[Dragaera] (offlist) Melting pot was Re: No traffic since February?

[Scott Schultz]

>I hate to break it to you but either I'm the exception that proves the rule 
>or there's more to the melting pot theories than you think.

Rather, I'd say there's more to cultural assimilation than the "melting 
pot". I'd wager that the western frontier was a big factor in your highly 
mixed ancestry.

In any case, I wasn't suggesting that cultural assimilation doesn't happen. 
Rather, I was suggesting that when people emigrate en-masse (famine in 
Ireland, war in Europe, disease in the East) that human nature may work 
against assimilation rather than for it, at least in the short term. In the 
case of the Empire, where assimilation is difficult enough to be nearly 
impossible, it's small wonder that the Easterners have stayed in their 
ghettos instead of trying to become Teckla, who are barely better off. The 
Easterners of the Empire are caught in a trap - They have no social mobility 
to speak of. They can't be assimilated over time; they're not a different 
"race", they're a different species entirely. The Empire's social structure 
that depends from the Houses and the Cycle insures that there will never be 
a movement towards a multi-cultural acceptance of Easterners into Empire 
society. If you're not nobility, you're nothing. If you're not in a House, 
you're less than nothing.

The Easterners of the Empire are in a position of being outsiders in their 
own homeland. That is, they have been born, raised, and died in Empire 
lands; Fenario and the other lands of the East are a distant memory and a 
legend to most of the Easterners living in Adrilankha today. Never mind 
that, technically speaking, the Easterners are the hereditary enemies of the 
Empire.

It would be interesting to find out the status of Easterners who managed to 
settle in Greenaire or Elbe Island, outside of the Empire and its built-in 
prejudices. Just how atypical is Aiban in respect to his categorization of 
Vlad as a "dwarf", but otherwise treating him as a human being like himself?