Everything you were too afraid to ask

So when the Irish, when Germans, when Italians were coming, and they didn’t speak the language and they didn’t know the culture, the idea was they will assimilate into Americanhood; they will become American, which in the American tradition has meant white American.

But that melting pot never included people of color. Blacks, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etcetera, could not melt into the pot. They could be used as wood to produce the fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be melted into the pot.