They facilitate relationships between people by creating a space for eating and socializing and surprise connections. Potlucks respect diverse identities by enthusiastically welcoming the gifts of the people who gather.

‘We need to spread the good’ - a conversation with Eboo Patel.

The whole point of a potluck is the diversity of dishes. And what a nightmare it would be if you brought your best dish to a potluck and you were met at the door with a giant machine that melted it into the same bland goo as everybody else’s best dish. If everyone brings the same thing, the potluck is boring. If people don’t bring an offering, the potluck doesn’t exist. They rely on the contributions of a diverse community. Potlucks are civic spaces that both embody and celebrate pluralism. I propose a twist on the original: America as a potluck nation rather than a melting pot. To that end, I believe we need a new metaphor for American pluralism. So while we can be grateful for the steps forward of those who came before us, we also need to do the work to make progress in our own time. We should appreciate how remarkable it is that French Catholics and German Protestants did not, generally speaking, make war against each other outside Pittsburgh the way they did outside Paris.īut the problem with the melting pot metaphor is that too often it throws the baby out with the bathwater, encouraging us to melt away not just our ugly conflicts, but also our distinctive identities.

The melting pot metaphor did good work in its time. “The great Alchemist,” Zangwill wrote in his play, “melts and fuses with his purging flame.” But it was only safe, the theory went, if they agreed to leave those rivalries behind and submit themselves to the American melting pot. The main character, David Quixano, speaks of his heritage from the old world as being “hate and vengeance and blood.”įor these Europeans with their various national, ethnic, linguistic and religious rivalries -hatreds that had turned into violent conflict countless times over the past millennium -America was a safe haven. Invented by writer Israel Zangwill in a play of the same name, the term was meant to dramatize the elimination of intra-European prejudices in the great crucible of American democracy. The melting pot as a metaphor for American pluralism was a step forward.

Pot luck meaning