When the Melting Pot Stops Working
A few years ago, I moved to Austin, the capital city of the state where my ancestors migrated from Tennessee more than a century and a half ago. I grew up in a small town in rural East Texas, so I’d anticipated some cultural shock from the so-called amenities of city living, but the experience of trash disposal in a high-end urban apartment proved to be more than I could’ve ever imagined.
Conceptually, it was an easy enough task, one made even easier by the special compacting dumpster right next to the exit gate of my apartment complex. Instructions posted in clear English on the wooden fence surrounding the dumpster explained that bagged trash should be placed in the open side compartment, which could hold about a hundred standard bags.
Once this part of the dumpster was full, the swinging metal door should be closed and latched. When closed, the bags in the side compartment would be compacted into the rest of the dumpster, making room for more garbage. If the door was closed, all one had to do was open it to find the empty compacting compartment ready to be filled once again.
Routinely, I would carry my trash out and smell the putrid, rotting odor of an overflowing dumpster from across the parking lot. On hot days in Texas, you could practically see the stench rising from the pile of uncompacted trash. Often, I wouldn’t even be able to get within an arm’s length of the dumpster because people had failed to close the door; leaving the overflowing compartment uncompacted. The bags poured out as more and more people tossed their garbage on the pile, which would quickly grow until it was impossible to reach the dumpster without wading into the refuse.
My unit was on the second story overlooking the dumpster, so I began monitoring the situation to discover the cause of this social breakdown. The complex was largely populated by Indians who had been imported to Austin by the growing number of tech companies who preferred a foreign, visa-holding labor force to native workers who had more social mobility. Across the street from the dumpster, my new personal Alamo, were the offices of several technology companies, and in the morning many of my neighbors would walk across the road (not at a crosswalk) to their jobs. It became readily apparent that it was this portion of the tenants who were responsible for turning the nice perk of a compacting dumpster into a disaster.
But should this come as any surprise?
India leads the world in plastic waste production, generating roughly 20% of the global total, or 10.2 million tons of plastic waste annually. This is likely an undercount, as that particular study relied on official government statistics that “exclude numbers for disposal in rural regions and open burning of uncollected plastic.”
The Ganges, India’s sacred river, is now a by-word for pollution, choked with garbage and human waste. Nearly five billion liters of sewage flow into the river daily; the fecal bacteria level is 150 times higher than what is safe for bathing; and the ashes of an estimated 32,000 people are dumped into the river every year.
A change of environment has not seemed to work a change in habits. Time and again, I watched as new arrivals walked up to the dumpster, past all the signs, and threw their bags (if the trash was bagged at all) on top of the pile without any concern or recognition of the compacting dumpster. The trash, strewn about and picked over by coyotes and raccoons, turned the garbage area into a fallout zone.
Other neighbors who would come to try to dispose of their trash properly would be repulsed by the stench; unable to do the right thing even if they tried. The look of burning frustration and annoyance they carried became a familiar expression. Occasionally, the complex sent a maintenance crew to restore order, but it would never last. Before long, the trash would be overflowing.
The idea of Texas as a land of cowboys and oilmen is a misconception long since outdated. Texas’s cultural identity has been dramatically altered by stark demographic changes. In recent years, immigration not just from South America but from the global south has skyrocketed. Insular communities of Pakistanis, Chinese, Africans, and Indians have exploded in the previously rural areas around our major cities.
Muslim cities are being openly developed where cows used to graze. Quiet communities and open grassland have been paved over by concrete slabs and cardboard tenements to make room for these new transplants. While living in Irving, I never once heard English spoken in my apartment building. Foreign languages abounded, and local politics became dominated by racial tribalism and developers’ pocketbooks.
Indian populations have exploded to become the second-largest foreign group in America, with 70% of those present arriving in the last 25 years. Coming in concentrated waves targeting specific fields — such as gas stations, motels, and more recently tech — there is little incentive to assimilate. These groups, far from flinging off their former cultural preferences, are “displaying more, not less, affinity toward their Indian identity,” according to the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Study.
In that study, some 83% of respondents were U.S. citizens, but increasing levels of “paper Americanism” have not yielded a corresponding increase in actual American patriotism. In fiscal year 2023 alone, Indians in America sent nearly $33 billion back to their homeland — more than the immigrant population from any other country.
The population of Indians in Texas alone has grown to more than 500,000 — nearly half of whom are concentrated in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — and their political influences are likewise increasing. Governor Greg Abbott routinely touts his strong relationship with India and traveled there last year boasting of the “deep cultural tenants [sic] that Texans and the Indian people share.” The governor, who has held statewide office since 1996, added that Texas is “the most popular destination for Indian foreign direct investment and jobs created in the entire United States.” Texas trails only behind California in number of Indian immigrants, with the Dallas and Houston metroplexes both being top ten destinations for their diaspora.
This growing, yet separate, section of our population is reflected in political pandering. Senator John Cornyn, who routinely celebrates Indian holidays, carved out a separate civic calendar for Indians, saying, “To all the Indian American families living in Texas … you have made our state such a culturally rich and vibrant place, and I wish you a Happy Independence Day.”
He was commemorating not the independence of the American nation in 1776, but the separation of India from the British Empire in 1947. I can think of almost no more poignant sign of failure to assimilate than continuing to celebrate the independence of a foreign nation on the far side of the globe. Other signs of intentionally retaining their homeland’s culture abound, such as the 90-foot-tall, monkey-faced idol recently erected outside of a Hindu temple in Sugar Land. It is now the third-tallest statue in America, nearly 30 feet taller than the beloved statue of Sam Houston in Huntsville.
But it’s not a given that large groups of immigrants must refuse or fail to assimilate. In 2023, whites became a minority in Texas, with Hispanics now standing as the dominant plurality. Contrary to the grand prognostications of the Democrats over the past few decades, this replacement did not lead to the fabled “Blue Texas.” Rather, the 2024 elections saw Republicans win by larger margins than they had in recent years. These Republican gains were largely driven by massive shifts in the heavily Hispanic border regions of the Rio Grande Valley. Many of these Hispanic voters are not those who arrived in America only yesterday, but instead have been in this country for many generations.
Texas was originally settled by the Spanish, and since the state’s independence from Mexico and eventual admission to the Union, there has always been a statistically significant Hispanic population. By 1930, roughly 700,000 Texans had Mexican heritage; the number of those with a Spanish surname had grown to 1,400,000 by 1960. In the 1990 census, 80% of the 4,000,000 people in Texas with a Hispanic background were native-born Americans. The comparatively steady drip of migration allowed and encouraged significantly higher levels of assimilation among older communities than other ethnic groups that came in dense waves. While this is not true about recent bursts of mass immigration — legal or illegal — from South America, there are large portions of the Hispanic population who are undeniably Texan in their civic identity.
Compared to the Southern culture in East Texas where I grew up, the border region and the portions out past the Hill Country are distinctly Southwestern. The community fabric has, in a real way, been melting together under the unforgiving sun for centuries. A certain level of syncretism has occurred — something commonly understood as assimilation. Is the culture in these areas something George Washington would immediately recognize as American? Probably not. But a cultural cohesion has occurred in a distinctly American way. There remains an irrevocable affection for the credal virtues of this country — personal freedom, the rule of law, enjoying the fruits of your labor, and so forth. These communities no longer look to some other place as “their homeland.” This process worked itself out over the long course of successive generations blending and weaving together to create an identifiable unity.
Even in the unassimilated Hispanic communities that exist in Texas, there are fewer conceptual hurdles than those faced by the waves of Indian migration. For starters, there are deeper roots which more recent South American arrivals can graft into that are simply unavailable to the South Asians. Shared religious, historical, and geographical experiences enable a gentler interweaving over time than the transplanting of a foreign bloc of people from an entirely alien culture, society, and belief system. There is, obviously, a spectrum of assimilability. A neighbor often makes a better house guest than a stranger, and a relative even more so.
Like my compacting dumpster, the systems that constitute our nation only work if they are made to work. We must have citizens committed to playing the part allotted to them as members of a republican society. Representative democracy does not happen by magic, and it cannot be sustained by magic. The rule of law is not a self-operating force of nature. Food does not grow on the grocery store aisles. For the particular outputs of America to be produced, particular inputs must exist. Yes, there is a level of flexibility inherent in the design of the Founders. But if we are to have America, we must have Americans. If being American is to mean anything there must be a limit to what that includes, just like there must be borders to define a nation’s territory.
And despite the claims of global powerbrokers, human beings are not interchangeable cogs. People are specific, ensouled beings who are the product of all that came before them, not the random result of chance. They are the culmination of the hopes of bloodlines and the consequence of centuries. Americans are the product of a unique set of circumstances unparalleled in the history of the world — Texans even more so. They cannot be replaced or substituted like some ingredient in a recipe; otherwise, America would cease to be American.
The American republic, the American Constitution, the American way of life — these are the most complex pieces of political machinery developed in the history of man. They rely on centuries of advancement and inherited tradition, passed down through generations in the form of a distinctly American culture. When the constituent parts in our republican machinery — the American citizenry — are swapped out for others untutored in this culture (and, in many cases, actively hostile to it), the machine is not simply altered; it becomes inoperable.
Our national identity is more than merely the adoption of a few cultural expressions or the profession of our (admittedly important) creed. My earliest American ancestor came to Jamestown in 1611 and served in the original 1619 Virginia House of Burgesses — the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. My father’s oldest father with roots on this continent fought during the War for Independence. My family has been in Texas since the Civil War, and I have never lived beyond the borders of the Lone Star State. From East Texas to Houston to Dallas/Fort Worth and most recently Austin, I have a deep familiarity with most of the state. I’ve witnessed the effects of our new “multicultural society” firsthand.
Many of the recent waves of concentrated immigration by organized ethnic groups have come with an open declaration of their intention to reject the American creed and culture. They landed on our shores not as dreamers but as conquerors. Even if there existed a genuine possibility for these immigrant blocks to assimilate, they have decidedly rejected such an offer. Much rather, they have mobilized to elect leaders who boast that they will advance their home country’s interests at the expense of America.
The “melting pot” theory of American identity cannot possibly survive under such circumstances. It is an insultingly reductive analogy that ignores what the Founders knew: our experiment is fragile. It must be preserved, deliberately and faithfully — by and for Americans.
Simply, not everything melts. Nor should we want to reduce anyone who washes up on our shores into some component part to be dissolved into the whole. For everything added, it means something changed, and not all changes are for the better.
For instance, I’d still like to be able to take out my trash.