Similarities Between A Quilt Of A Country And The Immigrant Contribution

In the excerpts entitled “A Quilt of a Country” by Anna Quindlen and “The Immigrant Contribution” by John F. Kennedy, Throughout both it was brought to my attention that these two excerpts have some similarities in them as well as their many differences. A topic that both covered was how America wouldn’t be America without immigrants. One concept about immigrants that we need to understand is that we are all different and all share our own different story/background.
One Similarity between “A Quilt of a Country” and “The Immigrant Contribution” is how they both talk about how we are all different. “America is an improbable idea. A mongrel nation built of every changing disparate parts, it is held together by a notion, the notion that all men are created equal, though everyone knows that most men consider themselves better than someone(Quindlen, 13).” In this quote Quindlen refers to America as a mongrel nation while Kennedy refers to America as a melting pot. The idea of

a mongrel nation and a melting pot are a part of the same idea, just different wording. “The ideal of the “melting pot” symbolized the process of blending many strains into a single nationality, and we have come to realize in modern times that the the “melting pot” need not mean the end of particular ethnic identities or traditions (Kennedy, 27).” These two authors, Quindlen and Kennedy, both believe that Americans come from all different backgrounds.
Even though Quindlen and Kennedy had a few similarities, they also had a few differences.

“Historians today bemoan the ascendancy of a kind of prideful apartheid in America, saying that the clinging to ethnicity, in background and custom, has undermined the concept of unity. These historians must have forgotten the past, or have gilded it (Quindlen, 14).” The understanding of this quote is that we have forgotten the concept of unity because of our different backgrounds. Quindlen’s essay is stating that we have forgot about unity but Kennedy states how immigrants have added truementisally to our country but we still have our unity. “Perhaps the most pervasive influence of immigration is to be found in the innumerable details of life and the customs and habits brought by millions of people who never became famous. This impact was felt from the bottom up,and these contributions to American institutes may be the ones which most intimately affect the lives of all Americans

(Kennedy,26).”