Another superb piece, fitting for the season from Functional Ambivalent. Tom attends his son’s high school music program and is almost moved to tears. You should read it all, but here’s some of it.
There are people who rave against multiculturalism, but in my kid’s school multiculturalism isn’t a theory, it’s a fact. The names in the program read like a U.N. phone book. Well, maybe the book for the phones in the hillbilly wing of the U.N. Caleb, Ali, Phoenix, Kamisha, Abukar, Emilio, Kyaw, Roniesha and even a Mary took the stage together. It wasn’t threatening; it was joyful. These were American kids in an American high school singing, and in the audience were parents beaming with pride. And, it’s true, occaisionally smiling at the miscues.
I don’t get the complaining. I don’t get why some people think we ought to fix American culture at what it was fifty years ago and never let it move. I don’t get why inviting a bit of other cultures into ours is something worthy of debate, because those bits of other cultures are becoming ours whether we like it or not. No culture has ever frozen in time, and our[s] can’t either. I don’t get why that causes anger and fear.
Me either.
I was thinking along these same lines as I read, this morning, about the flap the White House “holiday” card has caused this year. All these people up in arms and throwing away their cards because they say “Happy Holidays” instead of specifically mentioning Christmas.
Does it really make your Christmas less meaningful if other people’s holidays are also seen as worthy of respect? How? Why?
I fail to “get” this in the same way I fail to get people who rail that gay marriage will ruin the institution of marriage. Personally, I find that the relationships of perfect strangers have curiously little effect on my marriage. Likewise, the December celebrations of non-Christians don’t ruin my Christmas fun.
A guy I worked with about 8 years ago was ranting about Kwanza one day. He was genuinely pissed off about its very existence.
He was upset about the fact that there was a holiday that was only designed for what he felt was one ethnic group.
I asked what the problem was since it wasn’t an official holiday it wasn’t as though goverment employees had the day off or anything. And besides, he was certainly welcome to celebrate Kwanza the same as anyone else.
This guy, Mike, came from a mixed marriage. His mother was Italian and his father was Irish and apparently the two sets of grandparents never took to the idea too well.
Anyway, he said Kwanza should be abolished because it was exclusionary and wasn’t a holiday that all Americans felt comfortable celebrating.
I said, “I know what you mean. I’ve always felt that way about St. Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day.”