America needs acceptance of different cultures
Rather than celebrating diversity, we should celebrate and encourage multiculturalism, because diversity is just the variety of cultures whereas multiculturalism stands for the advocacy of acceptance and integration of different cultures. To use the word diverse to describe society is just a joke, or worst, a slap on the face. Being diverse does not mean anything to me. Diversity is common, is everywhere. Multiculturalism is harder but more effective since it deals with understanding and reception of different cultures, not necessarily seeking agreement. I am culturally ethnocentric, a coward when it comes to stepping out of my comfort zone to get close to people from different ethnicities, countries, gender or religion, and start the questioning: What are you? Where do you come from? What do you think and why? I am afraid of the unknown. I am afraid I might insult someone. Sometimes, I rather stay away, preventing myself from getting an answer. I am afraid because I was taught to be so. I was taught to accept diversity and, with it, all its assumptions. It is easier to assume that whoever is raised by a gay couple will automatically become gay and live forever unhappy or that all Afro-Americans talk “black.” Coming to school with people from many parts of the world and seeing flags of their respective countries hanging in the College Center still does not tell me anything. Instead of uniting, diversity separates because it focuses on the differences rather than on a converging point. Look around the college into the different student group organizations. Are they working together? Nope! They are working, no doubt, but only toward their goal, representing their values. When are your values going to meet with mine? The other morning listening to KBOO on my way to school, I heard a comment from a caller who said he was going to go to the march held on Saturday and support his Latino brothers and sister protest against the H.R.4437 “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act”. I cried. I cried because I felt the love, which I guess I am not used to feeling from people from another culture. I plead you to take down your flag, your mask. I want to get to know you.
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