When I was little, before every birthday my mom would take me to this magical place a few miles south on Highway 1, a store with a roof but few walls, giving it the feel of an open air market. It was filled with pretty, colorful things, most of which I didn’t know the use for, nor did I care. I just liked that they were there. The store often had music playing, guitarróns and vihuelas strumming together into some melody, different from what we played at home, but familiar to me through the community I lived in.
And hanging above our heads as we walked through the store were piñatas. They came in every shape imaginable. Sombreros and unicorns, dragons, and cakes, lions, stars and donkeys, cars and cartoon characters. I got to choose whichever one I wanted. The day before my upcoming birthday party my mom and I would carefully fill it with candy. Then my friends and I would beat the hell out of it it with a stick until its form cracked open, spilling sweetness all over the pavement.
I’m not Latina, but it didn’t occur to me that I was borrowing from someone else’s culture. This is California, after all. We used to be Mexico until President Polk got a bug up his ass and decided to go to war to expand America’s territory. But our origins can be found in our people, our culture, the names of our cities and streets: Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Sacramento, El Dorado Ave., Ventura Blvd, all Spanish words that speak of angels and saints, gold and fortune. And of course within these cities and streets with Spanish names, there are Thai restaurants and Chinese New Year parades and little boys and girls of Asian, African, Armenian, Russian and Latino and Italian descent who all wear green once a year to keep from being pinched on Saint Patrick’s Day.
It’s all so very…American.
Our culture is an Americanized version of every culture, our individual traditions often mixed up and made splashier because that’s just how we do. We’re the ones who turned the folksy Irish-Catholic traditions for All Hallows’ Eve into a $11 billion+ Fright-Night extravaganza. The Mexican tradition of Day Of The Dead is marked by a star-studded rave at the Hollywood-Forever Cemetery.
Oddly enough it’s the fact that we borrow from every culture that makes us unique from every culture. And it’s always been that way. It’s not like a bunch of Englishmen came over on the Mayflower and built a mini-UK here. Instead one of the first things the Pilgrims did was ask the Native Americans to share their food, engage in trade and teach the new arrivals how to grow certain crops to incorporate into the Pilgrims cuisine and create a whole new diet. And of course a lot of the white immigrants from Europe brought over kidnapped individuals from Africa and those tortured souls held in bondage had a monumental affect on the musical and religious landscape of this new land. And then the Chinese laborers were invited over to help build the railroads and as mentioned above, parts of Mexico became parts of America…We just kept absorbing culture after culture, weaving it into our national identity.
You can decide if diversity is the thing that makes America great or not for yourself. That’s an opinion. Conversely, here’s an inarguable fact:
Diversity is the thing that makes America.
Period.
Diversity is what defines us. It’s who we are and perhaps more importantly, it’s who we’ve always been. It’s who we always will be.
So, on this 4th of July, allow me to wish our country good tidings.
Happy Birthday, América. Despite multiple, albeit pathetic, attempts to white wash you, you remain as colorful as ever.
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