Kitchens & rivers: metaphors for America.

Americans are always trying to figure out who we are. The current battles over multiculturalism and identity politics simply extend that debate. Sometimes this never-ending renegotiation of American identity revolves around metaphors.

Our first such national identity metaphor was E pluribus unum. It drew from the poet Virgil's description of a wonderful salad where all the flavors blend into one. In the recent clamors over multiculturalism and identity politics, two metaphors have come to frame the debate: the melting pot and a mosaic. Each is useful but oversimplifies reality and has polarized the discussion. We need new metaphors that better capture the moral and social realities of American life.

The image of the melting pot, popular since the great European immigrations of the last century, suggests that whatever characteristics a given national or ethnic group brings to American life must be reduced by heat and melded into one gooey, indistinguishable mass society. We become a national stew where nothing remains of the original individual ingredients, and where distinct cultural identities are obliterated. Yet the metaphor nicely captures the dynamism of American life arising from the interactions of social and economic change. It hints at the passionate forces that simmer beneath everyday life, and it reminds us that born identifies need not be forever: that we can come to share a new common destiny by virtue of physical proximity and a common environmental, economic, and political future.

America as mosaic has emerged as the preferred metaphor to the melting pot, especially for today's multiculturalists, identity politicians, and some communitarians. Its proponents argue that individuals come from distinct communities and that their differences deserve respect as constituent elements of the nation. Mosaics can stun with their beauty and their power: their collage of colors and textures yields a majesty greater than the sum of the individual tiles.

The attractiveness of this metaphor cannot conceal its problems, however. Each community or culture subsists in a complex and larger, multihued composition, yet each remains a segregated unit, hard and impervious as the proverbial individual tile. Further, glazes seal off each stone from outside influences. Nothing common exists between individual segments except the rigid mortar that maintains their separation.

It is time to jettison both metaphors. For starters, I would suggest two others, each of which offers a better balance between the individual and the communal, and better reveals the joy, diversity, chaos, and order of American life. I am thinking of a Great Northwestern Halibut Taco and The Big Muddy River.

The first, in keeping with Virgil's insight, reminds us that the future of American identity lies in its kitchens. Two years ago I had dinner in a New York City restaurant that billed itself as Cuban-Italian-Chinese. The stir-fried rice tasted of Caribbean spices, Italian marinated chicken, and fried sesame oil. The food revealed a marvelous if impure mixture of flavors, identifiably Caribbean, Asian, Mediterranean, and profoundly American. In Seattle, where I now live, the food - we call it cuisine - melds many different cultures. One of my favorite dishes takes Alaskan halibut mingled with Italian garlic, Thai chili, and peanut sauce wrapped in a whole-wheat tortilla with a side order of mixed greens using cilantro and romaine covered with honey Dijon dressing. Thailand, Italy, Mexico, France, Alaska all rolled into one American meal. American cuisine - with its hyphenated experimentation and concoction of enticing new combinations - represents a truer identity metaphor than the melting pot. The new creations I am thinking of offer tastes that are not only distinctive but pleasing because they cohere. Their achievement lies in the fact that their differences have not been obliterated but blended in juxtaposition.

Some might call this metaphor a recipe for mongrelization, even the ultimate debasement of distinctive national cultures. But to me the image captures something quintessential about American identity that emerges from the interaction of new tastes, colors, combinations, and textures, never before envisioned.

This also helps explain why the mosaic metaphor fails. That image implies that cultures and communities exist as static, self-contained, impervious units. Beneath this view lies the moral claim that personal identifies should be determined by their culture. It enshrines a vision of individuals as embedded in groups, perpetually strangers to outsiders, who are bound only by the forced cement of proximity. In real life, people are thrown together. They work, mix, argue, love, fight, talk. And in many American families, love binds and connects despite differences in race, culture, religion, geography, income.

The kitchens of America reflect this reality. In homes across the land, millions of individual chefs experiment, cross boundaries, hybridize, create new dishes, and fashion new identities. An even more durable and noteworthy reality occurs when intrepid souls from various tribes meet, connect, love, form families, and raise children who represent new flavors, new possibilities. Think of it: Puerto Rican-Irish, Finnish-Filipinos, African-Poles, Jewish-Catholics, Mexican-Chinese, Methodist-Hindus. Each one forms new, evolving identities, not bound by molds, that would be unimaginable elsewhere.

My other metaphor has to do with rivers. Growing up in the Midwest, I watched the great Missouri as it flowed near my city. From high above, it resembled a broad brown expanse, meandering steadily through lush fields and past great cities. Up close, the Missouri is a river of rivers, formed by a concert of movement. It is filled with wide, deep currents of distinct hues, speeds, temperatures. Each time a new stream or tributary enters, the composition of the mainstream alters. Upon entering, some of the larger tributaries remain seemingly intact for hundreds of miles, yet even here the eventuality of change is manifest in subtle differentiations of color, temperature, speed. On the various channels' fluctuating boundaries, water molecules leach into the mainstream, changing its chemistry and altering their own. Some streams disappear quickly into the enveloping larger river; others form roiling eddies before finally joining in. And the river is replenished by rainfall from above, by runoff from fields and highways, and by subterranean springs. Still, it is one, ever changing, ever complex, constantly recasting itself.

Since we Americans lack the foundational bonds of race, blood, religion, geography, and even long-enduring political covenants, we need metaphors to help define ourselves. Our kitchens and rivers provide a key. They embrace the tension between community and individuality while underscoring the energy and openness of life. In them, we better become one.

J. Patrick Dobel is associate dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.