Not a melting pot but a marketplace of cultures

The U.S. Constitution and capitalism act as the framework of a country where cultural identity isn’t unified but always shifting, leaving deeper questions about who we are.

By J A Aleman

In general culture isn’t difficult to describe, but when it comes to the U.S., many question if the country has a sole culture at all. 

A culture can be broken down into something like traditions, food, language and religious practices. With America having various cultures making up its citizens in neighborhoods everywhere, you can bet every street has a different feel about it. 

I’ve tried to narrow it down to what defines U.S. culture, and I can say with certainty that the U.S. Constitution and capitalism are what our country is recognized for. The expression it’s a free country has always been used as an idiom of why someone can or should do something. 

To my friends, I’ve often said that reality television was the real downfall for the U.S. culturally because it highlighted people who just want to become famous for being on a reality show. This is not a skill or talent, but either way, that hustle is part of American culture. 

“The Real World” is a series that ran from 1992 to 2017 which gathered people from all walks of life in America and placed them in a house together to see what happened. 

Early on it was interesting because people had actual careers and experiences that the rest of America might not have had. However, the show deteriorated in quality because it started to focus on people confronting each other and fighting. Every reality show followed the dramatic formula after that. 

There are many practices the U.S. follows from other places as well such as Mother’s Day being celebrated on the second Sunday in May and Christmas on Dec. 25 but for Latinos we celebrate our moms on the second Saturday of May and Christmas on the 24. 

The Constitution, the document America was founded on, gives the right to every citizen and person to live a life with certain freedoms. With this freedom, we can choose whether to participate in religious gatherings or not. What type of weddings we want to have, which includes not having to be married by any religious authority but by our friends. 

The latter example is not a practice I agree with, but that’s our culture thanks to the founding document and websites where anyone can pay a fee and become an ordained minister overnight. 

Work, loyalty and showing respect for military is a shared part of U.S. culture, but other countries value those things as well. Morality can’t be claimed by any cultural practice because morality is something that just is. 

Where we differ on morality depends on our opinion and that’s why we vote, so our society can have the values the majority want to implement. This, however, can be a double-edged sword because we can become a culture with a mob mentality if we aren’t careful. 

We’re all following the U.S. Constitution and try to abide by it and hold leaders accountable because of it. On March 1, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to make English the official language of the U.S., and that was received with mixed feelings by citizens. 

“There’s been a rising against multiculturalism in the last couple years. Powers that be trying to engrain in us that there is a single dominant U.S. culture. I personally don’t believe we have a single culture,” said UWT Student Ella Walken. 

People that migrate to the U.S. hold onto their culture. I’m consistently teaching my children Spanish because I don’t want the language to disappear from our bloodline and for the sake of our ancestors. Plus being bilingual in the U.S. is a way to open other avenues of opportunity. 

Establishing an official language in a country filled with many cultures can seem strange. The 5 most used languages other than English in order of most frequent are Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 

As migrants settle into the U.S. and blend or marry into other cultures, those language numbers can change, but the languages themselves never will. That is something too important for a culture to lose. 

Native Americans experienced bad treatment in our history when they were forced to learn English and lose part of themselves as the U.S. expanded. Fort Spokane was used as a boarding school where indigenous children’s identities were reshaped though coerced assimilation and labor from 1900 to 1907, according to National Park Services. This meant losing their ancestral culture, not just learning a new one and adapting to it in their own way. 

I understand the reason behind wanting an official language, but it cannot come at the price of other cultures ever losing theirs. Just because people migrate here doesn’t mean they want to exchange who they are and become something else. Before Columbus arrived, or any of the pilgrims, there were already established cultures and languages here. 

America isn’t a melting pot, but various cultures living together under the Constitution and its brother being capitalism and the free market. 

“Capitalism is a core part of American empire,” Walken said. “But I don’t think it’s necessarily something that most of us are choosing to opt into or choosing to embrace. The family that we come from, maybe there’s a certain style of cooking, a certain style of dance, or certain style of religious practices that we choose to embrace those things and make them a part of who we are.” 

We can all capitalize those things by selling them somehow. Maybe people aren’t choosing to tap into it, but you can. This comes from the Fourteenth Amendment of the Declaration of Independence which states the pursuit of happiness is a right for everyone in America. 

America has the largest economy in the world, according to ResearchFDI. This is one reason the country is seen as the land of opportunity because money is obtainable here faster and easier than someplace else. 

BuzzFeed asked its readership to share with them the normal, secret and weird things about American culture, and people from other countries gave insight as to what they saw. 

Some of the survey takers said television advertisements for medication were strange because that sort of thing should be recommended by a doctor. Another mentioned that the ability of making substitutions on the menu was strange because the normal thing should be to just order what is already there. 

The other day, I went to the Taco Bell drive-thru and ordered three crunchy tacos with some fries. I was assured by the employee I could customize my order any way I wanted, which I thought was weird. 

When I arrived home to eat, I was furious to find they put the fries inside my tacos. Who does that? This only could happen in a country where the culture is founded on the pursuit of happiness as a right. 

However you want to look at it, there is no one language, religion or set of values that match up perfectly. All cultures benefit from and agree upon the Constitution being the biggest unifier for the U.S., and though some might frown upon capitalism, it’ll always be around if we continue to buy the things we want.