Ramirez 1
Amanda Ramirez
February 15, 2006
English 114.08
Melting Pot
Like Oil and Water
The United States has always been considered a melting pot.   In the very beginning, people from all over the world would travel to the United States, the land of opportunity.   A chance for people to start a brand new life.   In the immigrants eyes America stood for acceptance of all cultures, ethnicity, and race.   The United States was looked on as the country that took from every culture that settled there and created a new one called “American.”   However, in the last two hundred years there have been a great deal of conflict between any and every race within this country.   Instead of “melting,” like everyone says America is, the US has become like oil and water: a mixture that will never become one, no matter how much one shakes it.
America has been separated in many different ways; one is the majority of the people in America continually express racism throughout their daily lives without even knowing it.   This is referred to as “institutional racism.”   Institutional racism according to Paul Wachtel, the author of “Talking about Racism: How Our Dialogue Gets Short-Circuited,” is “all processes which, intentionally or not, result in the continued exclusion of a subordinated group” (Wachtel 620).   This could mean a Caucasian and a Hispanic are applying for the same job and both of them have the same education and qualifications.   Although, the Caucasian ends up getting the job just because he or she is white.   Most of the hiring managers today are white and most races like to pick their own since they feel better around their “own kind.”   This happens every single day in the business world, especially within the higher paying jobs like CEOs, government positions, mangers of a high class company and so forth.   The disappointing part is most “whites who do not recognize racist intent in the operations of our dominant institutions or in the outcomes they yield are likely…