u235

I was reading an article yesterday from the Times, it was on Colorado and how Longmont CO. had decided to create a privately funded position called "immigrant integration coordinator". They felt they needed it to help aid some of the Mexican immigrants in melding with their community. As you might suspect it caused a huge stink - from the locals who felt that enough time and money went to supporting immigrants, some portion of which are here illegally and from the immigrants who felt that to be "American" was to lose their identity... more specifically their culture.

It's this last bit that I'm choosing to rant on, but first let me get the exact quote so you can see how it strikes first hand:

"Integration means I will participate fully in American culture," said Marietta Vigil Gonzales, who teaches English as a second language and volunteers among Longmont's Latino residents. Ms. Gonzales, whose ancestors first came to the American Southwest from Spain in the late 1500's, said she was proud that after so many generations she still spoke Spanish. "Assimilation means that I will have become like the stereotypical American, with no culture, no ethnic background and no roots," she said.

Ok maybe there's a subtle line in her phraseology between integration and assimilation - but for most people who can't handle any polysyllabic words it means the same thing... adopting and embracing the idea that to be American means nothing about where you came from, but about who you are now.

If you've ever travelled abroad, you're almost immediately struck with just how much American tourists can stand out. It's almost like they have a marker over their heads in many cases. Europeans are well known for their sense of displeasure in accepting filthy American lucre in the name of tourism, and this destain has once been translated into "Omg American! You have no Culture!". Culture... Well I suppose if you mean that we don't have castles that date back to the Dark Ages, yes then it's true.

But culture isn't just archeological findings, it's music and food, dance and social quirks, it's part the influence of history on our society and part popular myths - Paul Bunyan, Marilyn Monroe, "George Washington Slept Here", etc.. What struck me as offensive in the comment on having no culture was the same feeling I got from reading the article in the Times, that to claim that to ~be~ American is to shed all ties to your ancestors is bullshit. The problem, as I see it, is that these people who come from a (I'm inventing this word as far as I know) Mono-Cultural background just can't grasp what American culture is. They're so used to thinking in single terms of who they are that they can't see that when white kids embrace Bob Marley, that when we stop and eat at Taco Bell, that when the community has it's annual "cultural festival", or when Kawanzaa became a recognized holiday... that America is pan-cultural, greater than the sum of any of it's parts.

Maybe the point is we are no longer a "melting pot" so much as a "mixing pot". What people outside the US need to (but can't) recognize is that America doesn't have a high standard of living (food, health care, no wars) because we have a nice piece of turf... it's because the people ON that turf know how to get along and make the best of what we have. It means that when you piss us off we can suddenly turn around and enable and re-elect a president that will put the weight of nation behind a bitch-slap on a global scale. America mixes yes, but it also churns and thrashes, and 100%predictable we are not. This is an aspect of our culture.

My final say on this subject is to the people who have come to America to take and not give. I have a problem with illegal aliens who have no intent of integrating/assimilating/whatever. If you think you can be here and keep your "culture" you're wrong. Sure you can send back money. Sure you can get health care and social services. But remember this, you left your country for America for a reason - because here was better than where you were. And if you wonder why that's true, then maybe if you opened your eyes to the Americans around you then perhaps you'd see that our culture is part of our success and not the other way around.