IZZIE WEBB
Humans will always be social creatures. We cannot help finding community and developing culture wherever we go, and that fact ties us together more than anything else.
The necessity in celebrating culture not only preserves the culture, but it allows education and strengthens community. We learn how to appreciate the differences other communities bring and how they fit with others in a country like the U.S. that is already intertwined.
Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman voted into the Texas Senate in 1966, was an incredibly strong and vocal figure in strengthening the U.S. She spoke about uniting people, sharing responsibility and warned against a divided nation.
“How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance — the one value that is indispensable in creating community,” Jordan said in her speech “All Together Now” at the 1976 National Democratic Convention.
In 1976, racial violence was still at a high. For Jordan to make a stance about unification and acceptance of other cultures and races was not just an act of bravery but necessity. Even during a time of political unrest amid the Nixon and Carter presidential race, her message remained clear.
We only have each other.
In current day times when politics seems to desire tearing people apart and overshadowing cultures the country holds in its borders, we must remind ourselves why it matters. We don’t celebrate cultures to hide others. We don’t highlight them because we prefer one over the other. We do it to share pride.
America would look very different if we didn’t allow expression of culture in the early days of the nation. In fact, there was no choice. The early immigrants of America had nothing but the culture they remember from their home across the ocean.
It’s unfair to say it is a choice now, and a choice that doesn’t deserve the public eye. Anyone who believes it unfair that a culture gets a set time of celebration are rejecting opportunity and a life of experience. That is a lonely existence.
Everything in culture matters. Art, music, literature and food are just byproducts of the unique mindsets culture cultivates among people.
“Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people get together to eat,” Guy Fieri once said.
Sharing culture is how ideas are exchanged, too. Transcendentalism reached American philosophers through the writings of Chinese philosopher Confucius, who drew from the social changes he saw in the Zhou dynasty era of ancient China.
Children are signs of success in this country, and as people often say, “It takes a village to raise a child.” everything this society does is to help raise the upcoming generation to be more aware, intelligent and secure than the last.
Christmas Eve in 1944 Germany, 12-year-old Fritz Vincken and his mother let three American soldiers into their home and four German soldiers shortly after that.
The morning after everyone had been fed and their wounds had been treated, the soldiers shook hands and parted ways to rejoin their sides of the war.
We don’t want the next leaders of this county to lose sight of what makes America so unique to any other. We are not going to be here forever, and while the country continues to change, we have to start thinking now about how we can preserve the freedom and integrity we are supposed to be proud of.
Tragedy is happening all around us, and hope is easily lost in the face of divisive politics and angry, scared citizens. Just remember that at the end of the day nothing feels better than knowing you can find community in the people you share a country with.