Well, I'd call this an interesting blind spot in my education. My anthropological training is definitely keen on preservation of cultures--particularly indigenous ones, but largely, only in their native environment. My American sensibility says that the melting pot serves the function of *adding* to our society, not taking away from (de facto non-indigenous) cultural groups that immigrate. I suspect the general point of our national rhetoric is that coming to another country to build an insular, non-integrating community is hardly the point.

But seriously. Cultural blind-spot here. Still thinking about this one. I know that the Indian boarding schools of past centuries were probably part of the melting pot theory, and I find everything about them abhorrent, so, uh, yeah.