of subtext of social Darwinism that means that you don't try hard enough if you don't become successful or you are in some other way deficient or unwilling. And that hampers your success and your achievement. The idea of the self-made man. I think we can trace it back to Benjamin Franklin, who makes a very interesting connection. He says, If we all strive, we strive for our individual success and we also contribute to the public good. There is no contradiction for Benjamin Franklin in his worldview. If you succeed on your own, then you can also help make the community strong. Of course, in more recent variations we've seen that this is not really how it works, that in in a context where there is individual striving, there is competition. Not everyone is working towards the same common good, but there will be winners and there will be losers.

Hannah McCarthy:
And of course, there's one really glaring problem with all of this, with the discomfort of the winners and the losers, and that is that we live in a capitalist country and world. You must have winners and losers. That's part of it.

Nick Capodice:
You know, for our whole history, a lot of people in America have been really uncomfortable with the concept of losing.

Hannah McCarthy:
Yeah, And if people have lost so their fault, right? It's like, God, you really you really you didn't take this opportunity. You blew out. You blew.

Nick Capodice:
It. Really blew it. You had your shot and you blew.

Hannah McCarthy:
It.

Nick Capodice:
Right? For years, you've been carrying around that pistol and you waste your shot. He didn't waste it. That was my Orlando Bloom. So between part one and part two, we've got our seven myths.

Hannah McCarthy:
We've got our seven myths. Christopher Columbus, Pocahontas, Puritans, Pilgrims and the Promised Land. The Founding Fathers, the frontier, the melting pot, and the self-made man.

Nick Capodice:
Can I ask the unanswerable question?

Hannah McCarthy:
That is my favorite kind.

Nick Capodice:
As Heike was sort of ticking through these the holes and the falsehoods and the imaginary fairy tale of all of them. It's so clear when she says it. And yet, Hannah. Even if we intellectually understand that. These myths are still part of our culture today. So basically, my question is. Why?

Heike Paul:
I think this myth are persistent because we encountered them in various ways, in various forms and through various senses, and we encounter them through narratives that can be very powerful narratives. We encountered them in visual iconography, also very powerful, and we encounter them through cultural practices. So like holidays also these would be cultural practices. They also are emotionally charged for us. So I think the emotional dimension, the visual dimension, the narrative, the practical cultural practice, these are all dimensions that are tied together and it is very difficult to unlearn these kinds of things.

Hannah McCarthy:
I mean, be honest, Nick, listening to all of these myths, was there any part of you that feels an attachment to any part of them?

Nick Capodice:
Absolutely. I mean, I would joke about it all the time. 1776 is one of my favorite movies ever, but it is a big ole myth and there's some comfort in these myths, you know, and I know you're not busting these myths today, Hannah, but it sort of feels like something's kind of taken away when you're just told, Well, this is why we do things this way.

Hannah McCarthy:
Well, Heike has got a pretty interesting take. That to me. Almost sounds like new mythmaking for us to find a way to attach ourselves emotionally through holiday celebration, for example, to practices and beliefs that are better for our culture, that are better for our Americanness, maybe based more in truth, even if that truth is not the kind that warms the cockles of your heart.

Heike Paul:
I think we need to unlearn some of the ways that we react to the narratives. We need to learn to maybe cultivate different kinds of cultural practices, and we also need to be more critical of the iconography. The hardest part, though, I think, is unlearning to be emotionally attached. I think that's something that is more difficult to to achieve this kind of disengagement. Unlearning, yeah. Distancing yourself from certain kinds of effects that can be nostalgic, you know, can be childhood memories of an Independence Day parade. It can be the smell of a certain kind of food. It's very difficult to disavow that or even ask people to disavow it. So I think this is why the perseverance is so phenomenal, even though we can see all of the cognitive dissonance with those myths. What helps, I think, is to have at least kind of some sort of reflexive. Um, detour. You know, like you said, this is a holiday so and so, and, you know, I see whatever, you know, is implied by these kinds of facilities and maybe, you know, let's try to change the narrative or let's, you know, do this, tell it differently.

Hannah McCarthy:
I think it's important to acknowledge that emotional connection because that's part of the point, isn't it? Nick, you brought up your feelings about the founding fathers who know we're not this perfectly harmonious, homogenous group, but at the same time, casting them in a glimmering light does give us something to rally around to be patriotic about. And that is important. You can see how that builds a nation. But to hike his point, What if we had other things? We need our stories. We need our myths. But what if we changed the stories we tell? That does it for part two of this two parter. Oh, yes, it's in two parts. And if you haven't listened to part one on the Origin Myths of America, I warmly recommend you do so right now. This episode was produced by me and McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Jacqui Fulton is our producer, and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by Chris Zabriskie, Simon Matthewson, Young Karts, Stucco, Gray, Jakarta Riddim, Fabian Tel Dylan sits and spring game. You can check out our entire catalog at our website, civics101podcast.org. And while you're there, ask us your questions about America, be it the truth of the matter or the myth. Submit your question and we might just make an episode to answer it. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio.

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