I really have no idea about the melting pot thing. And I feel like it is adequately ambiguous for anyone and everyone to be correct. I think, even before looking at how culture changes, at how acclimation happens, even how identities are formed, one has to acknowledge something about self and culture. Namely, that though we all have lots of ideas about how a culture is formed, what is most important about a culture, what aspects of an identity people will reject, and which they will retain, we really can't tell with certainty any of it. We can't witness it, we can't say what is happening because of "human nature," and what is happening because of precedent, and what is because of genetics, and what is happening because of blah blah blah blah blah... Hell, maybe we can. But I can't tell what the hell I'm made up of. What is my Irishness? What is the Catholicism to which I was never exposed, but that snuck through my parents? What is the Polish grandfather I never met? And if you haven't taken into account these, surely you can still infer things about me, but what have you gotten?

One can quite legitimately point out that, yes, I may be an individual, and unpredictable in that way, but many of other things are quite predictable, namely as a result of my social life. But still, we can look back and say, "Yup, that's the aspect that was going to be expressed," and be all certain and clever about it, but I'm not convinced we have a whole lot of stuff looking at the future. Aren't those rare people who predict the popular things of any given age heralded as psychics? Are there scholars who do the same thing? I need to get educated, I guess.

Obviously, it's not essential, for one can make some helpful generalizations. But I think it's important to remember, if one is seeking to use language and concepts in order to adequately describe reality, presumably in hopes of according our inward mental picture with the "reality out there," that we will be wrong in many of the cases, and that we haven't really done anything particularly substantive. Maybe.