Beyond the Pale: Cinco de Mayo and Cultural Diversity

"...[J. T.]Ready had once said of Lily, who was half-Hispanic, “she's 50 percent ugly,” the paper reported. “That's how he described her," she [a friend of the child's aunt and mother] added."       - from MSNBC.com,

        about the toddler shooting victim, aprox 18 months old in Gilbert, Arizona murder / suicide

Cinco de Mayo, celebrating Mexican heritage, seems to be more celebrated in the United States than it is in Mexico.

flag of Mexico

If you asked many of the American celebrants what they were celebrating (at least in my experience), they wouldn't know, responding they were enjoying Mexican food, or  that it was a national Mexican holiday so they are celebrating Mexican heritage or maybe Mexican Independence Day.  Buzz-killers would simply grump that it is a made up holiday, a sell-more-greeting-cards kind of event.
So.....what is it really all about, celebrating Cinco de Mayo?
The ever-popular source for quickie explanations, wikipedia, provides background and context:
Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for "fifth of May") is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated nationwide in the United States and regionally in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla,^[1][2][3][4] where the holiday is called El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla).^[5][6][7] The date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride,^[8] and to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War.^[9] In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín.^[2][10] Contrary to widespread popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is actually celebrated on September 16.^{[2] [11]}
So now you know, if you didn't know before!

flag of Norway

A friend and I were talking recently about 'cultural diversity' in the corporate setting.  My friend is of Norwegian immigrant descent; while there are more people who have at least one ancestor of Scandinavian descent in Minnesota, last time I checked (which was a while ago) there were more people in this state of German descent than there were people of any one of the individual Scandinavian countries.  That gets tricky, because if you are up on your Scandinavian history, you would know that not all of the areas which are now separate and distinct nations were always so.  Most at one time or another, often for significant periods of time had national connections that made them controlled by or otherwise intricately related to Sweden.  (When you have a few minutes sometime, check out the Dissolution of the PERSONAL Union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, for example; a 'personal union' is probably not what you think it is.)
My friend noted that the company where she worked, a U.S. company that had become a subsidiary of a huge foreign-based, multi-national entity, was going to do something to promote cultural diversity for Cinco de Mayo...........but nothing for Syttende Mai (Seventeenth of May) which is the celebration of Norwegian Constitution Day, dating back to 1814.
Perhaps you are wondering why I'm writing about a Norwegian holiday celebrated in May on the day Mexican culture is celebrated.  It is a good question, and I have a good answer.
While both ethnicities, both cultural groups, have celebrations in this country of their heritage by marking a day special to their history, there are a couple of differences that go to the heart of issues in our culture, government and politics, even to the very unity of our nation as a melting pot for people from around the world.
My friend noted that while there was a corporate recognition and events for Cinco de Mayo, there was nothing done for Syttende Mai......and she felt slighted, as if HER heritage was treated as less important, and by extension as if SHE was therefore less important or valued for not having a celebration or recognition.  It created a very minor but real feeling of resentment on her part, and understandably so.
As a result, she felt (as I understood the feelings she expressed) that cultural diversity in some respects created more of a division than a reciprocity of understanding and sharing.  This woman is one of the nicest, kindest, most generous and compassionate people I know; it was not an easy thing to share that she felt a twinge of resentment once in a while. 
Her candor led to a very lively discussion, one that was a microcosm reflecting in very mild form broader national tensions and issues.
Part of our conversation focused on the immigrant experiences, including how Scandinavians were at one time treated disparagingly.  Ole and Lena jokes and Sven and Ole jokes were standard humor when I was growing up, with Ole and Lena being traditionally Norwegian, and Sven and his wife being Swedish in the classic ethnic humor tradition.  Like Polish ethnic jokes, the protagonists are often portrayed in a less than flattering light.  Ole and Lena have their own entry on - where else? - good ol' wikipedia, where this connection to the immigrant experience was drawn:

"One would not find Ole and Lena jokes in Sweden or Norway.  Rather they are an outgrowth of an immigrant experience. Language mistakes are a frequent source of Ole and Lena joke material. Turning the misunderstandings and mistakes into jokes enabled people to jest about their American immigrant experience. "

We are all immigrants to this country; it is only a question of how long ago, how far back in our history.  Yes, even the 'indigenous people' are immigrants; their ancestors came over the land bridge that is now the Bering Strait, earlier than the rest of us arrived from east and west.  My friend and I also watch the PBS series with Prof. Henry Louis Gates, 'Faces of America' together, which delves into the complexity of the genealogy of several diverse guests each episode, including DNA tests which show their origins from other parts of the world, and selected sections on their antecedents.  Among other things, Gates demonstrates that racial or ethnic 'purity' is largely a myth.

In the course of my discussion with my friend about diversity, I made the point that her company was attempting to give recognition to people who were less in the majority, who more often were excluded, marginalized or treated as other, outsiders, or diminished in some way.  It is intended as a way to include and make feel more accepted, more that they belong people who have not always been included, and/or people who are either in that immigrant transition, or people who have so few around them who are 'like them', in appearance, language or custom that they do not equally feel they belong, or fit in.  We have held robust celebrations for Syttende Mai for a long time; Cinco de Mayo is still new, still needing and deserving of greater exposure.

Some groups of people have already gone through that - as the Ole and Lena ethnic jokes, or the Pat and Mike Irish ethnic jokes (NO wikipedia entry) evidence; some of us are more 'like' the majority of those around them, we already have more points in common, a greater connection to each other of shared experience and references.

I believe profoundly that people should, all of us, be proud of who we are as individuals, of our heritage, from whatever country or countries, their cultures and traditions.  I believe we are a wonderful nation, that we are very special by having absorbed and combined so many people from so many parts of the world into one country.  I don't believe in 'American exceptionaism', however.  If we are a great nation for having been a melting pot of many different heritages, then we are so because those individual heritages were also valuable, EQUALLY valuable, for the strengths that they brought to our mix.  We do not need to be 'number 1', much less promote it interminably to be important, good or of value.  Others do not have to be less than us; it is not a sum game.  It is even more detestable when the 'we're number 1' claim is not true, when it is factually inaccurate.

There are those on the right who want to promote a false image of who we are.  There are those on the right who want to pick and choose what nations and cultures will be valued and which will not, focusing on people who are white, preferably western European in origin and culture. They seek a dominance for white people, for predominantly Christian people, preferably protestant more than Catholic.  The closer you get to the far right, the closer to the edge, the more extreme, the more that preference transforms into hatred --- hatred like J.T. Ready's that would cause him to accumulate a cache of paramilitary equipment.  His hatred caused him to hate an innocent little girl, eventually shooting and killing her.   CPAC and the current conservatives, whether they call themselves Libertarian, GOP, Tea Party or something else have embraced, as a movement in opposition to Barak Obama, a hateful and bigoted racism.  While it is clear that not all of the right is racist, they have tolerated, embraced, accepted and encouraged it. The right does more than just tolerate this pro-(some) European belief in the superiority of some people over others, of dominance of people they identify as like them over everyone else.  They demonize people, wrongly, unfairly, inaccurately.
In extreme cases, like J.T. Ready, it drives some people to kill other people.  Being caught in such horrific actions that result directly for horrific beliefs is embarrassing.  So these groups have to make up conspiracy theories pulled out of their backsides, claiming as fact the fiction that their 'hero' was murdered by malevolent Hispanic narco-terrorists, instead of being a murder/suicide arising out of a domestic dispute.  That a 911 call reporting the domestic dispute to police was in progress at the time of the shooting proves that wrong, but the extreme wing nuts will try to fly it anyway.

That this racism is behind the politics and policies of the right is clear from insanity like the following, from Think Progress (see the whole article that accompanies this video):



When they get caught, the right back pedals like crazy. Caucasian is a term used to describe a race; there IS no way to refer to it that is not racial. They lie; the right will lie like a rug, to avoid being caught publicly in expressing their racism. There IS no way to use the word Caucasian without addressing race in this context.
Cultural diversity should not ever disparage a majority, but so far as the larger experience of people who are in minorities or who are less inclusive in that majority, people who see fewer people around them who are like them, benefit from celebrating different cultures, from learning and from celebrating our respective strengths.  It is NOT something to be condemned, avoided or disparaged, even when it makes us less comfortable  That discomfort should be the starting point for finding common ground and shared understanding.
The alternative is what people like Ms. Brunstetter propose, which would harm a significant minority of people who are not 'like' her, who have a different sexual orientation.  And the extreme alternative to it are the views and actions of truly hateful people like J. T. Ready.  Conservatives are not moral people, they are not principled people, so long as they continue to embrace the white supremacists and the hateful anti-cultural diversity fringies, the homophobes and the Islamophobes and the Anti-semitics in order to expand their numbers and find new sources of money- and votes.  This is true in the politics and positions of people like Pat Buchanan.  It is true in the newsletters of Ron Paul.  It is true in the politics of CPAC.  It is true in the polling this past March by Public Policy Polling of SOUTHERN CONSERVATIVES that found significant percentages of them believe interracial marriage should be ILLEGAL (although not as high as the number of fools who did not believe in evolution).  Miscegenation ended by a SCOTUS decision in 1967; it never ended in these place by legislation.  The conservatives who feel this way are exclusively white; and they would love to see it be impossible for someone like President Obama not to be a legal child of marriage.  It is true in the politics of the people behind the 'Papers Please' immigration law in Arizona. It is true of people like J.T. Ready, who claimed (eventually, insincerely) to only be against illegal immigrants and 'narco-terrorists', but who could so clearly hate an innocent little girl for her parentage.  It is not isolated; it is endemic.

These people, these HORRIBLE, BACKWARD people, want to roll the world back to their odd, sick and horribly unequal and unfair days of 1920 and earlier, days when blacks and hispanics and women were all kept in a subordinate place, where they were submissive and dominated, where they did not play a significant role in power and politics and the economy.  A world where they could legislate away any fact they did not like and a world where corruption is rampant and ugly - where money buys everything.  They are immoral and they hate deeply.
They may be white, but these people are beyond the pale (so to speak) of a moral, ethical, civilized society.  THEY are the only ones who should excluded, by their political choices and beliefs, not their ethnicity or race, cultural origins, language or religion.

U.S. flag = US, ALL of US